More people need to understand Israel’s role in the growth and development of Hamas.

Hamas simply would not exist in the state we see today had it not been for Israeli involvement. Those interested can read the full text at the link, but in summary:

Israel viewed Hamas and Islamic militant forces as a counterweight to the overwhelmingly secular Palestinian resistance movements of the late 80′s and 90′s

Israel carried out massive campaigns of arrest and assassination against Palestinian leaders and intellectuals leading the secular charge, while largely ignoring Islamic forces that were slowly organizing and stockpiling weaponry

Israel at one point even arrested the eventual founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, for stockpiling weapons. Yassin told Israeli intelligence that the weapons were to be used only against rival PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization, a secular Umbrella Palestinian Organization that other groups operated beneath) and communists in Gaza. Israel released him not long after.

Israeli Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev confessed to Israel’s financing of the Hamas movement as a counterweight to the PLO & Marxist Palestinian movements: “The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques.” referring to the mosques that Hamas forces used to organize in the early days

Israel is responsible for Hamas in more ways than one:

- They rose as a response to Israel's settler colonialism

- Israel both actively and passively allowed them to flourish

- Israel actively targeted and crippled Palestinian forces that could've challenged Hamas

Hamas is, in every conceivable way, the fault of Israel. That we as Palestinians are left with nobody but an Islamic Militant Organization to fight against Israel is not of our choosing, but of Israel’s.

Don’t fall for their bullshit. Speak to an actual Palestinian in Gaza. You’d think if they were being used as human shields, if not only their lives but the lives of their ENTIRE family, their home, their livelihoods were at risk, that they’d be decrying what Hamas does.

Yet where do we continue to see the accusations of human shields? Exclusively by Israel.

You know what Gazans who HAVE spoken out against being used as human shields have to say? That it was the Israeli forces themselves using Palestinians as human shields. Something we /do/ have documented evidence about.

All this pro-Israel programming you’ve been fed? All of this Israeli propaganda you continue to promote?

Holy.Shit.

The official Israel Arabic Twitter account just quoted the QURAN Surah on that reads: "For He sent against them flocks of birds, that pelted them with stones of baked clay," (The Quran is the holy text of Islam, the dominant religion of Gaza)

the unquote passage that follows reads "leaving them like chewed up straw."

All over a photo of an Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip, where over 200 civilians have died with a THIRD being children.

An Israeli from Haifa commented on one of my posts about Israeli lynch mobs marking Palestinians homes for attack, attacking Palestinians in the streets, attacking their businesses, and this Israeli responded something along the lines of [I can’t find the actual comment so if someone does, please send it so I don’t have to paraphrase] “you’re exaggerating. It’s just a few small groups of extremists”

Here’s a video of what’s happening now in Haifa

THESE are the “small groups of extremists”

They are prowling the streets looking for Palestinians cars to burn and Palestinians to lynch

Where’s the police response? Busy dealing with Palestinian protests.

One thing you must ALWAYS keep in mind when people try to separate the Israeli government from the Israeli people, or when people try to shut down Palestinians speaking out with “you can’t blame all Israelis” is that Israel has mandatory military service.

These “civilians” marching through the streets? They have at one point, or WILL, served in positions of ABSOLUTE POWER over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza

Israel is not a society in which the government and people can be separated as if to shift blame - Israel is a society that fundamentally COULD NOT EXIST without our subjugation.

Whenever you say “Israel has a right to exist”, you are implicitly stating that Israel has a right to subjugate Palestinians.

Israeli police contributing to last night’s lynch mobs against Palestinians in Israel

Don’t let anyone fool you into believing that these racist mobs of Israelis are “just small gangs”. Israeli police were backing them and often leading the charge.

This is reportedly a young girl filming Israeli police raiding her home and beating her brother and father as she films through a window.

Imagine the absolute horror, not knowing what they’d do to you if they caught you filming their terror?

This is all a modern-day Nakba - the dfiference is, we have cameras and internet connections now.

If we had the same technology in 1948, the scenes would look exactly the same - Zionist forces raiding the homes of Palestinians, beating them, forcing them out.

Today marks the 73rd anniversary of al-Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

By the time al-Nakba was concluded, over 800,000 Palestinians had been ethnically cleansed, and thousands more massacred. Over 500 Palestinian towns and villages were burned to the ground by Israeli forces. What towns and villages remained were then occupied by Israelis and absorbed into what is today known as Israel.

The root of the latest assault on Gaza cannot be ignored - Israel was continuing their ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, attempting to remove Palestinian families from their homes and replace them with Israelis.

It is no different now than it was 73 years ago. It is no less of an ethnic cleansing now than it was 73 years ago.

It wasn’t a “property dispute”. That is the language used to justify the legalese used by the colonial power to sugarcoat the reality. The same legal systems they use to defend their policies are what entrench the subjugation of the Palestinian people to begin with and are themselves legacy of Britain’s colonial system in the region.

Palestinians have had enough of being forced from our homes, made stateless, of living under a brutal military occupation, treated as second class citizens in Israel proper, of living in the open air prison of the Gaza Strip.

We’ve risen before. We rise now. We’ll rise again.

Their exact same point, applies to Hamas:

Why do Israeli soldiers go home to their families at night? Why do Israeli officials surround themselves with civilian staff? Why do Israelis keep weapons in their homes?

It is because Israel is using them as human shields. Hamas is only firing at military targets.

Every Israeli home has a weapon of some kind in it because most Israelis are armed. That makes their homes valid targets for Hamas. Hamas warns these Israelis by launching slow rockets that trigger Israeli warning systems - they're trying to avoid civilian casualties

Hamas knows that Israelis have bomb shelters they can run to - they simply want to destroy the structures housing the Israeli weapons in the first place. Notice how few civilians Hamas has killed - that is proof that they're not looking to harm innocents!

Texts between my brother (green) and mom.

We're surrounded by two Israeli Settlements that have launched numerous attacks against our town.