Middle East Conflict: Relativizing Voids | nd-aktuell.de

In the last editions of “nd.DieWoche”, the internationally known historians Enzo Traverso and Rashid Khalidi each had their say in a major interview on the situation in the Middle East, Israel and the role of Hamas. Despite all the differences in detail, there were similar gaps in both arguments with regard to their interpretation of the Hamas massacre on October 7th. As a historian, I would like to contradict these arguments, although with a different focus: their empty spaces ultimately amount to a relativization of Hamas and its actions. The following comments are not intended as a comprehensive treatment of the Middle East conflict and its recent escalation, but rather deal with Enzo Traverso and Rashid Khalidi’s classifications of Hamas and the massacre.

Illegitimate violence

Both historians make it clear that they abhor the massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023. At the same time, however, they understand the violence as illegitimate forms of what they see as fundamentally legitimate armed resistance of an oppressed people (Traverso) in the context of the “war against Palestine” (Khalidi) – although with Khalidi it remains unclear which “Palestine” he means: Israel, the West Bank, Gaza or all of them? The fact that this resistance is also carried out using illegitimate means (Traverso) or is associated with violations of international humanitarian law (Khalidi) appears to both to be an unfortunate but almost inevitable side effect. So does the resistance of the oppressed have no other choice than to resort to the means of terror and murder? Here the resistance is negotiated as if it had not been preceded by conscious considerations and decisions.

The central question of whether these means are even suitable for achieving the desired liberation remains completely ignored. After decades of armed resistance from various organizations claiming the liberation of Palestine, the balance sheet is negative in every respect. Such a failure should be a reason for a fundamental change in strategy; Some armed groups have drawn the conclusions in similar situations and given up this form of resistance.

This form of “armed struggle” should actually be sufficient for the maximum distancing of an emancipatory left.

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In this context, it would be necessary to examine more closely what significance the use of “illegitimate forms of violence” plays in this failure, among which Traverso explicitly includes the massacre of October 7, 2023. Of course, the accomplished historian that Traverso is proven to be knows that the massacre had many similar antecedents. The only examples worth mentioning are the 1972 Olympic attack in Munich, in which, among other things, eleven Israeli athletes were killed, or the suicide attacks “popularized” by Hamas as a weapon from 1993 onwards and copied by other groups. This form of “armed struggle” alone, in which very young people are often made to blow themselves up at bus stops, among other things, should actually be enough to distance an emancipatory left from those responsible.

No emancipatory power

Which brings us to the second blank space. Traverso also sees that Hamas “is an anti-democratic, authoritarian, misogynistic and homophobic movement.” In a free society, he adds, it would be the enemy of the left. But why is it only in a free society? Hamas and similar organizations are already an often deadly threat wherever they have power – for leftists as well as for everyone else who is in political opposition to them. Traverso and Khalidi should have no illusions about this either. Alone, why don’t they mention it? It certainly didn’t escape both of them that among the victims of the Hamas massacre were Israeli leftists who campaigned for the rights of their Palestinian neighbors.

Traverso rejects Hamas, but says it is “the leading force of resistance against the occupation.” That doesn’t make it better – on the contrary. On the one hand, it was tragic that in 2006, in the last elections to date for the Palestinian Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip, an Islamist-fundamentalist group received the majority that embodies in every respect the opposite of emancipation and liberation. On the other hand, unlike in Israel, the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip cannot decide at regular intervals who they want to be represented by. Khalidi therefore also expresses cautious doubts as to whether the organization actually still has the support that the election results suggested 18 years ago.

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Traverso emphasizes that in order to classify the violence, one must understand that “Gaza is a sealed-off internment camp, a Palestinian ghetto” and it is therefore obvious “why hatred of the Israelis is so widespread among the Palestinian population.” Yes, the Gaza Strip is an area strictly sealed off by Israel. But neither of the two interviewees mentioned that the severity of this closure had to do with the fact that those in power in Gaza were not only unable to prevent attacks from their territory on neighboring cities and settlements in Israel, but were actively organizing them.

Hamas, “whose members are fighting Israel in the tunnels” (Traverso), has not put its own interests as a political-military organization ahead of those of the population for the first time. After her election victory in 2006, she did not concentrate on disarmament and investing the incoming foreign aid money in the economic and social development of the coastal strip she governed. Instead, rearmament was pushed forward and enormous amounts of money, materials and manpower went into building a tunnel system that was useless for civilian purposes.

Sideshows

October 7, 2023 was not only a crime against the victims in Israel, but also against the population of the Gaza Strip. Hamas commanders could have known how the right-wing Israeli government would respond to this attack. They cynically took into account the deaths of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip and the devastation that accompanied it. Did they expect that the resulting outrage would soon put their own actions into perspective and make them forgotten? Hamas, if it cared about the population, could immediately end the killing in Gaza by immediately releasing all hostages and giving up its already lost battle.

All these questions are not addressed by the two historians. Instead, both go into sideshows. Traverso deals in detail with what he believes to be misleading labeling of the October 7th massacre as a “pogrom.” He should actually know why the Hamas attack, which is specifically directed against Jews and their property, suggests this choice of term. Khalidi, on the other hand, is offended by the one-sided, interest-driven use of the term “terrorism.” In the end, according to the historian, negotiations will also have to be carried out with terrorists, as can be seen from the examples of the ANC in South Africa and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). However, the ANC’s fight against apartheid actually had an emancipatory purpose and a leadership that knew how to ultimately win sympathy among the non-black population. And the Good Friday Agreement with the IRA followed their realization that armed resistance to British occupation had reached a dead end. Neither can be seen in the Islamic fundamentalist “resistance”.

My impression is that Traverso and Khalidi are struggling with the fact that they neither sympathize with Hamas nor even approve of its actions, but at the same time they shy away from the obvious consequence of drawing a clear dividing line between themselves and a Palestinian “resistance” that expresses itself in this form pull. It is surprising why leftists, who of course fight all forms of right-wing extremism and stand up for women’s, LGBTQ and human rights in Iran and elsewhere, have problems distinguishing themselves from enemies of these rights when they pose as Palestinian resistance. Such a demarcation does not mean foregoing criticism of the current Israeli government, the way it conducts the war in Gaza and Lebanon, or its occupation policy in the West Bank. It would still contradict the support of all those who advocate a non-violent future based on equal rights for everyone between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Rather, it would be a necessary supplement.

Heiner Dribbusch is a historian and social scientist. From 2003 to the end of 2019 he worked as a collective bargaining and industrial dispute expert at the Economic and Social Sciences Institute (WSI) in Düsseldorf. In 2023 he published the book “Strike. Labor disputes and strikers in Germany since 2000« in VSA-Verlag.

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