Hamas Should Never Be Decriminalised
The campaign to remove Hamas from the UK’s list of proscribed organisations is not about defending free speech or political dissent. It is about legitimising jihad
A dangerous and morally bankrupt campaign is currently underway in Britain to decriminalise Hamas, the Islamist group responsible for some of the worst atrocities of modern times, including the pogrom of 7 October 2023, which led to the current war in Gaza. A UK legal firm, Riverway Law, is representing Dr Mousa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’s head of international affairs, in a bid to overturn the group’s proscription as a terrorist organisation. Their case argues that the UK government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act (2000) violates the rights of Hamas members and supporters to freedom of speech and assembly.
The submission claims:
For more than a century, the British State has been responsible for colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine. Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (the Islamic Resistance Movement or “Hamas”) is an organised resistance movement that exercises the right of the Palestinian people to resist Zionism and the colonisation, occupation, apartheid and genocide carried out in its name.
But Hamas’s “resistance” to Zionism is not legitimate. While Palestinians have a right to self-determination, it is both absurd and self-defeating to predicate this upon denying Jewish people their equal right to self-determination. What Hamas is “resisting” is the idea that Jewish people should be allowed to be self-governing. Rather, Hamas believes that Jewish people in Palestine must be subjugated under Islamic rule.
This latest effort to whitewash Hamas is an affront to the many victims of their brutality—including the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Hamas directly or died as a result of Hamas’s actions. Hamas is, without question, a terrorist group. It should remain banned in Britain—indeed, it should be banned everywhere in the world, including in the Palestinian territories, where its rule has inflicted catastrophic harm on the very people it falsely claims to defend.
Hamas has always been clear about its aims: Islamic supremacy and the destruction of Israel. Its 1988 charter is saturated with antisemitic conspiracy theories and calls for jihadist warfare against the Jewish state. Unlike some other revolutionary movements that have evolved into relatively mainstream political parties, Hamas has never shown any signs that it might morph into a more moderate form. If anything, Hamas’s leaders have only become more committed to all-or-nothing jihadism, as we can see by their willingness to sacrifice Gazans in the name of the destruction of Israel.
This reality was laid bare on 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a macabre mediaeval massacre of Israeli civilians. Over 1,200 people—including babies, women, and the elderly—were slaughtered: by being burned to death, decapitated with gardening tools, and disembowelled, among other gruesome methods. Others were kidnapped, tortured, and used as human shields. Citizens of thirty countries—including the UK itself—were killed, raped, or kidnapped. These atrocities were not isolated incidents or rogue operations—they were deliberate, calculated actions directed by Hamas’s leadership. Then-head of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh described the attack in the following terms:
Today, the enemy has had a political, military, intelligence, security and moral defeat inflicted upon it, and we shall crown it, with the grace of God, with a crushing defeat that will expel it from our lands, our holy city of Jerusalem, our al Aqsa mosque.
To attempt to decriminalise Hamas after such bloodshed is to abandon all moral clarity. Terrorism is not a legitimate liberation tactic. Slaughtering civilians is not a form of political expression. Mass rape is not resistance.
The campaign to remove Hamas from the list of proscribed organisations is not about defending free speech or political dissent. It is about legitimising organised violence and jihadist warmongering, and it constitutes a terrible threat to Jewish people in the UK who may be targeted by Hamas for kidnapping or murder if the organisation is allowed to operate in Britain.
By arguing that the UK ban infringes the “human rights” of Hamas supporters, this legal challenge turns the concept of human rights on its head. Human rights are designed to protect individuals from oppression and violence, not to provide legal cover for those who perpetrate them. To defend Hamas in the name of human rights is a grotesque distortion of that concept and, if successful, this case would likely erode public trust in British democracy and justice.
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