The new book, “Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters,” by Helena Cobban and Rami G. Khouri is set to launch next month at the Middle East Center of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In a description of the event on the institution’s website, LSE’s Middle East Center states that the “book aims to deepen understanding of a movement that is a key player in the current crisis” and, among other things, examines Hamas’s “transformation from early anti-Jewish tendencies to a stance that differentiates between Judaism and Zionism.”
The book’s publisher, OR Books, describes it, stating, “Across Western mainstream discourse, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has been subjected to intense vilification. Branding it as ‘terrorist’ or worse, this demonization intensified after the events in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023.”
It goes on to state that the book “does not advocate for or against Hamas” but rather seeks to “deepen understanding” of Hamas through “a series of rich and probing conversations with leading experts.”
According to a report from Jewish News, the text shared by the publisher was also initially shared in the LSE Middle East Center website’s description of the event, however, at the time of writing, it no longer is.
One of the book’s authors, Helena Cobban, is set to speak at the launch.
Cobban’s and Khouri’s anti-Israel sentiment
Cobban’s social media features numerous anti-Israel posts and she has retweeted a number of posts celebrating terrorists, including PFLP plane hijacker Leila Khaled and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
She also retweeted a post featuring an image of members of the controversial Jewish sect Neturei Karta meeting with former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. The post stated, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization.”
Following the news of the deaths of the Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri Bibas, an Israeli infant, child, and their mother who were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023, Cobban retweeted posts slamming the media coverage of the deaths while “ignoring or justifying the 20,000+ Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli state.”
Another post Cobban retweeted claimed that the Israeli government murdered the Bibas family.
The other author of “Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters,” Rami G. Khouri, a Jordanian-American journalist and regular Al Jazeera contributor, in an opinion piece published by Al Jazeera in late January, urged for the US to engage Hamas in dialogue. In the op-ed, he equated the terror group with other “liberation movements,” and blamed “effective Israeli propaganda” for the image Hamas has as a “reckless and vicious terror group that wants to destroy Israel.”
In addition to accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid, Khouri has also held the Jewish people responsible for such acts.
Examples include a February post to X/Twitter from last year where Khouri wrote that “The Jews who survived the Nazis & [the US and UK’s] closed doors & created Israel now impose genocidal death marches on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
The year prior, he wrote that perhaps Jews and Israelis “who celebrate their own historical endurance as a community” had lost “their sense of justice as colonial subjugators & occupiers.”
In a tweet from 2021, Khouri wrote, “This is the American South & South Africa in 1930…militant racist brutality that is all the more shocking because it is done by Jews who’ve suffered from white Europeans the worst racism that humankind has ever known. Apartheid is a crime done by many, and it must end.”
In addition to Cobban, University of Westminster lecturer Catherine Charrett, King’s College Professor Jeroen Gunning, and Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani are also set to speak at the book launch with director of the Middle East Center Michael Mason chairing the event. All of whom have long histories of publicly making anti-Israel comments or sharing anti-Israel content on social media.
In response to a query from the Daily Mail about LSE hosting the book launch, an LSE spokesperson said, ”’Free speech and freedom of expression underpins everything we do at LSE. Students, staff and visitors are strongly encouraged to discuss and debate the most pressing issues around the world.
“We host an enormous number of events each year, covering a wide range of viewpoints and positions.
“We have clear policies in place to ensure the facilitation of debates in these events and enable all members of our community to refute ideas lawfully and to protect individual’s rights to freedom of expression within the law.
“This is formalised in our Code of Practice on Free Speech and in our Ethics Code.”
Nevertheless, the event has been met with backlash from Jewish groups. Responding to the synopsis of the book, which notes that Hamas has been subjected to “vilification” and “demonization,” British NGO Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) wrote on Facebook that this may be “because it capped decades of lethal suicide bombings with the massacre of 1,200 and the abduction of some 250 people.”
“For all their virtuous anti-racism rhetoric, our universities have become epicenters of Jew-hatred and this event is yet another example of how bad the problem is,” CAA added. The NGO called on LSE to cancel the event.
Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), an international network of 850 groups dedicated to combating antisemitism, also condemned the event.
CAM CEO Sacha Roytman shared a post on X stating, “Education sets the tone. So when a top-tier institution like @LSEnews hosts an event for a book claiming Hamas has been unfairly judged since October 7, it’s a disgrace.”
In a later statement, Roytman added, “The planned event in London is horrifying, absurd, and the epitome of bad taste. No legitimacy of any kind can be given to a murderous terrorist organization like Hamas, which demonstrated its inhumane evilness on October 7th and in the more than 16 months since, including with the heinous murder of the Bibas family and countless other diabolical acts.
“There is no place, at institutions of higher education or anywhere else, for antisemitism, justification for terrorism, or statements that constitute, directly or indirectly, support for acts of violence targeting Jews. We will continue to work to expose the true face of those who disseminate Jew-hatred across the globe.”
This is not the first time LSE staff have come under fire for their stances on Hamas and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In December 2023, months after the Hamas-led massacres in southern Israel left approximately 1,200 dead and terrorists kidnapped some 250 others, UK Lawyers for Israel announced that it had made a criminal report against LSE’s Dr. Sara Salem, Dr. Mahvish Ahmad, Dr. Mai Taha, and Dr. Sonya Onwu for potential offenses under the Terrorism Act (2000).
At the time, the legal group stated, “It seems that LSE prefers to turn a blind eye to the series of terror tweets by its own academics, rather than tackle the issue head-on. The university claims that its priority is the ‘safety and wellbeing’ of the community – but its failure to take robust action in these instances makes Jewish students feel like second-class citizens.”
Danielle Greyman-Kennard contributed to this report.
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