Fourteen years ago, in 2009, Le Monde mentioned in an article an incident that pitted me against Hamas security forces on the beaches of Gaza, in the context of my fight against that movement’s religious fundamentalism, which took place during his first term in office Having been in power for years, he was already trying to tighten his grip on the entire population of Gaza. Four years later, in 2013, Le Monde also dedicated a portrait to me. The title “Asmaa, last free woman in Gaza” was an exaggeration, but whatever.
At that time, I took part in a movement that called for an end to the political division between Fatah and Hamas and advocated for Palestinian unity in order to give some hope to the young people of Gaza. Today, all social struggles and struggles to preserve freedoms in Gaza seem to have been in vain. This devastating war, which has already claimed the lives of at least 5,300 Palestinian children and reduced half of Gaza’s homes to rubble, is destroying all efforts at moderation and speeches for freedom, peace and democracy. Calls for revenge are echoing louder than ever, and it has become extremely difficult to challenge any current or future Islamic resistance movement.
Today, dissenting voices, including mine, are a minority. This war will not leave me unscathed. I’m about to lose faith in everything I believed in. Today, when I look at this liberal world, which I turned to after fleeing Gaza, I tell myself that it has lost its values and chosen “double standards”, perhaps because of my father, who is still in Gaza , doesn’t have blue eyes because my sister and her little daughter, who also stayed there, don’t have blonde hair. In addition, of course, my city, unlike Kiev, has nothing to do with Europe.
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I was surprised by the position of the government and the French president. I was amazed that a country once considered friendly to Palestinians gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to commit war crimes and kill thousands of children. When the French president compares Hamas to the Islamic State organization [EI]This shows that he is not fully aware of the fundamental differences between these two movements: Hamas is not isolated from society, regardless of Emmanuel Macron’s impression and my own opinion. Equality with ISIS is more about communication than analysis. This obscures the history of the movement, which grew from an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, tolerated by the Israelis when they controlled Gaza, into a political and armed resistance movement that won open elections in 2006.
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