Tareq Baconi

Tareq Baconi [Tareq G. Baconi] has expressed support for Hamas terrorism, including during Israel’s war against Hamas in 2023, which Israel launched after the October 7, 2023, terror attacks when Hamas murdered nearly 1,200 Israelis, injured thousands and kidnapped hundreds.

As of September 2025, Baconi was listed as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, as well as book review editor for The Journal of Palestine Studies (JPS).

Al-Shabaka supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and it is located in New York, New York.

Also as of September 2025, Baconi was listed as a research fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa.

As of October 2024, Baconi’s since-deleted LinkedIn profile said he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University (Columbia)’s Middle East Institute in 2015-2016. His LinkedIn also said he received a PhD in international relations and affairs from King's College London (King's) in 2014.

As of February 2024, Baconi was listed as “working on a book about decolonization in the 21st century. His memoir, a queer love story set against the decades-spanning sweep of violence and erasure that his family experienced as Palestinian refugees, is forthcoming with Atria in fall 2025.”

On October 25, 2023, Baconi said [00:03:26] in an interview on Amanpour & Company that it was “manipulative” to call Hamas a terror group “because it misses that nuance and it decontextualizes Hamas, so it suggests that Hamas is engaging in armed resistance or violence for the sake of violence, it misses the point that Hamas is engaged in armed resistance against a colonial force…”

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped hundreds and wounded thousands. War crimes included mass rape and torture. Many Palestinian civilians participated in and supported the attacks, and Gazans working in the targeted Israeli communities gave intelligence to Hamas on where to strike.

For more information, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.

On November 16, 2023, Baconi was featured as a speaker at a panel titled: “Teach In: Contexts And Histories Of Palestinian Resistance.” During the event, referring to Israel’s war against Hamas, Baconi claimed [00:00:05] that “Western discourse around decimating Hamas, dismantling Hamas, destroying Hamas…is a genocidal call.”

On November 26, 2023, Baconi published an article titled: "An Inevitable Rupture: Al-Aqsa Flood and the End of Partition," in which he wrote, referring to Hamas' terror attacks, that “primary responsibility for this violence sits squarely with Israel’s colonial regime.”

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, also known as Al-Aqsa Storm, is the name Hamas used for their terror operation on October 7, 2023. It is a reference to the allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, and has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before Israel was founded in 1948.

Baconi also claimed that “widely discredited claims of brutality [by Hamas were used] to stir up orientalist and Islamophobic tropes in an effort to justify the ferocity of Israel’s response” and referred to Hamas’ terror attacks as “an unprecedented display of anti-colonial violence.”

Denial of the Hamas war crimes of October 7, 2023, among anti-Israel activists has been likened to Holocaust denial among neo-Nazis.

In 2018, Baconi published a book titled: “Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.” In a June 22, 2018 interview with Jadaliyya, Baconi said the book aimed “to recount Hamas’s thirty year history on its own terms.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 7] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

Expressing Support for Hamas Terrorism

The Pro-Terror & Anti-Israel Movement After 10/7/2023

The BDS Movement

Social Media and Weblinks