Voice from Gaza: ‘Asking me if I condemn Hamas is an insult’

I was talking with my friend Ramez after midnight on October 6 about my plans to visit Gaza at the beginning of November to finalise the licensing of the Gaza Youth Committee with the Palestinian Authority and to implement joint projects between Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and between Palestinians and Israelis.

We also discussed continuing our initiatives to build bridges of communication between them, promoting mutual respect, and continuing our work to build a new generation of Palestinian leadership that actively participates in decision-making and influences it.

While talking to him, I could hear an Israeli drone buzzing in the background, which prompted me to say that I missed its annoying sound, a sound that reminds me of the atmosphere and wars in Gaza. As usual, I woke up early at 8am on the morning of October 7.

I don’t know what led me to open Facebook, something I don't typically do at that hour, only to see live broadcasts and numerous videos, and to read posts about Hamas fighters storming the border by land, sea, and air, infiltrating Israeli homes, army positions, and a music festival attended by hundreds of young people, who were being killed, chased, and brutalised.

What surprised me the most — and I initially thought the videos were fake — were the scenes of dead bodies with people standing around them, as well as scenes of civilians and Israeli soldiers being beaten, kidnapped into Gaza, and assaulted. Hamas leaders were broadcasting speeches, inciting people and giving them the impression that they were minutes away from reaching Tel Aviv.

As someone from Gaza, familiar with Hamas's ideology and the behaviour of the Israeli army, I knew this would spark a deep fear among most Gazans. We know that Hamas neither seeks nor has ever sought our wellbeing, but rather its own interests, using us all as human shields.

This has been the case since their first war with the Israeli army in 2009, where over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, and Hamas declared this a victory, but for me I decided to create Gaza Youth Committee and understood Hamas's vision very well from that time. What happened in 2009 has led them to repeat the same tactics with the Islamic Jihad movement multiple times between 2012 and 2022.

In those moments, I was deeply worried about my friends near the border, the fate of Roni Keidar, her husband, and family, as I had visited them at their home, and also about my friends Eric Yellin, Julia Chaitin, Rosara, Liora, Adele, Avi, Orna, Robi, Mori, Rafi, Ruth, Jaber, Ayman, Vivian, Shayna, and others.

I had shared many moments, meetings, initiatives and calls with them over the past ten years. They always checked on me and contacted my family when I was alone in Hamas prisons. But I knew that if I tried to contact any of them to check on them, they might think I was somehow connected to the attackers.

Many Israelis already believed before October 7 that all Gaza residents supported Hamas. So, I decided to wait a bit, praying and calling for their safety. I reached out to my close journalist friend in Israel, Eugenia, to discuss the situation, how dangerous it was, and to verify the accuracy of the videos circulating on social media.

She didn’t have much information either. I sent her clips from Palestinian social media, telling her that just hours earlier, I had been listening on the phone to the sound of Israeli drones monitoring and filming all of Gaza, as they have done constantly since 2003.

I then started contacting my sisters, friends, colleagues, and Ramez in Gaza, and they all understood that what was coming would be very dangerous. For the first time, I felt the immense pressure of being a Palestinian peace activist, knowing that my family, home, and friends could be subjected to any retaliation by the Israeli army that targets Palestinians indiscriminately.

The early days of the war were bloody, and as the weeks passed, I started some fast initiatives through my global network in Gaza Strip to help some families and friends and began receiving news about the targeting of my friends in Gaza.

The hardest news was the killing of the three children of my friend Ramez Al-Souri, the man who was beside me on Gaza border 2018 launching the peace doves with peaceful messages. He was a Christian who had taken refuge with his family in the Greek Orthodox Church. The church was bombed by Israeli planes, killing more than 15 people, including my friends Abdel Nour and Tareq, whom I had met two months earlier in Cairo.

He had been telling me about his plans to settle in Egypt with his wife and two daughters because of his suffering from Hamas, but they were all killed by Israel in that attack, which felt like a personal blow.

I also learned that Hamas fighters had killed my friend Vivian Silver, an Israeli peace activist I knew well. I knew how much she had done for dozens of Palestinian patients, children, women, and students in Gaza, providing financial, medical, and psychological support. She had helped Palestinians in Gaza more than Hamas ever did.

As the war intensified, many Israelis began calling for revenge against all the residents of Gaza. Even supposed friends of mine, who work in peace organisations and claim to promote peace in their projects, incited violence against me and others. Some even cursed me in messages and comments, asking me sarcastically if I condemned Hamas's actions.

This question was an insult to my person and my life, especially since I have spent years and many months in Hamas prisons for speaking out and defending Israelis on the ground in Gaza. I wasn’t like others who only speak from outside Gaza. I had organised protests and movements against Hamas and was subjected to physical, psychological, and emotional torture by Hamas interrogators for my defence of my Israeli friends and my continuous opposition to Hamas from within Gaza.

I wasn’t like other Palestinians who were arrested by Hamas and then made cheap deals to get out of prison, only to later make deals with Israelis to secure more money and donations, pretending to criticize Hamas once they were outside Gaza while seeking its favour when they were still inside.

I realise that I represent a large number of Palestinians in Gaza and I know exactly what they want, through hundreds of initiatives, thousands of meetings, and tens of thousands of meetings and activities with sectors of Palestinian society, including women, men, the disabled, the sick, children and youth in the Gaza Strip over the past 25 years.

By the way, the Gaza Youth Committee, which I helped found, has never stopped organising its activities and contacts with the Israelis after or before October 7, and  I am always proud that I have real Israeli peace partners who believe in Palestinian human rights and we work together to build a common generation that respects each other.

October, November, and December were a time of revelation, showing the true faces of many Palestinians and Israelis, especially those working in peace organisations that only foster peace for the sake of personal connections, networking events, and dinners, building relationships at the expense of the real victims — both Israelis and Palestinians — who have been suffering from this war and conflict for decades.

A year after this war, which claimed the lives of more than 1,500 Israelis and over 40,000 Palestinians, with more than 100 Israelis taken hostage and two million Palestinians in Gaza displaced from their homes, and with the war expanding into Lebanon, anyone could be the next victim.

There isn’t a single person in Gaza who hasn’t been affected by the events of October 7. I, along with many Palestinians, have lost loved ones, relatives, families, friends, and children due to Israeli bombing in Gaza and personal agony outside of Gaza.

None of them were fighters or terrorists; they were peaceful people who always dreamed of a better life. I knew them well, and it is from them that I draw my strength and continue on my path, trying to spread peace and always calling on Israelis and Palestinians to talk and maintain these bridges of communication, as they are the key to finding hope and creating a better reality and life for both Israelis and Palestinians everywhere.

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