When Terror Is Framed as Resistance

In a recent article for Dutch opinion platform Joop.nl, Tijani Boulaouali argues that Hamas should not be seen as a terrorist organization, but as a legitimate resistance movement. Here’s why that argument is not only flawed, but dangerous.

In his recent essay for the Dutch opinion site Joop.nl, Tijani Boulaouali, a lecturer in Islamic and Arabic Studies at KU Leuven, laments the “negative framing” of Hamas in Western discourse. He portrays the group not as a terrorist organization, but as a misunderstood liberation movement, comparable, even, to the European resistance during WWII.

The article reads less like analysis and more like academic apologetics. Boulaouali constructs a narrative in which Hamas is the victim, not the perpetrator, of violence. His framing reflects a broader problem: the weaponization of intellectual authority to excuse atrocities, as long as they are cloaked in the rhetoric of anti-colonial struggle.

Victimhood as a deflection strategy
Boulaouali’s central claim  – that Hamas is “unfortunately often portrayed negatively” – reframes global condemnation of the October 7 massacre as an issue of perception rather than of substance. But Hamas was not “misunderstood” when its fighters butchered, raped, mutilated and abducted Israeli civilians. It was accurately recognized for what it is: a militant organization that targets civilians as part of its strategy, and that has codified antisemitism and the destruction of Israel in its founding documents.

Multiple human rights reports, including those by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have documented Hamas’ use of torture, extrajudicial killings, and systematic repression within Gaza. Equating media scrutiny with injustice is a rhetorical move, not an argument

History without accountability
Boulaouali traces Hamas’ roots to the Muslim Brotherhood but omits the fact that the original 1988 Hamas Charter is explicitly antisemitic, referencing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and calling for the destruction of Israel. This foundational document undermines any claim to moral or political legitimacy.

The 2017 revision of the charter did not lead to a change in practice. Hamas continues to rule Gaza with authoritarian force, executing opponents, using children as human shields, and launching thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian areas. The historical roots may be complex, but complexity does not equal legitimacy.

The false distinction from jihadist violence
Boulaouali insists that Hamas should not be compared to groups like ISIS or Boko Haram. Superficially, he is right: Hamas provides social services, runs ministries, and knows how to speak the language of international law. But brutal repression dressed in bureaucracy is still repression.

Hamas’ political facade does not erase its deeply entrenched violence – including its repression of LGBTQ+ individuals, severe restrictions on women’s rights, violent suppression of dissent, and repeated violations of international humanitarian law. Sophistication in governance does not make mass murder more excusable, only better organized.

Resistance rebranded
One of Boulaouali’s most alarming claims is that Hamas, as a “resistance movement,” is no different from anti-fascist partisans in WWII or anti-colonial fighters in Vietnam or South Africa. This comparison is not just misleading; it is morally obscene.

The European resistance fought against regimes bent on genocide. Hamas upholds and preaches a genocidal ideology of its own. There is a difference between resistance and terrorism, and it lies not in the identity of the fighter, but in the deliberate targeting of civilians.

Blaming the West to exonerate Hamas
Boulaouali’s closing argument is that Western silence on Palestinian suffering stems from political cowardice, Islamophobia, and a fear of being accused of antisemitism. There may be grains of truth in the West’s selective empathy, but that does not justify the inversion of truth.

By presenting Hamas as the solution to injustice, rather than as a source of it, Boulaouali enables the very cycles of violence he claims to lament. His piece shifts blame from those who murder civilians to those who criticize it – a grotesque misdirection that should not be taken lightly.

Conclusion
This is not a case of a scholar misreading a political situation. It is a deliberate effort to sanitize terrorism by embedding it in the language of historical struggle and cultural nuance. Boulaouali does not simply seek to explain Hamas — he seeks to legitimize it. That a platform like Joop.nl would publish this without editorial counterbalance is disappointing. But it is more concerning that an academic voice would lend intellectual cover to one of the most repressive and violent actors in the region, all in the name of resistance.

Some narratives deserve to be questioned. Others demand to be dismantled. When academic voices begin to normalize extremist ideologies under the guise of historical context or resistance, they blur the lines between scholarship and complicity.

Why this piece matters

In European academic and media circles, there is a growing trend to reframe Hamas as a misunderstood resistance movement rather than a terrorist organization. This article responds to a recent opinion piece by a Belgian scholar published on a major Dutch platform and dissects the rhetorical and factual distortions that accompany such narratives. It highlights the dangers of intellectualizing terrorism under the cover of historical struggle – a concern not only for Israel, but for democratic societies at large.