In Its Own Words: Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic Liberation and Resistance Movement Whose Goal is to Liberate Palestine and Confront the Zionist Project

"It's an honour to have contributed to this critically important application ... against the criminalization of Palestinian resistance in Britain, the imperial power responsible for Zionist colonialism in Palestine." 

"[Aiding and assisting on request an application to de-list Hamas in the U.K. as a] proscribed/banned [terror group]."

Charlotte Kates, leader, Samidoun

 

"The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century."

"Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people."

"Hamas is] a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project."

Legal Petition to the United Kingdom by Hamas 

"The legal profession is being damaged by ideologues exploiting their status to platform extremism." 

"This isn’t about free speech. It’s about a man [Riverway Law attorney Fahad Ansari], who repeatedly crosses the line into open support for terrorism — all while the authorities look away."

British Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick  

"They pose an ongoing threat to our security and to the peace and stability of the Middle East and have weapons and training facilities that put lives at risk and threaten our interests."

"They show no respect for human rights, life, and dignity and have oppressed people living in Gaza for too long."

"Those campaigning to end the proscription of Hamas fail to understand the seriousness of the threats this terrorist organization poses."

"[Hamas is an] evil Iranian-backed terrorist organization, which kidnaps, tortures, and murders people, including British nationals."

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel

Demonstrators hold Israeli and British flags outside the Law Courts, during a march against antisemitism, after an increase in the UK, during a temporary truce between the Palestinian Islamist terrorists Hamas and Israel, in London, Britain, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Susannah Ireland

 

The United Kingdom classified the 'military wing' of Hamas as a terror organization in 2001; a definition expanded two decades later to encompass the entire organization, including the political arm. Hamas encourages the West to think of it as a legitimate group fighting oppression, with distinct arms: a Health Authority, a political wing, a military wing and an executive body. In reality Hamas itself scoffs derisively at the very thought that there are such executive divisions; they consider the entire group as single-mindedly focused and engaged in its singular purpose: the destruction of the State of Israel.

 

A legal group by the name of Riverway Law which is supporting Hamas in its application to the U.K. government for the terrorist designation to be rescinded, contacted Charlotte Kates, herself head of a Vancouver-based outfit that advertises itself as a support for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, and which advocates as well for the legalization of Hamas and other terrorist groups as 'freedom fighters' and is part of a group proscribed in Canada as a terrorist entity.

 

One of Samidoun's leaders, Kates's husband, has direct links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a leading figure within it, another terrorist group that is proscribed as such in Canada. Riverway Law contacted Kates with a request for an "expert report" representing Samidoun that she and her husband co-founded, and Kates we happy to comply, as an ardent supporter of Hamas in Canada. Notorious for leading public chants of "Long Live October 7!"

It is such an honor to be here in Beirut today, one among a sea of over a million people in collective tribute, mourning, love and commitment to the road of resistance and liberation exemplified by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hisham Safieddine. Kates on X

 

According to Kates, the savage atrocities in Israel were "heroic and brave". So committed is she that she attended Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's public funeral that took place in Lebanon in February, memorializing him as a "great anti-imperialist leader of our day, the great Arab and international revolutionary, the beloved speaker of truth and warrior of justice". 

 

A Hamas political leader, Mousa Abu Marzouk, who lives in Qatar, rejected charges of  antisemitism: "Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. Our struggle is not against Jewish people because of their religion but against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem of antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage", he wrote in a witness statement to the Riverway application.

 

"[Hamas's terror listing runs]contrary to the European Court of Human Rights [and is] disproportionate" , wrote the Riverway Law application addressed to U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as they were "instructed by Hamas" to do. "The reality is that [Hamas] poses no threat to the U.K. people and have been explicit about this" -- handily bypassing the 15 British nationals who were slaughtered in the October 7 southern Israel attack in 2023.

"A whole host of legal and mental gymnastics were provided by the head of the law firm to explain why their actions are legitimate and how this is somehow a valid pathway to ending the bloodshed in Gaza and responding to the daily scenes of murdered Palestinian children."

"None of these individuals, including those at the law firm, bothered to understand that Hamas is the very root of the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of the Palestinian national project, having served the interests of the far right and the anti-Palestinian forces within Israeli politics and society."

Palestinian American researcher Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib