In Tempest, by Dan La Botz and Stephen R. Shalom
Sean Larson has written a long response to our short article in which we criticized author Jonah ben Avraham for his denunciation of those who, while organizing against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, also condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians on October 7. Larson’s response is unfortunately as problematic as the piece we criticized.
Larson charges that we “forefront” criticism of Hamas. On the contrary, in almost everything we have done in the past three months we have in fact “forefronted” the horror being faced by the people of Gaza. Larson’s objection is actually not to our “forefronting” criticism of Hamas, but to our mentioning it at all. We only wrote our initial article on ben Avraham because he suggested that to criticize Hamas atrocities in any way was to be “pro-settler.”
Larson suggests that we are moral monsters who, had we lived in earlier times, would have supported slavery and colonialism. He puts us in the current conflict on the side of Israel and the United States and against the liberation of the Palestinians. We are excoriated for having had the temerity to raise criticisms of Hamas while writing “from the imperial core.”
Dan La Botz is a US labor union organiser, academic, journalist, and author. He is co-editor of New Politics and active in DSA and Solidarity.
Stephen R. Shalom is a professor of political science, a contributor to Znet and Democratic Left and co-editor of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars and New Politics.