According to a Pew survey, 44% of American Muslims recently surveyed expressed a favorable opinion of Hamas.
The United States designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization long before it killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, raped women, burned families alive, tortured civilians, and kidnapped children and elderly grandparents. Its leaders have repeatedly declared that Israel should cease to exist.
Yet nearly half of Muslim Americans surveyed said they view the group favorably.
Many Muslim Americans have publicly condemned terrorism while backing the rights of Palestinians. But 44% support is significant.
Imagine if a comparable percentage of any other religious or ethnic group expressed favorable views toward a different U.S.-designated terrorist organization, such as ISIS.
Discussion of Hamas is softened by the political context. Excuses include “occupation,” historical disputes, or resentment over the war in Gaza. Those issues may help explain why some people sympathize with Palestinians, but they do not transform Hamas into something other than what it is: a terrorist organization whose charter, actions, and rhetoric have centered on violence and the destruction of Israel.
There is an important distinction between supporting the Palestinian people and viewing Hamas favorably. Millions of Palestinians themselves have suffered under Hamas’ brutal rule. The organization has redirected resources from civilians to military infrastructure, suppressed dissent, and embedded fighters and weapons among civilian populations, increasing the suffering of the very people it claims to defend.
This goes past a poll. When a terrorist organization is viewed through a political lens rather than a moral one, terrorism itself risks becoming normalized. Instead of asking whether deliberately targeting civilians is evil, people begin asking whether the perpetrators were sufficiently aggrieved.
No political grievance justifies the massacre of concertgoers, the murder of children, the rape of women, or the kidnapping of civilians. Those acts should be condemned regardless of who commits them or what cause they claim to represent.
Pew’s survey doesn’t tell us why respondents answered as they did. Some may have interpreted “favorable” differently from others. Some may see Hamas primarily as a resistance movement despite rejecting its methods. Public opinion surveys have limits, but the results cannot simply be dismissed because they are uncomfortable.