How Hamas Won Hearts and Minds on the American Left For 30 years, the terror organization has made a concerted effort to appeal to Western intellectuals. By Lorenzo Vidino
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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