Why Hamas, Hezbollah, And The Houthis Are Not The Answer

In the past year, a heroic worldwide movement led by students and youth has stood up in opposition to the Israeli capitalist state’s criminal, genocidal war upon Gaza and increasingly, the broader Middle East. This mass struggle fought back by state repression has naturally generated a firestorm of ideas, searching for the best path toward peace and liberation. One trend in particular has emerged: an identification with political Islamism.

Are Islamist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah able and willing to point the way forward to freedom and self-determination, or are they a hindrance to freedom? To understand this, we must know their origins, social character, and the role they have played.

Counter-Revolution

In the mid-20th century, socialist and communist forces were prevalent in the Middle East. Although they held weaknesses, like allying with nationalist forces and acting in the interest of the  Soviet Union, they nonetheless championed workers’ solidarity against the ruling class and the ravages of imperialism.

Islamism entered as a counter-revolutionary force of capitalism, using populist frameworks to seize on the energies of revolutionary and anticolonial movements and siphon them into reactionary regimes opposed to working class interests. They divided workers against each other on the basis of ethnicity, nationality and religion. This phenomenon both sprang from and contributed to the decline of the Middle Eastern socialist movement along with that of secular nationalist organizations like Fatah, now the steward of the occupation in the West Bank.

Hamas, originally the Gazan wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, was literally funded by the Israeli state as early as 1967 in order to serve as a “counterweight” to the Palestine Liberation Organization. This divide-and-conquer tactic was also aimed at thwarting the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

The counter-revolutionary potential that the Israeli regime identified is displayed by Hamas’s ultra-right wing, misogynistic, queerphobic, and brutally repressive character. It has taken the actions of summary execution, abduction and torture not just against Israeli civilians but also against Palestinians. Israel also used Hamas’s poisonous nature to suffocate the mass popular uprising known as the First Intifada.

Competing Empires

Today the principal backer of Hamas is the Islamic Republic of Iran, which sprang from the 1979 revolution after the revolution was betrayed by the Stalinist Iranian Communist Party and other false leaders who formed an unprincipled alliance with the religious leader Khomeini. Iran has recently asserted itself as a regional imperialist power, expanding its influence over the Iraqi and Syrian economic and political systems and setting its proxy militias all over the region. This all while repressing mass movements for women’s and workers’ rights. Now the direct attacks between Israel and Iran have opened a new chapter in this continued horror.

The party representing Iranian interests in Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, has been a key player in the nonstop escalation of the current war and was an accomplice to Bashar Al-Assad’s suppression of the popular uprising in Syria in 2012. Hezbollah was itself an outgrowth of the Amal Movement, a puppet of the now-deposed Iranian Shah aimed at quelling the rising socialist consciousness of Shia workers. It has now formed a major part of the Lebanese parliament that has presided over an economic catastrophe, bringing that country to utter collapse. A majority of Lebanese workers polled this year said they had “no trust at all” in Hezbollah.

Hezbollah then inspired the Houthis, or Ansar Allah Movement, who are fighting for Zaydi Shia minority rule in Yemen. In this pursuit they have carried out bitter persecution against Yemeni Sunnis (despite having Sunni members) as well as Christians, Jews, and Baha’is, aligning themselves with the now-deposed former dictator Salah. These acts must be unequivocally rejected by all strugglers against oppression and war.

Iran is increasingly binding itself to the Chinese-Russian imperialist bloc. Hence the ever-widening war between the Israeli state and its neighbors is another theater for the inter-imperialist power struggle between the US and Chinese camps, a situation that spells disaster for the region and for the world.

Which Way Forward?

Repressive, right-wing tendencies such as nationalist Islamism play directly into the hands of Western imperialism. These tendencies are in themselves thoroughly capitalist and exploitative in service of enriching their own ruling circles.

Socialists believe that in order for oppressed and working people in the Middle East and everywhere to be liberated, we need international working class solidarity. Capitalism lies at the root of the colonialism, war, dictatorships and economic crises that are razing the Middle East to the ground, and it is the workers alone who hold the unique position within capitalism to bring it to an end.

We call for the working classes throughout the region and world to unite across nations and religions, to become properly organized with revolutionary leadership, to fight for workers’ democracy and the right to self-determination of all nations. Without this, false prophets will continue to bring calamity to these long-suffering people. Gaza and the Middle East cannot afford these lies being propagated in their name across the globe.