A joint review of Khaled Hroub, Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide, third ed. (London/Las Vegas: Pluto Press, 2025) and Erik Skare, Road to October 7: A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism (London/New York: Verso Books, 2025).
I
It is not surprising that, at the current moment, leftist publishers want to offer pro-Palestine activists – and interested political readers in general – books providing background information on Hamas, the Islamist organization that has ruled the Gaza Strip for almost twenty years. Pluto Press and Verso Books have gone about it in different ways. While Pluto recently published an updated edition of Palestinian academic Khaled Hroub’s Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide (first published in 2006), Verso has released a brand-new book by Norwegian academic Erik Skare titled Road to October 7: A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism.
Since this is my blog and I can do whatever I want, I will dedicate this review to answering the question that any reader will inevitably ask themselves right now (drum roll): which of the two books shall I read?!
Granted, it’s not the best of contests. The books are, actually, quite different. Hroub’s work on Hamas (quoted by Skare on occasion) is, as the title suggests, a straight-up introduction, kinda like a Hamas 101. The sections carry headers such as “When, why and how was Hamas founded?” and “What is the position of Hamas on women?” (“conservative … but not necessarily very restrictive”). The new (third) edition includes new chapters on October 7 and the aftermath, while some of the older chapters (especially from the 2010 second edition) were adjusted. If you’re afraid that some of the original chapters might be outdated, don’t be. Hroub: “In the previous two editions, I made several judgments and predictions regarding Hamas’s politics, ideology and actions. The passage of time has put these assessments to the test, and most have been validated.” Solid.
Skare writes more about the road to October 7 than about October 7 itself (again, it’s all in the title). He also – and that’s perhaps the most important difference to Hroub – doesn’t solely focus on Hamas but brings in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hizb al-Tahrir as well. (If you’ve never heard of the latter, don’t worry, you’re not alone.) Another significant difference is that Skare’s book is an academic study that goes more into depth than Hroub’s book (which, I’m sure, doesn’t have anything to do with Hroub not being able to go into depth, but only with his, or his publisher’s, choice of, well, writing a “beginner’s guide”) and includes impressive charts about things like the “geographical distribution of PIJ martyrs” and “Gazan kinship structures in the Qassam Brigades.”
Who is more accurate in their description of Hamas? I don’t know, because I’m no expert on Hamas, but I assume both know what they’re writing about. I didn’t notice any major contradictions. Both dedicate a lot of space to Yahya Sinwar, which seems to confirm the importance of the Hamas leader killed by the Israeli military in October 2024, and Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin is also prominently featured in both books.
II
I have to admit that I sometimes felt that Hroub gets a little too defensive when it comes to criticism of Hamas. It’s understandable given all the propagandist slander directed at the group and the Palestinian liberation movement as a whole, yet certain arguments didn’t seem fully convincing to me – or I didn’t consider them to be arguments at all. Hroub’s take in the “Is Hamas planning the destruction of Israel?” section is essentially that the question is irrelevant because Hamas doesn’t have the power to do so. In the “Is Hamas genuinely democratic?” section, he mainly elaborates on the general lack of democratic forces in the region. Both assessments seem true, but do they answer the questions?
With regard to Hroub claiming that “military actions taken against ‘Jewish’ targets are taken against them as representatives of an illegal, aggressive occupier, and have nothing whatsoever to do with their creed, race, or non-Islamic culture,” I don’t dare say much about the motivations of Palestinian fighters in the Middle East, but, unfortunately, I do not think that this is true for all pro-Palestinian activists in Europe.
I was very surprised about the following comment: “Neither Hamas nor any other party involved in the conflict, nor even closely watching experts, could have anticipated the scale, magnitude and genocidal nature of Israel’s response.” Really? Perhaps it needed naive fellows like myself who thought that this was the likely outcome. I believe it is fair to say that Hamas was gambling with civilian lives by launching the October 7 attack. It doesn’t mean that Hamas is responsible for the actions of the Israeli government and military, and the fear of retaliation must never determine the means of resistance, but (putting discussions about exact “scales” aside) didn’t a massive Israeli response – under the current Netanyahu regime, no less – clearly have to be expected?
Finally, I’m unsure about the political value of discussing exact details of what happened and did not happen on October 7, as people easily get caught in arguing about “facts” that are ideologically colored from all sides. That the colonization of the Palestinian people, the occupation of their lands, and the military assaults they are subjected to are unjust and inhumane is not dependent on what happened on October 7. Even if Hamas fighters did terrible things that day, it doesn’t take anything away from the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. I do like Skare’s concise take on the matter. In the opening pages of his book, he writes that the October 7 attack included acts that “cannot be defended by the legitimate right to resist,” which, in turn, proves that “suffering does not turn the victim into a moral agent.” He then moves on to the focus of his book.
III
What I would have liked to read more about in Skare’s book relates to the conclusions. First, Skare makes an interesting point about Hamas’s current actions being at least partly determined by an internal conflict between “hardliners” and “moderates,” but he doesn’t expand on it. I believe there’d be a lot to learn here. Second, and more importantly, I feel that Skare is on to something very important when he writes the following: “Indeed, if this brief history of Palestinian Islamism demonstrates anything, it is that its appeal has never been its religious doctrine. … It has proven potent only as a prism through which Palestinian nationalism is expressed.” Skare goes on to explain that Hizb al-Tahrir (yes, the movement you‘ve likely never heard of) failed “because it refused to fuse its idealist theology with nationalist aspirations.”
My sense is that Skare is right. But this begs an important question: Does this render Hamas’s Islamism not particularly important? As in, “They are first and foremost liberation fighters, the ideology is secondary,” a popular take in some pro-Palestine circles. Or is this a serious problem, because it bereaves the Palestinian liberation struggle of its emancipatory potential? As a steadfast secular socialist who’s been to Palestine as a volunteer four times (including, once, to Gaza), this is the cardinal question for me, and I’m dying to hear intelligent thoughts on it, because my head is spinning in circles. Well. Maybe in another book.
So, which of the two books should you read? Come on, you knew all along that this was a rhetorical question! But maybe it created enough suspense to read the entire review. (Hooray!) Guess what, it all depends on the kind of book you want to read: an accessible, hands-on introduction to Hamas, or a comprehensive academic study of Palestinian Islamism including all its currents? Needless to say, if you have the time, you should read both! We’re about justice on all fronts.
Gabriel Kuhn
(June 30, 2025)