Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Hamas’s victim complex

Credit: Getty images

‘We are the victims… therefore nobody should blame us for the things we do.’

Who do you think said this? Some blue-haired campus activist who’s convinced they’re suffering from structural oppression? A trans campaigner, perhaps, who thinks being misgendered is an act of violence? Maybe some other social justice type who feels victimised by everything from statues of old colonialists to un-PC jokes?

Actually it was Ghazi Hamad, a leading figure in Hamas. Yes, Hamas is now the armed wing of the culture of victimhood. The genocidal army of the cloying politics of self-pity. One headline paraphrased his comments as follows: ‘We are victims – everything we do is justified.’ If anyone can find a better summary than that of the violent narcissism of our times, I’d be happy to see it.

Hamas clearly sees its terrorism as essentially a tantrum, a tantrum of the oppressed

Hamad, who has held various positions in the Hamas regime, made his remarks in an interview on Lebanese TV.

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