LSE to host launch of book about ‘viciously maligned’ Hamas

The London School of Economics' Middle East Centre is to host the launch of a book on “understanding Hamas” that describes it as a resistance movement which has been demonised in the West.

Two of the advertised speakers at next month’s event have argued against labelling the Palestinian Islamist movement - which is proscribed by the UK government - as terrorist.

Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters is co-edited by British-American writer Helena Cobban and Jordanian-American journalist Rami G. Khouri. According to its blurb, it features “a series of rich and probing conversations with leading experts” that examine Hamas’s “critical shift from social and religious activism to national political engagement” and “its transformation from early anti-Jewish tendencies to a stance that differentiates between Judaism and Zionism,” among other subjects.

It says the demonisation of Hamas “intensified after the events in Southern Israel on October 7,” with the group being branded “as ‘terrorist’ or worse.”

One contributor to the book, Palestinian academic Azzam Tamimi, has previously called for the destruction of Israel.

Speakers at the event include Catherine Charrett, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Westminster who said in 2019 that “the EU knows Hamas is not a terrorist organisation but continues not to meet with members of the group because it is working toward delegitimising the movement”.

Also due to appear is Jeroen Gunning, visiting professor at the LSE Middle East Centre and professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies at King’s College London – and a contributor to the book.

Last year, Gunning led a seminar for the UK Foreign Office where he and three other academics told officials that calling Hamas terrorists was an “obstacle to peace” and suggested that Israel was a “white, settler colonialist nation”.

The line-up is completed by Cobban, a writer and researcher whose study of the “Arab-Israeli theatre”, as her author bio in OR Books describes, has spanned decades and includes a 1984 Cambridge-published report called The Palestinian Liberation Organisation; and Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of independent Arab ezine Jadaliyya and a former senior analyst on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group. A conversation with Rabbani is featured in the book.

Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters is a compilation of five transcripts of webinar conversations with five “world-class experts on this little understood and viciously maligned movement”, according to the non-profit body Just World Educational (JWE), which was co-founded  by Cobban. JWE facilitated the webinars, which were co-hosted by Khouri and Cobban, and launched the book project.

Three years ago JWE (Just World Educational) ran programmes with the Israeli-American anti-Zionist activist Miko Peled. Last November in a debate at the Oxford Union Peled described the Hamas October 7 attack as "an act of heroism".

"Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters", published by OR Books, is the subject of an event at LSE on 10 March. (Photo: OR Books)[Missing Credit]

Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters was published by independent publisher OR Books on October 10 2024, almost a year to the day after the Hamas-led massacre of Israelis on October 7.

Along with Gunning and Rabbani, the book’s contributors include journalist and lecturer Paola Caridi; Palestinian academic and author Khaled Hroub; and Azzam Tamimi, a British-Palestinian academic and activist who has made headlines over the years for defending Hamas and making inflammatory comments about Israel.

In a 2010 lecture Tamimi told students at the School of Oriental and African Studies: “You shouldn’t be afraid of being labelled extreme, radical or terrorist. If fighting for your home land is terrorism, I take pride in being a terrorist. The Koran tells me if I die for my homeland I’m a martyr and I long to be a martyr.”

Tamimi has also advocated the destruction of Israel, urging people “to eradicate this cancer from the body of humanity.”

The release of the book has not been without controversy.

In September 2024, California bookstore Diesel announced that it would remove the book from its shelves after dozens of pro-Israel demonstrators gathered outside the store to protest.

In a response posted on its website, OR Books said: “We don’t know if anyone at the Diesel store, or the associated protest, has read our book. If they have, they will have discovered that it comprises contributions by a group of distinguished researchers with deep knowledge of Hamas and the Middle East conflict more generally.

“The book is explicit in stating that it does not advocate for Hamas but instead presents an in-depth consideration of its history, structure and politics.”

OR Books publisher Colin Robinson said at a New York launch event that the book “explicitly does not endorse Hamas, it attempts to investigate what it is as an organisation and why it should be taken seriously.”

LSE’s Middle East Centre, whose stated objectives include “fostering open and critical debate about the politics, societies and economies of the region,” hosts dozens of events each year highlighting a wide variety of regional issues and subjects. It has featured numerous panels concerning the Israel-Gaza conflict, Israeli foreign policy, and prospects for Palestinian nationhood.

In a statement sent to the JC, LSE Middle East Centre director Michael Mason — who will chair the book launch — said the topics in Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters were deemed “relevant and of scholarly interest” to the centre and the event itself is “covered by LSE's commitment to academic freedom and free speech”.

Referring to the school’s Code of Practice on Free Speech, Mason added: “The Middle East Centre does not (as with LSE as an institution) take a formal position on political or international issues. We endeavour to provide a platform to facilitate discourse on contemporary matters by encouraging critical debate, within the law, where the views of all parties are treated with respect.”

He added, “Nothing from the hosting of this event can reasonably be construed as the Middle East Centre or LSE condoning Hamas and its actions on October 7. This is patently not the case.

“I recognise that the issues being discussed are highly charged, but universities are an important space where such discussion can take place openly and freely.”

The Board of Deputies has issued a call for the cancellation of the Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters launch event at LSE, saying in a statement on Wednesday: 

“Despite the purported caveat that the book "does not advocate for or against Hamas” it is difficult to see how this is anything other than an attempt to whitewash a group proscribed as a terrorist organisation in this country. Not only should this event be cancelled, but the Home Office should take a direct interest in it.”