Ein Portrait von Hamza Howidy, einem Oppositionellen aus Gaza

Er floh vor der Hamas und führt nun aus Deutschland seine Opposition gegen die Hamas fort: Die Times of Israel portraitiert Hamza Howidy.

In einem langen und sehr lesenswerten Beitrag lässt sie ihn ausführlich zu Wort kommen. Hier einige Auszüge:

"In 2019, hundreds of Gazans took to the streets demanding better living conditions in what became known as the “We Want to Live” rallies. Hamas security forces brutally suppressed the marches, beating demonstrators and detaining over 1,000. Howidy and Abed were among them.

“The protests did not have leaders and were not explicitly political,” Howidy said. “To be honest, we wanted to overthrow Hamas, but we couldn’t say it out loud publicly, so we demanded a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and fresh elections.”
Hamas security forces were swift in clamping down on the demonstrations. To disperse the masses of protesters, they opened fire into the crowd, Howidy recalled.

“People started running for their lives. After shooting, the militia came with batons and started hitting as many as they could. And then they arrested us,” he said. (...)

“While they don’t necessarily love Israel, people have realized that Hamas is using them as pawns and human shields, nothing more. They have realized that Hamas’s only strategy is to maximize civilian casualties.”
Hamas’s perverse tactic of hiding inside civilian infrastructure is not new, as it adopted the same modus operandi in previous rounds of confrontation with Israel, Howidy said.

“People in Gaza knew this 100%. In previous military operations, we would always tell each other to stay away from schools and hospitals, because we knew that Hamas were hiding there. However, when we see that these places are targeted [by the IDF] and there are civilian losses, we cannot say it’s acceptable because Hamas is operating there. There must be another way to fight them. (...)

“The problem is that the people in the West believe in the freedom fighters narrative, which is totally wrong. Yes, Israel deserves much criticism – I personally criticize Israel. But what Hamas does is not fight for freedom, nor defend the rights of the Palestinian people,” he said.
“Campus protesters believe that Israel is made up of white supremacists. They don’t know that over 50% of Israelis are descendants of Arab Jews,” he added.

“I don’t want to tell them whom to support, but they have to spend more time reading about this conflict before choosing their enemies and their heroes. If they knew what Hamas did to Palestinians, besides what it did to Israelis on October 7, for instance, what it did to us protesters in 2019, they would realize that they are supporting terrorists, but with good public relations.”