Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Gazans Rise Up Against Hamas — with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Please follow this link to subscribe to SAPIR, a quarterly publication edited by Bret Stephens: sapirjournal.org/dansenorWatch Call me Back on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CallMeBackPodcastTo contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts, visit: https://arkmedia.org/Dan on X: https://x.com/dansenorDan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenorArk Media on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arkmediaorgUpcoming Event Notice: Dan Senor will be delivering this year’s State of World Jewry Address at the 92nd Street Y (92NY) on Tuesday May 13 at 7:30 pm. To register: https://www.92ny.org/event/the-state-of-world-jewry-addressIt was a historic week in Gaza, as tens of thousands of Palestinians protested against Hamas in the largest demonstrations against Hamas in Gaza’s history. While the protests seem to have dissipated amidst a violent crackdown by Hamas and the killing of several protest leaders, these demonstrations could have a meaningful impact on Gaza’s future. To discuss the context behind these protests and where they might lead, we sat down with a native of Gaza who has been one of the most outspoken voices against Hamas in the Palestinian diaspora. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a Gazan-American writer and analyst whose work has been published in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Ahmed grew up in Gaza and left in 2005 as an exchange student in the United States, where he later received asylum and citizenship. Ahmed is a Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he directs the Realign for Palestine project: https://realignforpalestine.org/Follow Ahmed on X: https://x.com/afalkhatibThe Times of Israel article referenced in this episode: https://www.timesofisrael.com/gazan-man-murdered-by-hamas-after-joining-protests-against-terror-group/CREDITS:ILAN BENATAR - Producer & EditorMARTIN HUERGO - Sound EditorYARDENA SCHWARTZ - Executive Editor, Ark MediaGABE SILVERSTEIN - ResearchYUVAL SEMO - Music Composer

The Palestinian people in Gaza, the majority of them, including those who did not participate in the latest protests, all deep down know that they would still be in their homes, their loved ones would still be alive, my family, I, Ahmed, my family would still be alive, my childhood home would still be standing. My mom's family was wiped out. One airstrike killed 29 people, man, on December 14, 2023. That would not have happened had Hamas simply kept its soldiers at home on October 7th. When you launch this horrendous massacre, gone are the days of selling illusions to the Palestinian people. It's 1030am on Sunday, March 30 here in New York City as many of us are counting the hours to the Auburn's men's basketball game, regardless of the outcome,

which we'll know by the time many of you listen to this podcast. I think it's important to say that we all have been rooting for and honoring Coach Bruce Pearl. If you know what I'm referring to, you know. It's 5 30 p.m. on Sunday, March 30th in Israel as Israelis wind down their day. For the first time since October 7th, thousands in Gaza are protesting against Hamas, calling for the release of the hostages and an end to the war. It does seem to be a historic moment, and yet it is far too soon to say what kind of impact these protests might have or how widespread their sentiment

truly is. Even if Gazans are fed up with Hamas and the devastation the group has brought upon them for years, opposition to Hamas rule does not necessarily mean a rejection of the terror group's ideology. After all, according to every Palestinian poll conducted after October 7th, 2023, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank supported the October 7th massacre. Nevertheless, for Palestinians that have opposed Hamas for years, these protests in Gaza are encouraging, are potentially a sign of something, which is why we wanted to sit down with Ahmed Fuad Al-Khatib, one

of the most outspoken Palestinian voices against Hamas and its violent Islamist ideology. Ahmed left Gaza in 2005, Gaza is where he was raised, and later received asylum in the United States. He's now a US citizen and he's a prolific writer whose work has been published in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, DC, where he leads a project which he founded called Re-Align for Palestine. We will provide a link in the show notes for this project. It is well worth getting up to speed on.

We'll get into our conversation with Ahmed right after a word from our sponsor. We're taking a short break to tell you about the sponsor of this episode. We'll only be doing this selectively, but I wanted to take a moment to discuss Sapir, which is a quarterly publication edited by Brett Stevens. Each issue is built around a theme.

The new one is around diversity, not in the DEI sense. Some of the articles include Michal Bitton on Why I Am Not a Jew of Color, Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik on Jewish Identity Versus Jewish Politics, Israel's President Bougie Herzog on Zionism as a Method of Diversity and there's always a terrific essay by Brett Stevens. You can have a hard copy of this print publication arrive in your mailbox every quarter, which is especially good for Shabbos reading. I'm a religious reader. My view is they should be charging for it, but it is free.

All you have to do is subscribe. You can find the link to the publication in the show notes. Now back to our conversation. And we're back with Ahmed Fuad Al-Khatib. Ahmed, we have been watching and listening to your work for a while now and had been thinking about the right moment to have you on Call Me Back. And I cannot think of a more timely moment than now given what's happening in Gaza. It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Thanks for coming on Call Me Back. Thanks for having me. Much appreciated. Ahmed, before we dive into the protests taking place in Gaza, I wanted to spend a few moments talking about your own background so our listeners can get to know you. Your family left Gaza during the 1948 war. They eventually settled in Saudi Arabia, where you were born in 1990.

But then your family moved back to Gaza in 2000. You were 10 years old at the time, and then you left later on. Can you tell me about this period in your life arriving in Gaza in 2000? Sure. So my family actually arrived to Gaza in 1948. My dad, like many Palestinians arrived to Gaza in 1948. My dad, like many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,

left the coastal enclave in pursuit of work opportunities in the Gulf region. Doctors, engineers, nurses, professionals, left Gaza on a regular basis to go work in the Gulf region. For me, however, I was actually born in Saudi strictly because my father happened to be there at the time, even though in the 90s we were in Saudi at the time, but we were actually going back and forth to Gaza throughout the 90s. And then finally we moved back in the year 2000. My family experienced the tail end of the

Oslo peace process. We abandoned our Egyptian travel documents and then obtained the Palestinian Authority passports. And that was really a qualitative leap in terms of us having a national identity documents. We had a Palestinian ID card that was developed for us. We had a short-lived airport in Gaza that I flew into in 99 and in 2000. Can you imagine even saying the word flew into Gaza in a modern context? The airport was an outgrowth of the Oslo Accords, of the

peace process, where Israel was working with the Palestinian leadership to try to build all the infrastructure of sovereignty, potentially for a future Palestinian state, which included an airport. It's unheard of. You're right, right now to think that there would be an airport there. Precisely. But my family, for example, I mean, my parents were born in Rafa in southern Gaza in an actual bona fide refugee camp, the UNRWA refugee camps when they were tents. And then it was seen as a sign of an upgrade, a progress, if you made your way from southern Gaza, which was very poor, and you made your way up to northern Gaza.

So I grew up in Gaza City, very close to the Jabalia area. Jabalia is the famous and big refugee camp. Which is where, according to history, is where actually the Intifada in 1987 started. The match was lit formally. Obviously, the conditions were in place before that, but the match was lit in Jabalia in 1987. Precisely that. And ultimately, Hamas would turn the Jabalia refugee camp into one of its strongholds.

So Gaza was an interesting and a difficult and a unique place to grow up in. On the one hand, it was beautiful and meant so much to its people, whether it was the beaches, whether it was the food that was relatively ubiquitous and much cheaper than even the West Bank, for example, not to mention Israel. Then on the other hand, there were the issues with not to mention Israel. Then on the other hand, there were the issues with both internal Palestinian dynamics, with the Palestinian Authority trying to assert its monopoly on violence, both from the different factions, as well as from the different clans and the different, you know, lawless elements within Palestinian society. Then I experienced the second Intifada in the year 2000. And that was an entirely new and difficult experience and resulted in multiple near-death experiences, unfortunately. Can you explain? In 2001, when I was walking home from school at the age of 11, and unfortunately there was an air strike, a heavy air strike that targeted a

Palestinian authority facility and it killed two of my friends and almost killed me and it caused me a TBI that rendered me largely deaf in my left ear. And it causes me issues to this day. But it was then that that planted a seed for me to really want to leave the Gaza Strip. I realized that I had no future in the Gaza Strip and that I had to pursue life elsewhere. But at the same time, I still hoped that the trajectory overall was going to be positive, particularly because when I left in 2005, I left one month before the disengagement or the withdrawal of Israeli settlements in

July of 2005 as an exchange student to the United States. Since you knew Israel was withdrawing from Gaza, did that temper at all your desire to leave because was there part of you that thought, oh, things are going to change. We really are going to be on a path towards getting our state or on a path to sovereignty. Israel's getting out of here. The occupation, as we've known, it will end. Did that at all influence you to think maybe I should change my plan? Well, it certainly gave me some optimism on the horizon, but nothing in the immediate

term because no one knew what this would look like. Hamas was poised to try to move in and exploit this. The Palestinian authority was very incapable of setting a truly transformative vision. And then there was just, like I said, the uncertainty of how would Hamas react? Is Hamas going to turn into a political movement or is it going to keep with the armed resistance narrative? And so for me it was a done deal. It was like once I obtained the ability, the scholarship, to leave Gaza and head to the United States, there was no turning back. I mean, and it was only for a year. I was supposed to come to the United States, plant seeds here, live with a host family, and then go back

a year later. Unfortunately, I was unable to return to the Gaza Strip a year later because Hamas abducted Gilad Shalit. And that resulted in a mini war, simultaneous with the Lebanon War. And plus there was incitement against the program that I had participated in by not just Hamas, but other Islamist factions. The first time I was in Gaza was in 1993. I was studying in Israel for the year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And I had gotten to know an American journalist in Israel named Tom Hundley, who was the Middle East bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune. I was helping him do research and basically kind of interning for him on projects. And he told

me I'm going to Gaza for a couple days. Do you want to come with? And help with his interviews and whatnot. So I went with him. We spent a weekend in the Jibali refugee camp. And I will tell you, and I'm not trying to sound like I'm sugarcoating or anything, really, my impression at that time, and this was a few years before you moved there, it's not like Palestinians in Gaza.

I don't want to suggest for a moment at that time that they were living in the lap of luxury, but it was quite beautiful. The area was beautiful. People did not seem like they were living in complete and total poverty. It was probably comparable. I mean, I've never made this comparison now, but I'll do it and you can react

because you're more of an authority than I am. Tell me if I'm wrong. It felt like a suboptimal living situation that you'd find in almost any part of the Arab world, which is not horrific, but totally manageable and a real basis upon which to build and grow and develop. That was my impression of it. Was that your experience? Oh, absolutely. I mean, even during the blockade, man, parts of Gaza, and I'm not taken away from the horror and the misery that some people experience in the poverty and the aid dependency, even

during the blockade and before October 7th. Parts of Gaza looked like a five-star hotel in comparison to parts of Syria and Iraq and parts of Sudan and Yemen. Now, that's not at all to say that there was no suffering or hardships a mile away from where that was, or that the people working at those restaurants or those parks or those beach resorts. But it is the height of irony that even during the blockade Gaza's first shopping mall came about in 2010 under Hamas, under the restrictions. And the reason why I make a point of saying this and I'm so frustrated by the reductionist overly simplistic pro-Palestine narrative in the west of there is something in between an open-air prison and some on the pro and I'm putting in quotes pro Israel side make it seem like this was Western Europe and Gaza was just heaven on earth

and these people are they just threw it all away and the pro Palestine people are like this was the worse than the Warsaw ghetto and it was horrendous and people were like crawling on the ground in poverty. And I'm like, how about somewhere in the middle guys? How about it doesn't have to be Western Europe and it doesn't have to be a Warsaw ghetto. But I will tell you for a fact that no one experienced hunger in Gaza before October 7th.

There was plenty of aid and food options. And I feel very strongly about this because unfortunately this idea that, okay, so we had polluted water, we had a dependency, so let's just launch the single worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and think somehow that's like those are the people that believe that October 7th was a necessity and an inevitability to which I say no it was a choice by a nefarious deadly terror organization and by a small circle within Hamas itself. So going back to your point though, I will say there's an irony in the sense that Gaza definitely

did improve. Like because Gaza is not that huge of a territory, it's not that big of a piece of land, it does and can improve rather quickly with the injection of capital, which is why I'm optimistic about our ability to be able to rebuild it. But Gaza doesn't need rebuilding alone. Gaza doesn't just need a bunch of stones and buildings. Gaza needs to be reconstituted. Gaza needs something fundamentally different.

Okay, I want to get to that. But before I do, Ahmed, I often, as listeners to this podcast know, I often ask first-time guests to this podcast where they were on October 7th and what they were doing and what they were thinking as they were absorbing the news, meaning what was the first impression? I know very well, I remember vividly and viscerally

my first impressions as I was learning the news. I actually, as we're talking about it, I've realized I've never asked a Palestinian, a Gazan Palestinian, someone who has a real connection to Gaza, this question. So where were you on October 7th as you were learning about the war being launched against Israel? And what were you thinking? So it was the evening of October 6th. I was in California.

I had just finished a long walk. And upon arriving back to my house, I started getting notifications about what was happening. And I remember, and I am not ashamed to say this, like I screamed into the void. I absolutely gutterly, like viscerally, screamed into the void. Because absolutely gutterly, like viscerally screamed into the void because I immediately registered the calamity of what was going to happen. I had no doubt that Gaza was

going to be flattened. Now I'd been tracking some developments in the lead-up to October 7th that gave me indications Hamas might try to do something really stupid. But I had no idea it would be this horrendous, this deadly, this successful, unfortunately. I called my brother, I called my mom. Were your brother and mother in Gaza when this was happening? Yes. And you were able to call them in Gaza and say what? I was like, do you have contingency plans?

I said to my brother I need you to start get some cash, get some water, get some dry goods, get some of your medications from the pharmacy because we're screwed. I said that to them. I said we're absolutely screwed. So yeah, I just remember being up until like 4 30 in the morning and just realizing the disaster of what was happening. But here's the thing, I was horrified by the taking of elderly and women and children as hostages. Not just from a consequences point of view, but from a values point of view, man, these are not the values that I associate my people with. Okay? I can associate Hamas and some of the other despicable, disgusting players, but this is

unfortunately what happens to some of the population when you have a large number of Gazans, something like 70 to 80% of Gazans. I've never left the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately then, very sadly, people are a product of their environment. But for me, there was just a sheer sadness and disappointment that my people, I remember I come from a very devout Muslim family. My two brothers and two sisters and my mom and everybody in my family, they're all hijabis, they're all fast and pray and do everything you want. There was a sense of sorrow of where did we go wrong where the dehumanization took place. So like,

I believe in collective responsibility and I took it upon myself to acknowledge that, yes, the people of Gaza writ large are not responsible, even though Hamas ultimately is part of the makeup of Gaza, even though there were some civilians that, yes, did, when the walls were breached go into Israel and and do things so that was that on the one hand and then over the next couple of days I was also horrified by the sheer dehumanization of everybody in Gaza as everybody's a terrorist everybody needs to be killed everybody needs to be taught a lesson and I just thought that the flames were just

being fanned in a really terrifying way that I have not seen ever before. I want to ask you, Ahmed, what made Hamas's rule so effective in Gaza? We're going to get to during the war, but just let's start with before the war. So as you said, you left just before Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. And then Hamas comes into power basically 2006, 2007. I mean, they win these legislative parliamentary elections in the broader Palestinian territories in 2006. And then they force the Palestinian Authority, basically Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority, the Fatah-led governing authority

that ran the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas pushed them out, and when I say pushed them out, violently pushed them out. I mean, it was like a mini civil war among the Palestinians, where officials of the quote unquote more moderate Palestinian Authority were being slaughtered by Hamas. Hamas pushes them out, stages a coup, and takes over Gaza.

So let's begin there, basically, when Hamas effectively becomes, or practical purposes, becomes the governing authority in Gaza. From then until October 7th, 2023, what made them so effective in running Gaza? How did they do it? If you look at the Taliban, if you look at ISIS, if you look at Al-Qaeda in Iraq,

if you look at Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria. What's the common thread among all of these Islamist groups? And by the way, Hamas is on the spectrum of these Islamist terror jihadi groups. It's not a Sana'a, but basically Hamas is the first step to get there. The common ground that these groups have is the first thing they do is they enforce a monopoly on violence. And ISIS and Al-Qaeda, when they go into a place, they immediately clamp down on crime,

they clamp down on lawlessness, they ensure that they are the sole policing power that both for a small number of the population that might actually create, it's like, thank God, thank you for coming to save us from these criminals, or for, I would argue, an overwhelming number of people, it immediately creates a deterrent effect. So that's number one. Number two, when Hamas came in, for the first time you had in the governance apparatus, you had all of these ideologically motivated workers, foot

soldiers, policemen, guards, across different layers of Gaza government, you had these ideologically motivated dudes. And these dudes with guns, they're not afraid of dying. They're not afraid of being killed. They're not afraid because it's a win-win either way. Either you achieve your goal and Allah rewards you with heaven or somebody kills you or you don't achieve your goal and Allah rewards you with heaven or somebody kills you or you don't achieve your goal but the intention is there and Allah is still going to reward you.

It's a wonderful equation. So how does that translate to the day to day? You have policing for example. There used to be no go zones throughout the Gaza Strip where criminal enterprise would basically run their own little neighborhoods and the Palestinian Authority could never dare go there. And when Hamas took over, Hamas was like, at first they tried to like engage them nicely, whatever, but then a few of Hamas's members were assassinated.

Then Hamas cut loose in 2008 in particular. Hamas went after every clan, every opposition, every criminal enterprise in a way that's even more more robust than I would argue what they did in 2007 when they violently took over. They collected a lot of guns, they killed a lot of the criminals, they deterred the population, they established a singular rule of law. And I'm going to be honest with you, even secular, non-religious people that I personally knew who used to despise Hamas were like, dude, finally we have some resemblance of law and order. Like, they created this whole Hamas, the government, and all they sold people is

law and order. That is it. They didn't sell them economic prosperity, they didn't sell them open borders, they didn't sell them anything. But then, especially after 2016, that wore off. The people of Gaza finally were like, all right, we're done. We're finished. There's no horizon. There's more to life than law and order. We've known eight hours of electricity a day. We've known no prospects, no travel. We're all aid dependent. Youth unemployment was 70%, one of the highest in the world, something like 40% overall unemployment. And so law and order alone was no longer the sole ability

for Hamas to maintain dominion over the population. You started seeing cases of people committing suicide with rap poison, people burning themselves in Gaza. And Hamas purely then lost the grip on power and became a purely authoritarian North Korean style organization. And that all came to head, my friend, in 2017 when Senoir took over. Okay, so let's talk about that. So Sinwar gets out of prison in 2011, serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison. He's serving those life sentences not because he killed Jews, but because he killed Palestinians, because he was a ruthless implementer of efforts

to deter, if you will, any Palestinians living in Gaza who had an inclination to what he would call collaborating with the Zionist entity, but what many, I think, Palestinians regarded as just trying to live a life that is not completely under the grip of Hamas. And he would personally, in some cases, slaughter these Palestinians in pretty grotesque ways. And that's why he was in prison. He gets out of prison, returns to Gaza. And basically, from what I understand from other experts is that he was instrumental in transforming Hamas into one that was just incredibly, incredibly oppressive towards Palestinians that didn't completely tow the Hamas line.

And that was really the rocket ship of his ultimate path To leadership that he rode. So can you talk about that the kind of sin war is ation if you will of Hamas? Sin war unfortunately was the guy who wanted to repair relationships with Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah and Iran to resume military and financial support to the Qassam Brigades in Hamas because to him there is just like a Mackey villain ruthlessness that he's just said he was like well I don't care about like Syrians I could care less about what happens to them like we like we're, like we are the ultimate people here,

so who cares about anybody else? Then there was the push. I mean, Hamas, and I'm not at all, like I don't want you or others to misunderstand me, but like it's important to get that there were There were reasonable voices once upon a time early on in Hamas that saw the disaster they were headed toward. Mishal and Haniyeh, believe it or not, who said, listen guys, we need to reconcile with the Palestinian Authority. We need to be part of a political pragmatic vision. Just for our listeners, you're talking about Khalid, Michelle, you're talking about Ismail, Hania. So these were leaders of Hamas.

Yes, years ago. The non-Sinwar leaders of Hamas who ultimately- The non-Sinwar. Right, I know, I just want people to understand who we're talking about. And then they ultimately moved out of Gaza, and they're the ones who wound up in Doha, and they were running international affairs,

if you will, for Hamas, while Sinwar and Mohammed Def and others were running life and operations of Hamas inside Gaza. And they became irrelevant, basically. Not irrelevant in the sense that they were kicked out of Hamas, but they were absolutely irrelevant in terms of, like, the actual decision-making, because all they could control was the suitcases full of cash from Qatar from Doha which is important but that really was not what broke Hamas. But my point is Sinwar realized he was a proponent of an evolution like the Hezbollah model. He wanted Hamas to not govern, but Hamas to have full

control and full say and full veto over everything. He didn't want to turn over any of the real levers of power in Gaza over to the PA. He definitely wanted Hamas to continue building rockets and tunnels. Like his vision for reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority and a political track was hogwash was entirely unreasonable and could never work. Unfortunately when he hid that reality in his twisted mind he interpreted that as there's no way but the armed resistance way. And that was really when he began, I think, being an actual proper proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, because he knew that Hamas, on its own, could never defeat or undermine Israel. October 7 was meant to basically, not just the attack itself, but the

vision behind October 7 was meant to be a simultaneous multi-pronged attack from the north, from Syria, from Yemen, from Iran. Ironically some of that ended up happening, but he ended up being kind of a liability for the Islamic Republic of Iran and their so-called axis of resistance. Basically, a lot of Hamas members themselves are furious with the devolution and the end of Hamas as they knew it. They feel that it was suicide to launch this attack on Israel expecting Iran to come to the aid of the Palestinians. What I was told by many people who were on the periphery of Hamas's Politburo, they knew he was a dead man walking, they knew he couldn't do anything, but that was Hamas trying

to signal to Arab intelligence services that what Sinwar did was a unilateral step by himself and Dave and that they are very dissatisfied with the disaster that he brought upon not just Gaza, they could care less about Gaza, about themselves, their interests, their empires. They know that Israel is not going to rest for decades until it goes after everybody remotely connected to Hamas. And there goes their empires in Turkey, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Doha, in Algeria, in Tunisia, in Lebanon, everywhere. We're taking a short break to tell you about the sponsor of this episode.

We'll only be doing this selectively, but I wanted to take a moment to discuss Sapir which is a quarterly publication edited by Brett Stevens. Each issue is built around a theme. The new one is around diversity. You can have a hard copy of this print publication arrive in your mailbox every quarter which is especially good for Shabbos reading. I'm a religious reader. My view is they should be charging for it, but it is free. All you have to do is subscribe. You can find the link to the publication in the show notes. Now back to our conversation. Okay, I often ask Israeli leaders, political and military leaders, who were in power of

the years after Israel left Gaza, after Hamas took over Gaza, up until 2023. And I say to them, how did you not know that Hamas was building this massive tunnel system? Hundreds and hundreds of miles of tunnels, like the size of the, if not bigger, than the tube system in the UK. This is not something that is easily done in secret. You need massive equipment. You need massive resources, cement. I mean, this stuff doesn't just grow on trees. It's gotta be brought into the terror to Gaza.

It's gotta, you need lots and lots of people working on it. You need engineers, you need technical talent. It's a massive undertaking Did the average Palestinian living in Gaza during those years know that this underground? Maze that ultimately became an underground hiding space for Hamas a prison system for Israeli hostages a place to house an arsenal did the average Palestinian know that this whole system was being built? Without a doubt, 100% they did. They didn't know exactly where it was leading, but it was very, very well known.

I was calling on the phone all the time on WhatsApp and on Facebook Messenger in Gaza for over a decade, man. And people will be like, oh yeah, you know, they hired diggers and they give them like a hundred shickles a day. They had like a really strict, what I would later then identify as counter intelligence mechanisms in place. So like they would never have the same digger digging in a singular location. So like, if you have 10 diggers

you mix and match them, you take them to new locations, but it was out in the open. Now there were several people in Gaza who attempted to confront Hamas and there are several documented cases of that to say hey why is there a shed here? Why is there like this fresh looking dirt here? People would attempt to confront Hamas and I would argue 97% of the time they would be bullied, threatened or beaten into silence and told that you will be thrown in jail with the charge of being a collaborator for the Israelis. And so people knew what was happening. It was truly, talk about a big open secret that everybody knew about and yet very few to none knew where any of these tunnels really were. And they were fragmented and the tunnels themselves were designed so that

if one shaft or one area or one section are compromised, you don't compromise the entirety of the infrastructure. And I keep saying regularly, imagine if that ingenuity to building all those tunnels and all the secrecy and all the meticulous preparation that went into it. Imagine if that was applied into building Gaza, building a better future, into real job opportunities, into nation building, into peace building. And that's not a hypothetical, that is entirely possible. And that's what breaks my heart, is that we have the resources, we have the people, we have the intellect, we have the intelligence. And Gaza has had resources that could have built it four times over, over the last 20 years. And yet here we are standing with tens of thousands dead for absolutely nothing, tens of billions wasted for nothing. What has it been for? Yeah.

Okay. I want to get into something that I've discussed a lot on this podcast, which is there are two characterizations that I hear to try to explain what's happening in Palestinian society in Gaza. One of those is the Palestinians are just as much victims of Hamas as anyone. That Hamas is basically an authoritarian state that rules over the majority of Palestinian civilians who are just victims of Hamas and they're terrified and terrorized by Hamas and they have no choice and don't blame the Palestinian people.

The other characterization, and I will be honest Ahmed, I'm going to say this, it's uncomfortable to say this, but the other characterization, which is the one that I tend to increasingly over time agree with, is that most Palestinians are sympathetic to Hamas and claiming that the Palestinians are just these victims without agency and can't take matters into their own hands and aren't in any way aligned with Hamas or Hamas ideology

is absurd and what I point to is poll after poll after poll and I don't want to start evaluating the methodology of these different polls because I'm sure the methodologies and the accuracy of them are uneven but generally speaking we see repeatedly how popular Hamas is or how popular what they did on October 7th continues to be both in Gaza and the West Bank among majorities of Palestinians. A. B. We hear the stories of Israeli hostages that have been released and how they were treated in Gaza.

Many of them were not only held in captivity, but many of them, especially the ones who were released recently, so they were there for well over a year, interacted with a lot of different Palestinians, many of whom were quote unquote Palestinian civilians. And they tell stories that they never met a Palestinian in Gaza or interacted with one who tried to care for them in any way. The way, I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor who was saved by a righteous Gentile,

what we call righteous Gentile, which was a non-Jew who risked their lives to save Jews and care for Jews who were on the run. There's no comp to that. There's no stories we hear of Palestinians who are willing to take any kind of risk to save or care for a Jew. In fact, one Israeli hostage said that it was Hamas that was protecting them, because Hamas was trying to keep the hostages alive and because the hostages were currency for Hamas and if they were not being protected by Hamas, they would have been lynched by the average Palestinian civilians they came into contact with in Gaza.

This is very uncomfortable, I got to say, to be saying this to you, but I just want to go there. The risk of oversimplifying this, what is the right characterization here, the accurate one from your perspective? You're closer to this than I am. So starting with the polls, I've never once believed those polls, not because they tell an uncomfortable opinion that I disagree with or that I'm trying to manufacture, but because these polls are completely inconsistent with other polls. And you're referring to the Shikaki polling. Shikaki, yeah, who's a Palestinian pollster, who's considered a very reputable Palestinian

pollster. Maybe you don't buy into his... Not in the slightest anymore, at least. And he himself has acknowledged that his polls were wrong and false. And the IDF itself found documents in Gaza I don't know but most people have forgotten about that yeah the idea found documents that said Hamas falsified and exaggerated and inflated his polls to show overwhelming support for it for October 7 when consistently polls by the Tony Blair Institute and

Zobby research and all these folks for the past, what, since since last September, keep showing that something like less than 8% of Gazans want to see Hamas remain in control of Gaza. Something like 87% of Gazans hold Hamas responsible for the killing that is taking place at a level that is equal to Israel. Okay? That is equal to Israel. So of course there's problem. I mean unfortunately after 23-24 years our two people have been separated, man. I get that and I wish to God I could have heard different stories from some of these hostages. I really do. Could it be that these folks that they came in contact with are members of, I mean my like what

I would say to people is there are Hamas families that are helping hold these hostages in places. So I don't know if that's part of it. I don't know if just that these are folks who are hostages in places. So I don't know if that's part of it. I don't know if just that these are folks who are upset and angry at losses they've endured. I don't know what it is. Obviously it's wrong. It's terrible. They should have never been there in the first place. But my point is that I don't think like even people who may have once upon a time had given Hamas a break or a pass, it's all come back full circle, crashing down with the realization that this is a nefarious,

deadly terror organization that doesn't care about our people, that has served us on a silver platter to the most far right government in Israel's history. And that what did you expect would happen when you launched this horrendous massacre? Now, Hamas would say, well, actually, our people have every right to be upset about the pain and all the injustices they've experienced since the war, but that they're really upset at Israel not at us. Hogwash. Completely inaccurate. The Palestinian people in Gaza, the majority of them, including those who did not participate in the latest protests, all deep down know that they would still be in their homes, their loved ones would still be alive, my family, I, Ahmed, my family would still be alive, my childhood home would still be standing,

my second childhood home, my mom's family, my mom's family was wiped out, one airstrike killed 29 people, man, on December 14, 2024, 2023. That would not have happened had Hamas simply kept its soldiers at home on October 7th. Gone are the days of selling illusions to the Palestinian people. So you have to start somewhere. Like one of the things that's been frustrating with these protests that are happening in Gaza is that some are like, oh well they're not really for peace with Israel and I'm like you have to start somewhere. This is a population that's battered, that's struggling, that's malnourished, that is experiencing ferocious bombardment on one side and is being terrorized by a despicable Islamist group

on the other. Yeah, they want peace, but they're not going to necessarily explicitly say, I want peace with a Jewish secure Israel. I have the luxury and the ability of saying that here because I have had a chance to step away. So I'm just saying that, yes, people in Gaza once upon a time may have supported Hamas, but that was a point in time.

And what we saw on October 7th, even if it's thousands of people who were abusing the hostages or were and that's thousands too many, those were shameful scenes. Though remembering just stepping back, like I've met with Israeli settlers. I'm anti the military occupation. I believe that the settlements are wrong, though I'm a proponent of territorial swaps. And I've met with some settlers who tell me,

Ahmed, you're wrong. You always associate us with those cavemen who go out and attack Palestinians and look horrible. That's only a tiny minority of us. And I'm like, OK, so you're telling me that just a few thousand guys are giving you all a bad reputation by the violence that they're perpetuating? Where have I heard that from before? Where have I seen that from? So both of our people, man, we have the same tendency to overgeneralize. And again, I'm not trying to understate the problem of the need to de-radicalize, and that's why the efforts that I'm doing with Realign for Palestine, like, like I

want to challenge the narrative elements of the Palestinian national project related to armed resistance, related to sloganeering, related to armed resistance, related to sloganeering, related to maximalism. But we have to acknowledge that this incessant desire to say that Gaza is synonymous with Hamas. But my pushback on that, Ahmed, is that it is true that there are extreme elements within Israel. In fact, there are extreme elements within the Israeli government today, a couple ministers in particular. However, historically, this line has been used against Israeli governments that Hamas

is extreme, Israeli government is extreme, isn't it sad both peoples are governed by extreme elements? And the reality is, historically, whenever there has been a real interlocutor on the Arab side, throughout the Arab world, a real perspective peace partner, you've seen the majority of the Israeli public move heaven and earth to try to meet that interlocutor from the Arab world, wherever he is, to try to reach some kind of peace deal or normalization, whether it was King Hussein and Jordan,

whether it was Anwar Sadat in the late 70s, whether it was the leaders of the Gulf states that joined the Abraham Accords in 2020. I mean, whether it was even when the majority of the Israeli public was willing to do a deal with Yasser Arafat, which is kind of incredible given Arafat's history with Israel. When there has been a prospect for real peace,

the Israeli public has mobilized for that opportunity, and the Israeli government, no matter who was in power, whether it was a left-wing government or a right-wing government, has had to respond to that momentum, or they would be out of office, because that's where the majority of the Israeli public is. So I think the comparison

to who has been leading Gazan Palestinians, I know that Gazan Palestinians haven't chosen this leadership, but I just think it's an unfair comparison. It may be that a majority of Palestinians in Gaza want some kind of normalization, I don't know. But the idea that there's a mechanism for there to be a responsive leadership in Gaza right now to meet that moment like there is in Israel,

I'm skeptical, highly, highly skeptical. I think it was incredibly horrendous that Hamas's suicide bombings in the 90s and how that like Yahya Ayash and Ahmad Agel and like all those guys like from Gaza that like destroyed the fragile Oslo process. You know, Arafat walking away from the Camp David process. The Abu Mazen supposedly not accepting the 2008 idea for Omar.

So I am very much so critical of these narratives. And what we have is our Palestinian representatives. We don't have Palestinian leadership. Representatives are, you know, it's like, where's the wind blowing? Oh, here it is. Okay, let me, someone who tells their people rather, what they don't want to hear, that's a leader. Like I look at somebody who's ahead of their people,

but not so far ahead of their people, that there's just like no ability for them to catch up. That's a leader to me. And it's very unfortunate that we don't have real Palestinian leadership. Okay, I wanna talk about what's happening on the ground right now in Gaza. We're watching these videos, we're seeing these videos

that are now popping up all over social media. It's a shame that they're not getting more press attention by the mainstream press. Talk about countering a narrative that Hamas is to blame for this mess. It's after the media has been telling us for the last, since October 7th, that somehow Israel was explicitly or implicitly responsible for this war. Suddenly having Palestinians on the streets of Gaza videos, actual documentary evidence

of Palestinians countering that narrative. Let's just say it would be the honorable and responsible thing to do for the mainstream press here in the US, in the the UK and elsewhere in Canada to cover what's going on here would be pretty important but be that as it may, what created the conditions that allowed this to happen now? Like why are we seeing these images of Gazans rising up and resisting Hamas rule now? Well I think after the return of the war it was too much for people to take. They had just begun returning to what remains of their homes, not their homes, what remains of

their homes. People at least were enjoying some relative quiet and sense of the ability to just to sleep peacefully, the ability to try to rebuild their lives, to think about a better future, or just to get by day to day. Life was far from perfect. It was horrendous, even during the ceasefire, but still anything is better than the return of the war. And then when the war returned, unfortunately, and that began with horrendous bombardment and over a thousand Palestinians have been killed thus far, that I think was just a bridge too far for people in the north in particular. In Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanun, those northern towns right by the air's

crossing. Meaning because these Palestinians had moved farther south from their homes and their communities, and then they moved back up into northern, central northern Gaza, and they were like, oh wait, we just got back here, and now we have to evacuate again. Precisely. Because Israel's issuing these evacuation orders to get the civilians out of the way to avoid civilian casualties because the war is restarting, and these Palestinians are saying, wait, what?

The war is restarting? How did we go from 50 days where we got a chance to go back to our home and try to rebuild and now it's all starting again? And they're looking at Hamas saying, what are you doing here? Israel wants these hostages back and we get quiet and you're not giving the hostages back.

100%, that's how it started. So they started organically. They started as a way for folks to express their frustration, their anger. And basically they said that they thought and believed that by kicking Hamas out of Bayt Lahiya, even though Hamas is basically invisible, but just by the whole city, the whole town coming out against Hamas and saying Hamas, Barra, Barra, Barra, get out, Barra town coming out against Hamas and saying Hamas, get out, means get out. They said Hamas is a terrorist and saying like we want life, we want to live, we want dignity, freedom. And so that's how it started in Bayt Lahiya and then it moved to multiple parts of Gaza

and moved to Jabalia and moved to Shaja'ia and moved to Saraya and moved to Nusayrat and moved to Deir el-Balah, it moved to Khan Yunus. Khan Yunus which was like, you know, the cinemas, headquarters, and it was easily tens of thousands of people. Some would bring their kids, some would bring the elderly. It was very clear that Hamas was caught off guard, completely caught off guard.

Because they realized if they just started slaughtering tens of thousands of people or hundreds or thousands or whatever like that would just be bad for them. But then they were like at the same time we don't want to let them keep going enough to where they basically get entrenched and become impossible to remove. And so what Hamas ultimately did do is like it let the first couple of days go. Then it started sending out its counterintelligence officers into these protests and I shared some photos where these guys that were masked, these are it started sending out its counterintelligence officers into these protests. And I shared some photos where these guys that were masked,

these are the guys that beat and shoot people, but it just sent them with like a bunch of batons, but they just like stood there and watched people protest. And then they started kidnapping people and making calls. And then yesterday they tortured to death a young 22 year old who was part of organizing some protests. They executed six people that they said were collaborators. So one person that's there's there's an article in the Times of Israel, I'm sure it's elsewhere, in the Gazan man Oday al-Rabai, who young man kidnapped by Hamas, tortured, executed by Hamas, and then they left his body at his family's doorstep because there was footage of him joining these anti-Hamas protests.

So what impact do you think that'll have? People are terrified. People are afraid. And the protests have gone down right now, but that's also because today is Eid al-Fitr. And so it's hard to say if it's from the suppression or from the end of Ramadan. Today is the first non-Ramadan day. Yeah. So unfortunately, I mean, the killing of Oday was like a, and the brutal torturing of it. I don't know if you saw any of the footage. It's awful.

We'll link to the footage in the show notes. It's brutal. Horrific, horrific business. So there's that. As to why now, there's no food that's been allowed it for almost a month now. The Israeli Supreme Court just okayed the government's decision unanimously

not to send in any food. The suffering, the hardship, the lack of electricity, the lack of water, the lack of any horizon. I mean, I wouldn't underestimate the cumulative power of despair to really just get people to not care anymore. So there's external, I would say, inputs into the environment that I think are just generating horrendous pressure on the population. The thing that I hope you, your listeners, the world, I say this to US folks here all the time in Washington, no amount of pressuring the people of Gaza is going to induce behavioral change by Hamas. Period. End of story.

Hamas not only stole a lot of the aid and sold it and not only has enough stockpiles of its own, unfortunately the people of Gaza are the ones that are suffering the most. The Assad regime, the Iranian regime, the Saddam Hussein, like history is full of examples. North Korea developed nuclear weapons under sanctions. Hamas developed this Gaza metro under the blockade. Pressuring the people of Gaza to rise up against Hamas developed this Gaza Metro under the blockade, pressuring the people of Gaza to rise up against Hamas. Hamas will slaughter them.

Hamas will not care about them. And Hamas will unfortunately make them sign super fake statements saying we are all with the resistance and we call on our sons to not take part in any suspicious demonstrations. It's like this like counterintelligence game that's really dirty. But Ahmed, we have not seen violent revolt against Hamas. I've spoken to a number of Israelis who are monitoring these protests, are curious about them. But if Hamas is a violent organization, at some point you need Palestinians willing to exert violence against Hamas

in order to truly topple Hamas. Can you envision a scenario like that taking place in Gaza? I mean, I don't beyond like a few clan folks and a few individual people with some AKs, maybe with some grenades, can take on Hamas, but I don't really see an armed campaign against Hamas anytime soon, unfortunately. I don't see a scenario in which Hamas is toppled militarily with the existing stockpiles.

All right, Ahmed, we will leave it there. I hope this is the first of many conversations we have together on Call Me Back. There are like a hundred more questions I want to ask, but out of respect for our listeners, commutes and their commute usually doesn't bleed into a second hour. So we wanted to keep this to one hour more or less, but we're going to come back to you because there's a lot more to get into with you. And honestly, we're just scratching the surface, but it's an extremely illuminating perspective, I think, for the Call Me Back community. And I'm really, really grateful for your taking the time

and dealing with these difficult issues. Thank you for having me and look forward to speaking to you again soon. That's our show for today. If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring Call Me Back, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at callmebackatarkmedia.org. That's callmebackatarkmedia.org.

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Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huérgaux. Our Comedias executive editor is Yardena Schwartz. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Sinor.