Author’s attack on ‘dehumanisation’ of Hamas triggers walkout at heated LSE event
Helena Cobban, co-author of Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters, also alleged 7 October attacks were focused on military sites
Richard Ferrer has been editor of Jewish News since 2009. As one of Britain's leading Jewish voices he writes for The Times, Independent, New Statesman and many other titles. Richard previously worked at the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, edited the Boston Jewish Advocate and created the Channel 4 TV series Jewish Mum Of The Year.
The co-author of controversial new book Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters has denounced the “dehumanisation of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups”.
Speaking at an event titled Understanding Hamas at the London School of Economics (LSE) on Monday evening, Helena Cobban said: “Hamas is not well understood in this country or the United States. It has been systematically misrepresented in the corporate media in much of the west for a long time prior to 7 October and most especially since then. I am trying to represent a broad range of specialist views on the topic.”
Cobban, a British-American writer on international relations, told the audience she had coined the term ‘disrepresentation’ to describe how Hamas has been let down by the mainstream media, which “actively puts out falsehoods” to deliberately misrepresent the movement and its actions”.
She added: “This suppression of vital information about Hamas and the other resistance movements has been responsible for a lot of public ignorance we now see.”
Cobban was later sharply challenged by both the chair, Michael Mason from LSE’s Middle East Centre, and members of the audience, after asserting: “It is important to note, both by the recent Israeli military investigation and many Israeli investigative journalists, that a lot of what Hamas did on 7 October was attack military targets.”
Some audience members staged a walkout during the Q&A section of the event.
Mason introduced the panel – which also included Professor Jeroen Gunning from King’s College, Dr Catherine Charrett, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Westminster and Mouin Rabbani a Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst – by expressing his “ethical unease” about the book’s “moral one-sidedness”.
Mason also cautioned the panel that he would terminate the event if they crossed the line into statements in support of Hamas.
Panelist Jeroen Gunning said he also believed the word “terrorist” in relation to Hamas was “dehumanising”, adding: “It has devastating effects. It erases the historical context of 7 October, facilities the dehumanisation of Hamas and other Gazans and obstructs the political solution. None of this is to deny war crimes. Hamas, like Israel, should be investigated by the International Criminal Court. The attacks (of 7 October) were shaped by the settler colonial context of the conflict. The timing of the attacks was also connected to the threat of Saudi normalisation with Israel. Hamas has twice the support of Fatah so a political solution without Hamas is unlikely to work. Sidelining them is not helpful.”
Praising the book, Dr Charrett said: “It places Hamas’ strategy in a longer history of anti-colonial struggle, such as the Tet Offensive in north Vietnam, which led to American withdrawal in the county.”
Dr Charrett also claimed the book “provides a corrective to how Hamas has been portrayed in much of western mainstream media, which literally does not know anything about the movement. The book provides expert response to this. You cannot engage in negotiations from a position of othering.”
A Jewish LSE student who attended the talk said: “It’s shocking that this is the type of event that LSE staff think is acceptable to host on campus. The event wasn’t hosted by a radical student group but by employed members of staff at the Middle East Centre. The comment Helena Cobban made on Hamas only targeting military zones in the 7 October massacre is a dangerous form denial and propaganda which I cannot believe is narrative being spread in a UK university.”
In a significant intervention ahead of the event, a Home Office spokesperson told Jewish News that anyone taking part “should seriously consider any views they plan to publicly express” in regard to illegally stating support for a proscribed terror organisation.
A protest against the event, and a counterprotest in support of the authors, took place outside the building.
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