The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Vs. Rosa Luxemburg

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – Facebook page

“Three years ago today, the Islamist terrorist organisation Hamas launched a coordinated large-scale attack on southern Israel.

“More than 1,200 people were killed, including around 800 civilians and 36 children. More than 4,000 people were injured, and 251 were taken hostage and abducted to the Gaza Strip.

“The attack also marked the beginning of the genocide in Gaza carried out by the Israeli government and military.”

Paradoxically, the word 'terrorist' does not occur even once in the interview.

“Gil Shohat, West Asia Programme Manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin, headed the Foundation’s Israel Office in Tel Aviv from March 2023 to August 2026.

“In an interview with Neues Deutschland, he reflects on his time in Israel, October 7 and the trauma it caused, as well as the brutalisation and militarisation of Israeli society, the dehumanisation of Palestinians, the role of the media, the upcoming parliamentary elections, and the importance of Jewish-Palestinian alliances on the ground.”

Even if the action of Hamas was terrorist, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation follows the dominant narrative and the dominant definition of 'terrorism' by not applying it to the bigger and the decades-long violent actions of the Israeli state. Farcical. 

What would have Rosa said? 

“Despite her fierce opposition to the politics and methods of groups like Hamas, Luxemburg would never analyse them in isolation. In The Accumulation of Capital, she detailed how capitalist states use brutal imperialism, militarism, and colonial subjugation to expand. Luxemburg would likely view the blanket designation of "terrorist organisation" by Western governments as ideological hypocrisy designed to obscure the structural violence of colonial occupation and capitalism. She would argue that the rise of religious fundamentalism like Hamas is a morbid symptom of decades of brutal subjugation, capitalism, and the failure of secular left-wing alternatives in the region. She would strongly condemn Hamas’s tactics—such as the deliberate targeting of civilians and hostage-taking—not from a liberal pacifist standpoint, but from a revolutionary socialist one. She would argue that such methods demoralise the masses, divide Israeli and Palestinian workers who should theoretically unite against capitalism/imperialism, and ultimately strengthen the reactionary elements of the Israeli state.“

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