Moroccan intellectual condemns Hamas; others then attack him

I have been having a hard time finding any Arabs in Arab countries denouncing the October 7 pogrom in Arabic. But French magazine Le Point did publish this unequivocal condemnation of the attacks by  Moroccan Muslim intellectual Tahar Ben Jelloun several days after the attacks:

As a  Moroccan Arab and Muslim by birth, culture and traditional education, I cannot find the words to say how horrified I am by what the Hamas militants did to the Jews . Brutality, when it attacks women and children, becomes barbaric and has no excuse or justification.

I am horrified because the images I saw touched me to the depths of my humanity.

I believe that we can resist an occupation, fight against colonization, but not with these acts of great savagery.

The Palestinian cause died on October 7, 2023, assassinated by fanaticized elements, mired in an Islamist ideology of the worst kind.

Hamas is the enemy, not only of the Israeli people, but also of the Palestinian people. A cruel enemy without any political sense, manipulated by a country where young opponents are hanged for not wearing a veil on their heads.

The taking of hostages and the blackmail of their execution only exacerbates the anger of all of us.

This brutality comes from far away. Certainly from the occupation and humiliations suffered by youth without a future, quickly taken over by an Islamist movement dependent on the goodwill of Iran.

After the massacre, whatever the number of deaths on both sides, barbarism has permeated our imagination and it is difficult today to believe that these men did this to “liberate” a territory. No, war is fought between soldiers. Not by killing innocent civilians.

No, there is no reason to excuse what they did in homes, in camps, wherever they could seize young people partying.

The horror is human, I mean animals would never have done what Hamas did. A minister in Netanyahu's government [Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant] called Gazans "animals." No, there are men without conscience, without morality, without humanity who perpetrated the massacres, then there is a population which suffers, which is neither armed nor barbaric.

Do not confuse Hamas with the population (2.5 million people), who live under occupation and embargo .

I say it, but my voice is alone.

I, in my solitude, in my sadness and my shame as a human being, my disgust at this humanity to which I refuse to belong, I say, no, this is a fight that does not honor their cause. No, to these applause in certain Arab capitals. No, to this bloody triumph over the innocent. No, to the blindness of those who pull the strings of a tragedy where, sooner or later, it will be the Palestinian population who will pay this heavy bill.

We will carry this tragedy in our memory as an injury to all humanity. A wound, never closed, never forgotten.

Morocco's Hespress wrote that other Moroccan intellectuals were "almost unanimous" in denouncing Ben Jelloun.

Moroccan writer Aziz Lazraq said that this article was filled with "hasty and emotional statements that are not part of his language or nature, and devoid of any meaning."

Another writer, Montaser Hamadeh, accused Ben Jalloun of adopting the French position towards Israel instead of the Moroccan one.

Both he and writer Abdel Samad Belkabir explained that Ben Jallun lacked proper "context" in condemning Hamas without seeing that everything is really Israel's fault, and Hamas' murders and kidnappings and rapes are mere "mistakes." 

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