Why are people in the US pro-Hamas when Hamas is a terrorist organization?

This is a very large question, and since you admit that it’s coming from a place of ignorance, I’ll assume it’s sincere.

It’s tough to even know where to start, and it would be nearly impossible to summarize a sufficient answer here. But let me try this:

Israel is a settler colonial project that involved mass expulsion of people from their land (ethnic cleansing). Everything surrounding the project has been textbook examples of inhumanity, and there is a reason why Israel is the poster child when discussing a terrorist state. If “terrorism” means anything, it can be best demonstrated in the crimes against humanity that Israel has committed against the Palestinians.

Whatever you want to say about Hamas, it is the result of a occupation by a terrorist apartheid state. It’s a resistance movement, and technically has more of a legal right to use any means to fight off their occupiers.

The question you’re framing here is a result of lots of propaganda designed to switch it up and make the oppressors the victims. It’s an attempt to weaponize LGBTQ+ rights to support genocide. It’s used so often to justify crimes against humanity – as well as crimes against the LGBTQ+ community as well.

The “college students” you refer to are disproportionately Jewish and LGBTQ+ who are simply demanding that their college tuition stop going to funding the literal murder of a captive population, half of whom are children.

So, it’s incorrect to call them “pro-Hamas”. But it’s also immoral and explicitly evil to demand people condemn the actions of the predictable results of a resistance movement.

It’s important to remember that anyone who supports Israel (and the US’ support of Israel) objectively supports terrorism, child murder, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, starvation, torture, and genocide.

This is important to note when considering whether to use the term “terrorism”.

That’s a start, I suppose. But probably not sufficient to answer your question.

Why are people pro-Trump?

Neither of these make any sense to most people.

I believe you are conflating pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas. They are not the same. People can be pro-Palestinian and still be anti-hamas.

I believe @hat is correct. Obviously the US government and the Christian Right support Israel for various reasons, but historically Israel is not innocent.
Some would argue Jewish persecution/genocide and excuse their political/military actions.
As early as 605 BC Jews have been targeted. Hamas started around 1987.
So its a bit complicated.

@Lightlyseared I know I had seen pro-Hamas support and I just did a quick search, and found this Wikipedia page. I see on it, in the section about CUAD, they talk about pro-Hamas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Columbia_University_pro-Palestinian_campus_occupations

“CUAD demanded that Columbia stop investing its $14.8 billion endowment in companies supporting Israel’s government,[71] dismantle a university outpost in Tel Aviv, and end collaboration with Israeli universities.[72] Journalists reported that CUAD became more “hard-line in its rhetoric” over time,[73] praising Hamas and Hezbollah leadership in its email newsletter[67] and saying on October 8, 2024, that it supported “liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance” and would no longer “pander to liberal media to make the movement for liberation palatable”.[73] It also withdrew an apology it had made for a member who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”[73][67]”

I appreciate all of the answers so far.

It depends on who is defying an organization as “terrorist”.

In many respects, the “Oath Keepers” are a terrorist organization, but Trump called them nice people.

@zenvelo I got it from their Wikipedia page (Hamas’ Wiki page). I didn’t make it up.

Link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

Because they are confused, ignorant, OR support blowing up and killing Israelis.

They see Hamas as freedom fighters against the supposed tyranny and occupation of Israel, but that means they are also against there being an Israel at all. Hamas is against any Jews being there. Maybe some Hamas supporters don’t understand or know Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel. I think most do know.

Hamas only cares about destroying Israel altogether. They don’t even care about peace. They are groomed and raised to be destructive, violent, and martyrs for a cause.

Who supports Hamas? If they are Middle Eastern they likely know exactly what that means. They know the chants River to Sea in Arabic, and that the complete phrase in Arabic is often from the River to the Sea Palestine will be Arab. Or, from the River to the Sea Palestine will be Muslim.

If they are American kids and young adults, some of them have been entrenched in critical race theory, caste in America, and similar teachings, and see the US as white oppressors and Black slaves, and project it onto the ME, because they think of Jewish people as white, and even further, many minorities think of Jews as wealthy and controlling media, politics, and the world. Half the Jews in Israel are “Brown” they are from the ME. Color has nothing to do with anything in the Israel situation.

Maybe they don’t know or don’t believe the violence Hamas has committed. Not only against israelis but also against their own people.

The Palestinians are trapped in Gaza. It’s terrible.

@JLeslie ”. Color has nothing to do with anything in the Israel situation.”

Bullshit. The Zionist movement was about European Jews colonizing Israel, and were opposed by many of the middle eastern Mizrahi Jews living there at the time. There was a lot of racism towards the Mizrahi by the Ashkenazi who viewed them as inferior. This was a time right after the Americans had essentially butchered and force-marched the entire Native American population into little reservations. Ideas of racial superiority were rampant. Scientists were measuring the skulls of various races to determine intelligence. Black people in the US had to use separate bathrooms, water fountains etc.

THAT’s the origin of Zionism.

@gorillapaws That was 75 plus years ago. Over 50% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi Jews, “Intermarriage” is extremely common. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are very interwoven into society now, you are proving my point. Mizrahi Jews, similar to Ashkenazi, also were being oppressed and murdered in their countries before Israel and even in Israel if their families were already there, and went to Israel for the same reasons as European Jews, to return to the Land of Israel, or feel safe in Israel. Jews in some ME countries were being taxed more, similar to the mob making you pay a security tax. They couldn’t become citizens in some countries, a Jewish homeland was a place for them to escape to with their lives many times. Are you saying the Mizrahi Jews who are zionists are racist against Palestinians for skin color or country of origin?

The answer is very simple…a good propaganda campaign. That’s it. A lot of the pro-Palestinian/Hamas protesters have been told that they are victims and it is the evil Israel that is the aggressor. They don’t have the wit enough to do the research to see that throughout its history, Israel has been attacked by various Muslim groups. That is how all the violence starts. The is recent iteration is no different. Iran arms Hamas and Hamas attacks Israel, killing civilians (men, women, and children) and taking hostages (men, women, and children). And from the very start of the Israeli retaliation, they started a propaganda campaign that blamed all the violence on Israel. Hamas hides behind Palestinians and even digs tunnels and staging areas under hospitals and civilian areas. But that is stuff that is never discussed. All the propaganda says they are harmless.

The ones that kill me are the LGBTQ+ groups that are pro-Hamas. They don’t even understand that if they went to the Gaza strip, those same people they are protesting for would violently murder them.

Any LGBTQ group visiting Gaza today, and I cant imagine many would want to, like aid workers and journalists are much more likely to be murdered by Israelis than by Hamas.

@gorillapaws It’s like saying if Black Americans were fighting Black Africans for America that the Black Americans are being racist against the Africans because they are Black.

You are talking about long ago internal bigotry in Israel among the Jews. The Q, and I, am pointing out over half the Jews in Israel are Middle Eastern Jews, often their complexion is “Brown” just like the Hamas fighters and there of course are Palestinians who are very fair also, they come in various shades too.

Frankly, I’m more disturbed by the amount of people who support Israel and the IDF than the small number of people who’ve expressed support for Hamas. Yet somehow this is never questioned.

And that’s ignoring the fact that there’s a concerted effort to brand anyone expressing support for Palestine or even criticizing Israel as a supporter of Hamas.

@Demosthenes From my perspective a ton of people question how Israel has handled things, especially in the last year. Even most Jews I know discuss and argue about Netanyahu, and even aside from him, how Israel has behaved over the years, and what should be an answer for peace. If you mean most people support the right for Israel to exist, I would say yes, most people support a state for the Jewish people in that location.

To think that Israel is always the bad guy and the Palestinians are always justified in their actions and reactions, that I don’t understand. Both groups have done bad things, both groups have rights to the land, both groups have been pushed around.

I personally don’t associate anyone supporting the Palestinians as being automatically supporting Hamas, but when someone tells me Hamas is the only hope for the Palestinian people, which is exactly what one woman told me, I think she is delusional and maybe even helping to promote and fund Hamas.

When people chant “River to Sea” and don’t understand that in Middle East terms that means to end Israel, and to push out the Jewish people, then they need to educate themselves and give a shit how that sounds to Jewish people. If they do want to get rid of Israel and the Jews, then sure go ahead and chant away, they can speak their truth. When people are shouting “Intifada” that is to me support for Hamas and violence and to erase Israel.

I think @seawulf575 is correct. Its good propaganda. Just like the majority of Americans feel they are in the right supporting the murder of sick children and the sexual torture of prisoners just because its Israelis are doing and they are the good guys.

Unless someone actually fully claimed their organization was pro-hamas, I’d be careful what you read and watch.

Some people aren’t even aware “troll farms” exist where employees make fake accounts and post fake videos etc. To get americans riled up and sow dissent.

Also, it’s a concept only touched on in science fiction in short bursts, so many people aren’t familiar with it or have a hard time coming to terms….

But terrorists are sometimes people that are fed up, essentially, without posting a huge wall of text.

This is why you had regular civilian citizens marching during the civil rights, and a separate group branch off to perform more extreme acts.

Common sense, revenge is ok from both sides in war.

There was a protest in Gaza a day or two ago that was anti-Hamas. Brave people.