A dangerous and morally bankrupt campaign is currently underway in Britain to decriminalise Hamas, the Islamist group responsible for some of the worst atrocities of modern times, including the pogrom of 7 October 2023, which led to the current war in Gaza. A UK legal firm, Riverway Law, is representing Dr Mousa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’s head of international affairs, in a bid to overturn the group’s proscription as a terrorist organisation. Their case argues that the UK government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act (2000) violates the rights of Hamas members and supporters to freedom of speech and assembly.

 The submission claims:

For more than a century, the British State has been responsible for colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine. Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (the Islamic Resistance Movement or “Hamas”) is an organised resistance movement that exercises the right of the Palestinian people to resist Zionism and the colonisation, occupation, apartheid and genocide carried out in its name. 

But Hamas’s “resistance” to Zionism is not legitimate. While Palestinians have a right to self-determination, it is both absurd and self-defeating to predicate this upon denying Jewish people their equal right to self-determination. What Hamas is “resisting” is the idea that Jewish people should be allowed to be self-governing. Rather, Hamas believes that Jewish people in Palestine must be subjugated under Islamic rule. 

This latest effort to whitewash Hamas is an affront to the many victims of their brutality—including the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Hamas directly or died as a result of Hamas’s actions. Hamas is, without question, a terrorist group. It should remain banned in Britain—indeed, it should be banned everywhere in the world, including in the Palestinian territories, where its rule has inflicted catastrophic harm on the very people it falsely claims to defend. 

Hamas has always been clear about its aims: Islamic supremacy and the destruction of Israel. Its 1988 charter is saturated with antisemitic conspiracy theories and calls for jihadist warfare against the Jewish state. Unlike some other revolutionary movements that have evolved into relatively mainstream political parties, Hamas has never shown any signs that it might morph into a more moderate form. If anything, Hamas’s leaders have only become more committed to all-or-nothing jihadism, as we can see by their willingness to sacrifice Gazans in the name of the destruction of Israel. 

This reality was laid bare on 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a macabre mediaeval massacre of Israeli civilians. Over 1,200 people—including babies, women, and the elderly—were slaughtered: by being burned to death, decapitated with gardening tools, and disembowelled, among other gruesome methods. Others were kidnapped, tortured, and used as human shields. Citizens of thirty countries—including the UK itself—were killed, raped, or kidnapped. These atrocities were not isolated incidents or rogue operations—they were deliberate, calculated actions directed by Hamas’s leadership. Then-head of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh described the attack in the following terms:

Today, the enemy has had a political, military, intelligence, security and moral defeat inflicted upon it, and we shall crown it, with the grace of God, with a crushing defeat that will expel it from our lands, our holy city of Jerusalem, our al Aqsa mosque.

To attempt to decriminalise Hamas after such bloodshed is to abandon all moral clarity. Terrorism is not a legitimate liberation tactic. Slaughtering civilians is not a form of political expression. Mass rape is not resistance.

The Women of 7 October

In that moment, time stood still. There was no context, no history, no argument, no discourse. There was only pain.

QuilletteIona Italia

The campaign to remove Hamas from the list of proscribed organisations is not about defending free speech or political dissent. It is about legitimising organised violence and jihadist warmongering, and it constitutes a terrible threat to Jewish people in the UK who may be targeted by Hamas for kidnapping or murder if the organisation is allowed to operate in Britain.

By arguing that the UK ban infringes the “human rights” of Hamas supporters, this legal challenge turns the concept of human rights on its head. Human rights are designed to protect individuals from oppression and violence, not to provide legal cover for those who perpetrate them. To defend Hamas in the name of human rights is a grotesque distortion of that concept and, if successful, this case would likely erode public trust in British democracy and justice.

Worryingly, Hamas apologists have been able to find sympathetic ears among parts of Britain’s intellectual and political elite. The BBC has an explicit policy of not describing Hamas as “terrorists,” claiming that the term is too “loaded.” Many defend Hamas on the basis that they are fighting for the rights of Palestinians. But while much attention rightly focuses on Hamas’s attacks on Israel, we should not forget that they have also terrorised and victimised the Palestinian people themselves.

Since violently seizing control of Gaza in 2007 in a bloody coup, in which they threw their political opponents off rooftops to their deaths, Hamas has ruled through fear, repression, and corruption. Far from liberating Palestinians, Hamas has subjected them to a totalitarian reign of terror. Those who criticise Hamas—or fall foul of the regime for any reason—are imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. Journalists are silenced. Basic freedoms are non-existent. The Gazan population has been battered, bruised, and bullied into complicity. It has taken nearly two years of war but finally Gazans—desperate for an end to the conflict and a chance to live like normal human beings—have begun to rise up against Hamas in mass protests calling for an end to the war and peace with Israel. Ironically, some of these protestors have explicitly called Hamas a terrorist organisation. It would be deeply ironic if anti-Hamas protestors in Gaza consider Hamas a terrorist group, while British authorities do not. 

Hamas has also economically devastated Gaza, funnelling billions of dollars in international aid into the construction of terror tunnels, weapons stockpiles, and propaganda machinery. It prioritises war over welfare, martyrdom over medicine.

Every time Hamas restarts the conflict with Israel in the name of their never-ending anti-Zionist jihad, ordinary Palestinians pay the price. Hamas deliberately embeds its military infrastructure within civilian neighbourhoods, using Palestinian men, women, and children as human shields. When an Israeli airstrike causes civilian casualties in Gaza, Hamas cynically welcomes this as a propaganda victory. Ismail Haniyeh stated this explicitly in October 2023: “We need the blood of the elderly, women, and children to awaken the revolutionary spirit within us.” 

This grotesque strategy ensures a cycle of suffering. It makes reconciliation with Israel impossible, isolates Gaza economically, and makes the dream of Palestinian statehood ever more distant. Hamas’s jihad against Israel has not liberated Palestinians in any way—it has brought them only poverty, violence, and despair. 

The one thing that could make life better for Palestinians is peace with Israel. But Hamas has no interest whatsoever in this. Indeed, in the court submission, Moussa Abu Marzook admits that Hamas’s position is that:

We will never recognise the legitimacy of the Zionist entity [i.e. the country of Israel] or its ‘right to exist,’ a concept that does not have any basis under international law. It is you and the Zionist entity that continue to deny our people’s right to exist. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

This is delusional. Israel is a technologically advanced, nuclear-armed modern country. Yet Hamas demands that the Palestinian people continue to suffer and die in a never ending jihadist onslaught until Israel ceases to exist.

At its heart, Hamas is a death cult. Unlike movements that seek to achieve their political goals through negotiation or diplomacy, Hamas glorifies martyrdom. Its leaders celebrate suicide bombings and rocket attacks that kill both Israelis and Palestinians, treating a high civilian death toll not as a tragedy but as a strategic asset. This culture has harmed every aspect of Palestinian society. Children in Hamas-run schools have been indoctrinated from a young age to hate Jews and aspire to martyrdom. Public spaces are named after terrorists and suicide bombers. Rather than investing in peace and prosperity, Hamas has tried to shackle an entire generation to endless war. It teaches that the only path to dignity is through violence and death. This is not leadership—it is abuse on a national scale.

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No movement that excuses the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians—even under guise of anti-colonial ‘resistance’—can survive as a mainstream political creed.

QuilletteJonathan Kay

It is only by dismantling Hamas and defeating jihadist ideology in Palestine that we can ever hope to achieve progress and prosperity for Palestinians. Palestinians deserve leaders who seek peace, justice, and development—not endless war. They deserve the opportunity to build a democratic society, free from theocratic dictatorship and perpetual jihadism. The destruction of Hamas would be a victory for ordinary Palestinians who are desperate for a better life. 

As a Palestinian myself, I know that we are human beings like anyone else. There is no valid reason for us to be trapped forever in Hamas’s fever dream of jihadist conquest. Israel is not going to magically disappear—no matter how many times radical imams might pray for such an event. Hamas’s vision of conquest over Israel has done nothing whatsoever to help Palestinians. Most of us have the same dreams as anyone else: we dream of normality, prosperity, and a better life for our children.

Instead of helping Hamas, we need to help Palestinians and Israelis build a normal relationship of peace and coexistence. Hamas has brought death and suffering not only to Israelis but to the Palestinian people it claims to represent. It has turned Gaza into a battlefield and mutilated Palestinian society with its hateful ideology. Any efforts to decriminalise Hamas must be firmly resisted. Palestinians must be freed from Hamas’s grip. Only then can there be hope for a future of peace, dignity, justice, and true liberation.

Hamas is not our salvation. It is our tragedy. We must resist every attempt to legitimise these terrorists—in the UK or anywhere else.