MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-11-03 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Dopes
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Opinion | How Hamas Won Hearts and Minds on the American Left
Lorenzo Vidino
5–6 minutes
Support for Hamas on college campuses and in city streets has shocked
Americans. But we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the fruit of an influence
campaign dating back at least 30 years.
In October 1993, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretapped a
Philadelphia hotel room where a dozen senior Hamas members—some of them
U.S.-based—had gathered. The men had called the meeting weeks after the
signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. For days they debated how to sabotage the agreement and
generate support for Hamas among American Muslims, the political class
and wider society. They correctly foresaw that the U.S. government would
designate Hamas a terrorist organization and agreed on a strategy to
frame the conflict in religious terms for Muslims while using
more-palatable frames for non-Muslim Americans. They plotted to create
an array of mainstream organizations to conduct this dual-track work.
“Let’s not hoist a large Islamic flag, and let’s not be
barbaric-talking,” one of the participants said. “We will remain a front
so that if the [terror designation] happens, we will benefit from the
new developments instead of having all of our organizations classified
and exposed.”
“I swear by Allah that war is deception,” another said. “Deceive,
camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way.”
Thirty years later, this strategy has proved effective. Widespread
support for Hamas’s barbaric actions on Oct. 7 didn’t come out of thin
air. Several things gave life to the phenomenon—from the identification
of Israel with “white privilege” to old-fashioned anti-Semitism—but the
terror group’s networks in the U.S. and Europe played a key role.
Now run largely by Western-born activists, these networks understand how
politics and media narratives work in the West. They frame the conflict
in religious terms to local Muslim communities, labeling Israelis as
“infidels” and evoking hadiths about the killing of Jews. On college
campuses those same networks use the language of postcolonial theory to
tar the Israelis as “European settlers.” Unsurprisingly, a few days ago,
a Hamas leader told a Vice.com journalist that “the same type of racism
that killed George Floyd is being used by [Israel] against the
Palestinians”—a comparison tailored to the ears of Western progressives.
A diverse web of fellow travelers and useful idiots have aided this
influence operation—including politicians in the U.S. and Europe. Jeremy
Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party from 2015-20, is perhaps the
best example. He called Hamas and Hezbollah “our friends.” But Mr.
Corbyn isn’t alone. In June, politicians from all over Europe attended
the European Palestinians Conference in Sweden. The organizer, Amin Abu
Rashed, a well-known Hamas supporter, was arrested weeks later in the
Netherlands for allegedly raising millions for the terrorist
organization. He has declared his innocence but Dutch law allows him to
be held in pretrial detention.
Academia may be even friendlier to Hamas than the leftist political
world. The recent campus demonstrations are evidence of the affinity,
but the connections run deeper. The United Association for Studies and
Research, or UASR, a think tank established in Chicago in 1989, is the
brainchild of Musa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas operative based in Doha,
Qatar, who is now the organization’s second in command.
Over the years, UASR organized events and joint publications with
prominent U.S. universities. Scholars affiliated with Duke, Johns
Hopkins, Fordham and the University of Maryland sat on the editorial
board of its quarterly, the Middle East Affairs Journal. UASR’s
executive director Ahmed Yousef returned to Gaza in 2005 to become
senior adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Mr. Yousef used his
experience with American media to place op-eds with the and other
Western publications.
Hamas also has funding networks in the West. In 2008 federal prosecutors
introduced transcripts from the Philadelphia meeting as evidence against
the Holy Land Foundation. The Texas-based front charity, also founded by
Mr. Marzook, was found guilty of funneling more than $12 million to
Hamas over a decade, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S.
history.
Hamas is more than a terrorist organization intent on killing Jews and
eradicating Israel. It is also a savvy international political player
that has used the West as a staging ground for an influence operation
aimed at policy makers, public opinion and Muslim communities. While
some of what Hamas does on American soil is constitutionally protected,
it is all in the service of its morally repugnant agenda. If, as
President Biden said, “Hamas is ISIS,” there should be no space in
politics, academia or the media for those who spin the terrorists’
talking points.
Mr. Vidino is director of the program on extremism at George Washington
University.
--
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