by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, spiked
Hundreds of Palestinians have taken to the streets in Gaza this week to protest against Hamas’s tyranny. In the largest anti-Hamas demonstrations since the war with Israel began, Gazans have been demanding that Hamas step down from power and end the conflict.
This won’t come as a surprise to those actually listening to Palestinians. Polling this month shows that just six per cent of Gazans want Hamas to stay in power. The ongoing demonstrations in Gaza feature slogans such as ‘Hamas terrorists’, ‘Hamas out’ and ‘Stop the war’ – a reminder that the onus to end this war lies with Hamas.
Hamas, which has occupied the Gaza Strip since 2007, functions as a jihadist militia, not dissimilar to the Taliban, al-Qaeda or Islamic State. But there is one glaring dissimilarity with those other terror groups. No other jihadist outfit could kill nearly 1,200 people, as Hamas did on 7 October 2023, and still receive so much sympathy across the West. No other group could deploy gory sexual violence at such a scale and be met with silence, if not applause, from women’s rights organisations. Hamas seems perfectly able to get away with it, however. This is because, for the past 18 months, ideologues ranging from leftists to Islamists have been able to couch their cheerleading for Hamas as a ‘pro-Palestinian’ position.