OPINION

Should Hamas Lay Down Their Weapons?

Questioning how we respond to violence

5 min read

Just now

Just the other day I wrote an article on what Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral race means for the left, and I was pretty positive for the most part in my assessment. I mentioned specifically how many of the smears that the right tried didn’t seem to stick at all, no matter how hard they tried. People on the right tried relentlessly to smear Mamdani as this evil antisemite, something they’re still trying to do now, and it doesn’t appear to be working that well.

One particular smear that reactionaries really tried to stick on him was this apparent view of his where he didn’t think that Hamas should lay down their weapons. The truth of the matter is, he didn’t think this at all and had even clarified that he thought they should, though he did at one point appear not to give a direct answer. I wanted to talk about this specific point because it’s one that I find really interesting, given that it reveals a lot about how we view organisations like Hamas and the actions they take.

First of all, I would say that it’s very telling that we place the onus on Hamas to lay down their weapons, as if Hamas are acting in a vacuum. People might try to counter this by saying that this recent conflict started on October 7th, which…