Bassam Eid is a brave man. A Palestinian activist who lives in the West Bank, he’s penned an op-ed in Newsweek that will surely drive anti-Israel leftists insane since it’s a) factual and b) goes against everything the liberal intelligentsia has spewed about the Jewish state for the past three weeks. There hasn’t been this much antisemitism spewed since Adolf Hitler’s political ascendancy in Germany.
From college campuses to the streets nationwide, the calls for genocide against Jews have reached a fever pitch. College administrations and faculty are either too scared to push back on the hatred or endorse it wholesale, including the murder of over 1,400 Israeli men, women, and children. Based on reactions from the Left, either the mass rape, slaughter, and torture committed by Hamas on October 7 were justified resistance against the so-called colonizers, or atrocities never happened. Both are vile positions to take, but Eid knows the truth.
He carefully goes line-by-line at the misery Hamas has brought the people of Gaza since 2006 ushered them into power and their 2007 armed takeover. They’ve been there ever since. They horde humanitarian aid, an easy task given that known terrorists work with the United Nations on this front. He blames the outbreak of the current war on Hamas, adding that any blood that’s been shed is on their hands.
“Hamas is responsible for all the blood that has been shed and will continue to be shed during this war, full stop,” he wrote.
Eid also explained how Hamas is an unholy combination of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS (via Newsweek):
In a since-deleted thread on the messaging platform X, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which services Palestinians in Gaza claimed that men acting under Hamas authorities seized fuel, medical supplies, and other types of material that were supposed to be used for strictly humanitarian purposes. UNRWA later deleted the post and withdrew the claims, but Axios journalist Barak Ravid confirmed it happened.
[…]
After Israel gave civilians in Gaza numerous warnings and time to flee, Hamas did its best to force them to stay. Most Gazans know the high stakes of violating a direct Hamas order. They've also made it impossible for Gazans to flee to Egypt via the Rafah crossing, and they've set up roadblocks within Gaza, preventing residents from exiting the northern part of the Strip.
This is all to strategically maximize the use of their own people as human shields.
[…]
For nearly two decades, Hamas has allowed its people to live in squalor, using the humanitarian aid it is given from the international community to stockpile ammunition and deliberately turn severe poverty and deprivation in Gaza into hatred of Israel.
Now, Hamas uses my brothers and sisters in Gaza as human shields, hiding their weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques, and embedding their terror fighters among women, children, the elderly and families. This is all by design. They don't want peace; they want Gazans to die in a propaganda victory over Israel.
Hamas showed us that it truly knows no bounds when it murdered over 1,400 Israelis—rape and torture have been detected in 80 percent of the bodies, including children. It injured another 4,000, and took 200 captives to Gaza last week. These unprovoked attacks all took place in peaceful communities that are part of Israel proper, not areas in question for my people like settlements.
Hamas's attack set my people and those of us pushing for peace back decades. And now Hamas is putting its own people at grave risk.
Hamas can best be understood as the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS combined. It is like the Taliban in that it runs a piece of territory as a brutal Islamic dictatorship, where LGBTQ+ people and those who do not live a strict Islamic lifestyle are executed. It is like al Qaeda in that it frequently engages in suicide bombings and just perpetrated Israel's 9/11. And it's like ISIS, which butchered the non-Muslim Yezidi ethnic group and took their women as sex slaves or "concubines."
The Palestinian people of Gaza deserve liberation from Hamas. If Israel ends the unjust rule of the terror gang, it will be doing my brothers and sisters in Gaza a life-changing favor.
Facts and truth are two things seldom exhibited by American liberals, who now side with the terrorists.
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Bonus: For 17 years, Hamas has controlled Gaza. They've built an array of tunnels for their terrorists but not a single bomb shelter for its people. Not one:
Arab man asks why Hamas has built hundreds of kilometers of Hamas tunnels under Gaza but not a single air raid shelter for civilians. pic.twitter.com/luiscP96Rx
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 31, 2023