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Source: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/hamas-and-its-two-million-hostages/
Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages
(Jewish News-UK) Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib - Hamas has been in control of Gaza for almost two decades. With 2/3 of Gaza's residents under the age of 30, few have any real memory of life before Hamas. I left Gaza in 2005 as a 15-year-old high school student on a U.S. cultural exchange program. I was supposed to return a year later. While I was in Egypt preparing to cross back in, Hamas abducted an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, triggering a mini war that prevented me from returning home. A year later, at 17, I interviewed for political asylum in the U.S. on the day that Hamas seized control of Gaza and violently ejected the Palestinian Authority. I became the first Palestinian from Gaza to receive U.S. asylum as a consequence of Hamas's takeover. I have been ferociously anti-Hamas, and so I have firmly opposed vocal elements of the Western-based pro-Palestinian camp that often justifies violence, promotes hate and refuses to endorse any rational discourse or pragmatic solution that could actually help the people of Gaza. I have chosen to engage in work that advocates for reconciliation, tolerance and common ground as the only way forward for Palestinians and Israelis. A Palestinian who challenges the conventional wisdom and speaks out against Hamas, who renounces its narrative of armed resistance, is perceived as a heretic. Since Oct. 7 it has been horrifying to see Hamas apologists, presenting themselves as pro-Palestinian, celebrate the group as a legitimate entity that supposedly represents the Palestinian people's best interests. Since its inception, Hamas has been deeply detrimental to Palestinian interests. Hamas is a moral stain on the Palestinian cause; those who genuinely support our national aspirations should have found it entirely unproblematic to condemn the group's murders and rapes, its firing of rockets at civilians, and its Islamist ideology. The failure to call out Hamas weakened genuine pro-Palestinian advocacy, which by default became associated with celebrations of Oct. 7, finding excuses for Hamas's heinous acts of terror. Instead, a form of mass psychosis took hold of activists, academics, journalists, advocates, politicians and average individuals, all blinded to Hamas's criminality against both Gazans and Israelis. I experienced the tragedy of seeing a group of Jihadi fascists destroy the Palestinian national project. This is why I focus on speaking out against Hamas. The writer is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington.