Grasping the Significance of Hamas

Posted in Palestine on July 1st, 2007

(This by way of Speaking Truth to Power from Boston (formerly from Egypt, then Kuwait - this guy gets around)):

One of the battles at present involves the construction of Hamas. That is, there are various players, writers, scholars etc., aiming either to get Hamas right or get Hamas wrong (and everywhere in between these two poles). What seems important in some circles is that the significance of Hamas not be understood, that its relevance be dismissed and that its importance be denied, in favour of a perversely one-sided demonization and characterization of it as a terrorist organization. Obviously, given the context of Palestine’s near decimation at the hands of Israel’s state based policy of cultural destruction and land theft, the notion of blaming Hamas various responses to Israel’s countless violations and aggressions - at least to some - is laugh out loud ridiculous.

So what happens when “Ms. Roy, a senior research associate at Harvard U., who earned her Ph.D. in political economy at Harvard,” … “renowned for her meticulous, morally-informed and articulate research on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza” … and “uniquely knowledgeable about Gaza,” is offered the task of reviewing Matthew Levitt’s book on Hamas (Title: Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad)? What happens is that she spends some time constructing a review, “commissioned by The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the official foreign-policy journal at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.” The editor-in-chief, apparently pleased with the review even selects out key sentences to be featured in sidebars.

Then what happens?

The whole review gets censored. Killed. Why? Give it all a read at Middle East Policy Council who did publish it. Read what happened, why it was rejected, Roy’s thoughts on the matter and last but not least, read the review.

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