Why ‘Washington Post’ columnist Shadi Hamid excuses Hamas, demonizes Israel, Jews - opinion

When Gaza-born activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib penned a devastating op-ed in The New York Times on September 4 decrying Hamas’s destructive role in the Gaza Strip, Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid was incensed (“For Gaza to Recover, Hamas Must Be Expelled”). 

Hamid invented on X/Twitter that “pro-Israel hardliners” support Alkhatib because he “justifies the killing of Palestinians as unfortunate fact or a necessary evil.” Hamid’s assault against Alkhatib is a gross distortion of Alkhatib’s vision for a bright future for the people of Gaza.

“A Palestinian miracle on the Mediterranean is within reach if Gaza rejects Islamism, Jihadism, Hamas, and stale nationalist notions, all of which have left it devastated,” Alkhatib wrote, laying out the path forward for the fruitful development of the coastal territory.

But a thriving future in which the Gaza residents can pursue peaceful lives free from the ruinous rule of Hamas is apparently not Hamid’s shared vision. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre, Hamid’s columns and social media posts have rationalized Hamas, demonized Israel, and marginalized Jews politically. 

On October 31, 2023, Hamid published a column in The Washington Post explaining that Hamas isn’t evil. The essay – written three weeks after Hamas launched a cross-border raid and murdered 1,200 people and abducted 250 others – exonerated murder, abduction, and rape carried out in the name of Palestinian “resistance.” 

Noting that Palestinians had become convinced “that nonviolence doesn’t work,” Hamid argued that Hamas’s violence was a legitimate expression of Palestinian frustration.

But in what world does frustration justify mass murder?

Moreover, in his essay, Hamid ignored the inconvenient history of Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas rejecting peace deals. He left out Hamas’s ideology, codified in the organization’s charter, which advocates killing Jews.

He was silent on the inculcation of hate in Palestinian schools. And he also ignored Hamas’s hijacking of international aid to raise an army, dig tunnels, and build a rocket arsenal.

By ignoring the threat that Hamas posed to Israel, Hamid was free to accuse Israel of using excessive violence and committing war crimes in its war against Hamas. Over the course of a year and a half, Hamid argued his case, often using discredited information that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

The tolerance for hatred

In his May 28, 2025, Post op-ed, Hamid wrote: “A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.” He rehashed charges that Israel deliberately starved the residents of Gaza. 

But a UNICEF study released this summer showed that acute malnutrition in Gaza ranged from 0.2% to 0.8% (pre-war, the rate was 0.8%), which is significantly lower than the malnutrition rate for many surrounding countries such as Egypt (2.9%) and Jordan (2%). 

Hamid also argued that the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’s definition of genocide, which emphasizes intent, fits Israel’s actions in Gaza.

But as David Bernstein, a law professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University, noted, the established international legal standards requiring genocide intent mandate that “[a] state’s conduct must be inexplicable except as an attempt to annihilate a protected group.”

Bernstein detailed that given that Israel provided “a plausible explanation for its conduct [namely the elimination of a very real terror threat], the inference that the campaign is aimed at destroying Palestinians as a group cannot be the only reasonable interpretation.”

Claims of Israeli excesses have fueled harassment of Jewish students on campus and created a toxic atmosphere for Jews in general.

Hamid has also been involved in efforts to marginalize Jews politically. In his opposition to vice president candidate Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Hamid wrote in 2024, “It’s simply a fact that Josh Shapiro holds hardline pro-Israel views that are well outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party. None of the other leading VP contenders have shown such disregard for campus protesters, comparing them to white supremacists.”

Shapiro’s pro-Israel views are hardly hardline. They are centrist, maybe even Left of Center, and well within the American Jewish consensus. While he didn’t say so explicitly, Hamid implied that no Jew holding mainstream views of Israel should be welcome in the Democratic Party.

When he started at the outlet in October 2023, he was a member of the editorial board. The first Washington Post editorial after October 7 described the terror as “clarifying.” To the editorial board, the cataclysmic attack demonstrated extensive preparation. Yet, October 7 and its aftermath have been clarified in another way too.

Three years after the worst mass-killing of Jews since World War II, one of America’s most prominent newspapers has a columnist who excuses the terrorist perpetrators, demonizes Israel, and considers most Jews unfit for mainstream politics. The tolerance for hatred is indeed clarifying.

The writer is a US media researcher for CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, the leading organization exposing and countering anti-Israel narratives in the media, online, and in schools. Learn more at CAMERA.org and on social media @CAMERA4Truth.