How to support terrorism (legally)
I’ve moved: check out my newest posts in the Times of Israel.
The London School of Economics has once again delivered itself into the centre of controversy following its book launch for British-American author Helena Cobban and Jordanian-American journalist Rami G. Khouri’s 244-page Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters on Monday evening.
In spite of its status as one of Britain’s most prominent universities, its events, its lecturers, and its student union are almost regularly charged with antisemitism and anti-Israeli bombast — and this time is no different. I wrote about this launch last month when I was sure it would never happen, but now that it has actually taken place — see the video here — I feel inclined as to compose another article on it.
The occasion featured a panel dialogue with Cobban, Professor Jeroen Gunning from King’s College London, Dr Catherine Charrett from the University of Westminster, and Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani. It was chaired by Michael Mason, Director of LSE’s Middle East Centre, who opened the session by expressing what he defined as an ‘ethical unease’ about the book’s moral framework:
‘I want to begin by acknowledging that I have deep ethical unease about this event. I have agreed to chair it because I believe in open academic debate, but I want to make it clear that if any statement crosses the line into direct or indirect support for Hamas, which remains a proscribed terrorist organisation under UK law, I will have no hesitation in terminating this event.’
Cobban wasted little time setting the tone of the evening, diving immediately into a barrage of what is, if not verbatim terrorist sympathy, certainly shockingly thoughtless:
‘Hamas is not well understood in this country or the United States. It has been systematically misrepresented in the corporate media in much of the West for a long time prior to 7 October and most especially since then. I am trying to represent a broad range of specialist views on the topic.’
She accused Western media of distorting the truth about Hamas. ‘I have coined the term ‘disrepresentation’ to describe how Hamas has been let down by the mainstream media, which actively puts out falsehoods to deliberately misrepresent the movement and its actions.’
According to Cobban, this ‘disrepresentation’, a societal instance of misinformation as she regards it, is to blame for the widespread cluelessness, ‘ignorance,’ regarding Hamas and its activities in the Gaza Strip and Israel, declaring that ‘this suppression of vital information about Hamas and the other resistance movements has been responsible for a lot of public ignorance we now see.’
Cobban’s talk, already atrociously provocative, took a lurch in the wrong direction in her attempt to almost entirely sanitise the horrors of October 7. Anyone even remotely familiar with the events of the day, one that saw the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, will know that 1200 men, women and children were slaughtered, with a further 251 taken hostage, kidnapped into the Gaza Strip. Cobban disagreed with the facts: ‘It is important to note, both by the recent Israeli military investigation and many Israeli investigative journalists, that a lot of what Hamas did on 7 October was attack military targets.’
Thankfully, though, the event’s chair and director of the LSE’s Middle East Centre Michael Mason felt compelled to challenge Cobban’s claim:
‘That is not consistent with the overwhelming body of evidence that has emerged since the attack. The targeting of civilians was systematic and deliberate… I feel an ethical unease about the book’s moral one-sidedness. I want to remind everyone here that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation under UK law.’
In my last article — linked above — on the LSE’s decision to host an event of this sort, the authors’ gross insensitivity on their social media and prior writings. Cobban’s media activity includes a post in response to the confirmation of the deaths of three out of the four members of the Bibas family — a mother and two sons — that claims it is ‘racist and a form of genocide whitewashing to act like two dead Israeli children is earth-shattering news while actively ignoring or justifying the 20,000+ Palestinian children.’
See, also, the allegations made by pro-Hamas activist Dr Azzam Tamimi that Israel lied about what took place on 7 October to justify mounting a revenge attack. He writes of ‘Hamas actvists and leaders, and some eyewitnesses who all testified that there was no beheading of babies, there was no rape whatsoever….’ adding that most of the hostages taken during the massacre into Gaza ‘were not actually taken by Al-Qassam fighters’ but by ordinary Gazans, who were all ‘in a sense jubiliant they managed to set foot in their homeland of their ancestors… just acting in a very disorderly manner.’
Khouri, not to be outdone in this apparent competition of insensibility, wrote recently that:
‘Effective Israeli propaganda has long demonised Hamas in the West as a reckless and vicious terror group that wants to destroy Israel. The reality, however, is that Hamas has been a successful Palestinian national political organisation. (Hint: If you detain your young gay citizens for homosexual intercourse, then coerce them into making a promise on the Qur’an not to ‘be gay’ again, you’re probably not a ‘successful political organisation.’)
If this is not sympathy for terrorism, I don’t know what is. Speaker Professor Jeroen Gunning from King’s College London, who we quickly realised upon her ascent to the podium is no less half-witted, insensible and imprudent than the book’s authors, staunchly declared:
‘The word ‘terrorist’ is dehumanising. It has devastating effects. It erases the historical context of 7 October, facilitates the dehumanisation of Hamas and other Gazans, and obstructs the political solution. None of this is to deny war crimes. Hamas, like Israel, should be investigated by the International Criminal Court. The attacks of 7 October were shaped by the settler colonial context of the conflict. The timing of the attacks was also connected to the threat of Saudi normalisation with Israel. Hamas has twice the support of Fatah, so a political solution without Hamas is unlikely to work. Sidelining them is not helpful.’
Lecturer Dr Charret took an approach that was, relative to her co-lecturers, reasonably tame, attempting to place Hamas’ massacre within a historical context of an anti-colonial struggle:
‘The book provides a corrective to how Hamas has been portrayed in much of Western mainstream media, which literally does not know anything about the movement. It provides an expert response to this. You cannot engage in negotiations from a position of othering… It places Hamas’s strategy in a longer history of anti-colonial struggle, such as the Tet Offensive in North Vietnam, which led to American withdrawal in the country.’
The audience’s reaction to this utter inanity was no less divisive than that of the wider public: some in attendance walked out in protest during the Q&A, one Jewish student describing their reaction to Jewish News:
‘It’s shocking that this is the type of event that LSE staff think is acceptable to host on campus. The event wasn’t hosted by a radical student group but by employed members of staff at the Middle East Centre. The comment Helena Cobban made on Hamas only targeting military zones in the 7 October massacre is a dangerous form of denial and propaganda which I cannot believe is narrative being spread in a UK university.’
Despite the — quite reasonable — backlash, Cobban and her fellow panellists remained defiant. Cobban repeatedly insisted that the West’s understanding of Hamas is fundamentally flawed, asserting that ‘there is a deliberate effort to portray Hamas as barbaric and irrational. That’s not true. Hamas operates within a clear strategic and political framework.’
Hamas is barbaric. A British American who has never lived the life of a Gazan citizen oppressed by their government, or an Israeli civilian struggling with PTSD because their friends will never return from the music festival they planned to spend the day at, will never comprehend the scale of suffering inflicted by Hamas in just one day: see here a video of Hamas’ butchery — discretion is advised.
Before the event, a spokesperson for the LSE said simply:
‘Free speech and freedom of expression underpins everything we do at LSE […] Students, staff and visitors are strongly encouraged to discuss and debate the most pressing issues around the world.’
If events like these are the future of ‘free speech and freedom of expression,’ the future for Jews and Israelis looks increasingly dismal. Such is the reality we live in: history repeats itself.
Thanks for reading today’s article, everyone — maybe even give another one a read while you’re at it.
It’s also worth saying that articles like this are based on incredibly controversial topics. That said, if you disagree that this book is written by and for anything other than Hamas apologists, I thoroughly disagree with you and invite your arguments in the comments.
Buy my book — it helps finance the caffeine addiction that allows me to write articles like this one.
See:
- The LSE’s web page promoting the event
- The book’s official page for purchase
- Speaker Dr Catherine Charret (University of Westminister) and her MyWestministerResearch profile
- Helena Cobban’s Wikipedia page
- Speaker Jeroen Gunning (LSE Middle East Centre, and King’s College London)
- Speaker Mouin Rabbani (Jadaliyya, nonresident fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs)
Good day — Simon
