After Pantin1
I can neither renounce the grief and outrage I feel about those attacked and killed on October 7th nor stop insisting that genocide is happening against Palestinian people. For me, this is not a contradiction.
Although it is apparently difficult to hear, it is possible to describe Hamas as part of a resistance movement or armed struggle, without considering their actions as justified. Not all forms of “resistance” are justified.
To do that, we must find ways of understanding the reasons for violence without resorting to (a) quick and dubious justifications for it or (b) racist caricatures to oppose it.
If we want to ask people to lay down their arms – as I hope we do - then we must understand why they take them up in the first place. To pursue that kind of historical inquiry is not to justify the violence that they inflict.
For the means we use reflect and embody the world we want to create, which is why nonviolence, however impractical, affords a perspective we cannot do without.
perhaps this incident illuminates the limits of what can be heard