Hamas is an Islamist, terrorist organization. It is no different from ISIS.

Equating Hamas with ISIS is a false equivalence rooted in racist and Islamophobic stereotypes. Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian liberation movement that emerged to resist Zionist settler colonialism and occupation. ISIS, by contrast, is a borderless nihilistic movement that seeks to establish a global caliphate, targeting all religious and ethnic minorities.

Conflating Hamas with ISIS relies on reducing the Palestinian struggle to a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews. The Hamas Charter explicitly states that its struggle is with the Zionist project, not with Jews because of their religion. It further affirms that Islam is a religion of tolerance and rejects "all forms of religious, ethnic or sectarian extremism and bigotry." In stark contrast, ISIS seeks to establish a global caliphate through violent, exclusionary rule and rejects ethnic and religious pluralism.

ISIS and Hamas are in fact adversaries. Hamas has actively fought to stamp out ISIS supporters and other like-minded groups that had gained a small foothold in Gaza and succeeded. ISIS, in turn, "declared war on Hamas," branded it an apostate movement that fails to implement Islamic law, and called for its overthrow.

Hamas emerged within a nationally rooted struggle for Palestinian liberation. International law recognizes the right of peoples under colonial domination and foreign occupation to resist in pursuit of self-determination.

The ISIS comparison is part of a broader imperial "War on Terror" narrative. Just as imperial states have invoked Islamic extremism to justify invasions, occupations, and atrocities from Iraq and Afghanistan to Chechnya and Xinjiang, Israel portrays Palestinian resistance as terrorism and irrational religious extremism in order to obscure its settler-colonial project. The "terrorism" label is not a neutral category. It functions as a political instrument wielded by the powerful against those they seek to dominate.

Saying ISIS and Hamas are the same is like saying the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers are the same.