Rachel Kohn

Al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, where some of my injured family members were treated from IDF bombardment last year, has shut down today after staff stopped working and locked the facility down. Want to know why? Because the medical personnel were protesting against Hamas members taking over the Surgery Ward/Division and hiding there to protect themselves, endangering the entire facility. The staff made the courageous decision, despite the immense need for medical surgeries, to stop operating the hospital and protect the facility, their patients, and their lives, to send a clear signal to Hamas and other terrorists: You have no place in a hospital, and you’re not welcome here. This heroic action is yet another step that’s part of a growing trend of small but growing local resistance to Hamas’s fascism and terrorism, which Palestinians in Gaza hold responsible for their complete annihilation in a useless war meant to prolong the rule of an Iranian militia in the coastal enclave. This has happened time and again in medical facilities across Gaza, something that is illegal and immoral. And while I don’t want Israeli bombardment and targeting of hospitals anywhere in Gaza, international humanitarian law clearly states that the misuse of a hospital/medical facility to gain a military advantage or to shield military objectives from attack removes the protection for hospitals under IHL. In other words, Hamas’s thuggery, criminality, and terrorism give the Israeli government the excuse to target medical establishments in Gaza, something that, in turn, worsens the suffering of the civilian population in the coastal enclave. Remember this whenever you hear or see people chanting for the “resistance.” Remember this when you see headlines that absolve the terror group of any responsibility for the systematic destruction of Palestinian lives and hope under the pretense of “fighting the occupation.”

Today, I was on the campus of a major US university and gave remarks as part of a panel discussing Gaza, Hamas, the mass demonstrations against the terror group, pathways forward, and my hope and optimism for a better future ahead for Palestinians in the coastal enclave. While there was immense interest, enthusiasm, and intrigue in what I was saying by students and faculty, a group of white-appearing “pro-Palestine” students attended the talk. They asked questions and made physical gestures of mockery and disapproval that were incredibly infuriating. “Why should we as Americans care about Hamas or spend any time talking about them?” said one of these students, who clearly had ignored the hour-long discussion and all my remarks and chose to focus on this angle of it. “I don’t know all the details about Hamas, I guess they suck, but we as Americans finance Israel and genocide and that’s all we should care about, not some random ‘terror’ organization.” After hearing my ten-minute-long impassioned response and me demanding that clueless, non-Palestinians take a step back and not speak over actual Palestinians, they came up to me after the talk and asked how can I speak out against Hamas, knowing that what I say may be “used to justify” Israeli actions in Gaza, making me a supposed accomplice to the murder of my own people, including my family members. I explained that I couldn’t prevent people from manipulating my words to justify Israeli actions and even potential war crimes. However, that shouldn’t stop me from exposing Hamas and its vile tyrannical rule over the people of Gaza and presenting divergent and desperately needed Palestinian views that reject Hamas/violence, hold multiple truths, and embrace radical pragmatism as a framework for a meaningful resolution of the conflict. Who are they or any Western “activists” to speak over actual Palestinians in Gaza experiencing the consequences of Hamas’s despicable actions, iron-grip, and terrorism that have set the Palestinian people back for no reason whatsoever? Regardless of my response, in which I detailed the horrors that Hamas has unleashed upon the Palestinian people, moral consistency necessitates speaking out against the terror group irrespective of whether the US funds them or not. This was yet another confirmation of the one-dimensional ethos that governs almost the entirety of the “pro-Palestine” movement and activism on college campuses. Opposition to a terror organization that has led to the annihilation of Gazans is somehow synonymous with providing justification and support for Israeli actions in the coastal enclave – this is the very definition of black and white, overly simplistic, reductionist, and harmful rhetoric, mindset, and thinking. It is time for a rejuvenated pro-Palestine movement that cares about Palestinians even when non-Jews and non-Israelis harm them; it is time for a pro-Palestine movement that is steeped in a consistent application of moral and ethical values instead of selective outrage. It's time to redefine what it means to be truly pro-Palestine beyond simply being anti-Israel.