Israel-Hamas War VI: The Gaza they will miss, poor souls!

What they did to themselves!! This article has a short version and a longer version. Both are stories of mourning. Gazan stories of mourning. And to both of these I add an addendum of my own. An Israeli story of mourning.

Ahmed Alnaouq, 29, left Gaza four years ago and now resides in London after having received a scholarship to study for a masters degree in journalism at Leeds University.

The Short Version

This is the Gaza that Alnaouq and his fellow Gazans are mourning, “the Gaza that once existed before the 7th of October.”

You really have to watch this to understand the depth of mourning for what can, in no way, be accurately referred to as the most densely populated place in the world or a Middle Eastern “Warsaw Ghetto.” These lies have been debunked on this website and by Al Jazeera, respectively.

Another very popular label for the Gaza Strip is “the largest outdoor prison.” Many social media posts have debunked this one as well. But perhaps the best is this video posted by Alnaouq.

Watch it to get the full effect of what Gazans have lost by throwing in their hat with Hamas and for hating Jews more than they value the quality of their own lives. (I have downloaded this video in case someone thinks it should be deleted for some reason.)

What do you know! Look at this — he deleted the tweet. So Here is the video he deleted underneath the text that was on it:

We will miss our Gaza… the Gaza that once existed before the 7th of October. pic.twitter.com/bos0Bpq2di

— Ahmed Alnaouq (@AlnaouqA) November 26, 2023

The Long Version

This part is to give you a sense of who Alnaouq is.

Before war broke out, Ahmed Alnaouq was not a very prolific “X” poster. Perhaps a post one day after the other, perhaps with a gap of two weeks or more. He liked to promote the young people in his project, “We Are Not Numbers,” whereby youth in Gaza are paired with English-speaking mentors who help them write up their personal stories. He co-founded this project with American journalist Pam Bailey, whom he met when she was living in Gaza. The project was born in 2015 out of his own grief at having lost his brother in the 2014 war, “Operation Protective Edge.”

In The Nation, an article Alnaouq and Bailey wrote together talks about the current war that murdered his family:

At 4:30 am on October 22, 20 members of Ahmed’s immediate family—his father, two brothers, three sisters, 14 nieces and nephews, and a cousin—were murdered by a distant Israeli soldier with a missile. Four days later, another niece succumbed to her burns due to a shortage of ICU beds. In addition, his now-deceased cousin’s wife and daughter were killed in a separate bombing. There seems to be no end.

Of course, Alnaouq and Bailey concur with UN Secretary General António Guterres who said that the Oct 7th Massacre did not occur “in a vacuum.”

I was curious what kind of materials he was posting before the war and in the first days after the Hamas slaughter of Israeli kids and families and music festival attendees. Would there be any sign of denouncing Hamas? (Not very likely if he thinks the atrocities did not occur in a vacuum.)

Here is an example of the kind of general posts Alnaouq would repost from others before the war:

On @BBCNewsnight dismissing the use of "terrorism" label against the Palestinian people, adding the Palestinians have been at the receiving end of Israel's state sponsored terrorism for 75 years with the complicity of Western governments and media. #Nakba75 #Palestine pic.twitter.com/FBOkjcp2pa

— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) May 12, 2023

Most of his posts were about Israeli occupation, genocide, and atrocities against the Gazan people. Some were posts about his project featuring the stories of Gazan youth.

This is the last post before the war — uploaded a month before the Hamas atrocities on Oct 7th:

WATCH ????️ | Gaza Youth: Let's End Israel's Impunity

"International humanitarian law is not applied here, there is not international law applied in the region!" says Fatima Elzahraa, a Palestinian law student & writer with @wearenotnumbers pic.twitter.com/xBx60BOpfJ

— Palestine Deep Dive (@PDeepdive) September 8, 2023

Then Alnaouq suddenly became very active on his “X” feed. So many posts about Israeli destruction and genocide.

I did a video-search on the Internet to verify that the video below is, in fact, from Gaza and from 10 October 2023 as it claims. It is both. People have been known to upload horrific scenes from Syria or other war zones and say that these are examples of what Israel has done in Gaza but it appears there is enough contemporary material from this current war such that supplementary fakes are not required. In spite of that, we do know of many instances of Pallywood operating now in the Gaza Strip. Oh well. I guess they grew enamoured of their own theatrical skills and were not willing to let a war go by without showcasing their productions.

Don’t worry – they covered this video but is mild considering what we have already seen.

Introducing Israel’s targets in its war on #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/zrOZjxI7dD

— Ahmed Alnaouq (@AlnaouqA) October 10, 2023

UPDATE: Looks like they took this post down. For some reason, it still comes up for me, but, in case for you it does not, I have it downloaded onto my computer, so here it is.

The text read: “Introducing Israel’s targets in its war on #Gaza”  Many comments ask Alnaouq where he was on Oct 7th and where is his outrage? They noted: there was none.

I cannot help but wonder how many of the crowd in this video were also viewing the paraded Israeli hostages, cheering their humiliations and their deaths and their abductions.

“Pure panic everywhere you look.”

Inside the Gaza siege – a resident’s eyewitness report by Yousef Hammash. pic.twitter.com/NLhKHPWa0X

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) October 10, 2023

Again – how many of these masses of Gazan “innocents” in the following post were among the cheering throngs on Oct 7th?

And note the lie: they claim that the IDF killed 70 of those fleeing south for safety when it was their own Hamas terrorists who killed them in a vain attempt to stop the abdication of their human shields. How dare the people leave the brave Hamas warriors defenseless, with fewer women and children to hide behind! Even news sites not particularly friendly to Israel report on how Hamas is preventing the movement of civilians from north to south (see here, for example).

#Shame! So the Israeli army asked a million Palestinians who love north of the Gaza valley to leave their homes and move south. When the Palestinians responded and moved south for their safety, the same army targeted them, killing 70 and injuring hundreds. #Gazagenocide pic.twitter.com/jqHFpeAX5a

— Ahmed Alnaouq (@AlnaouqA) October 13, 2023

He has a series of posts in which he shows family members who are no longer among the living, children who have been injured, and a few Israeli soldiers who boast about their intention to quash Hamas.

My Addendum

Of course, Ahmed Alnaouq makes it appear as if his family and all other injured Gazas are merely innocent civilians. But I wonder. I hope you will forgive me for my cynicism. Alnaouq claims that his family was killed:

… as part of a deliberately indiscriminate bombing campaign that has targeted every single person inside Gaza. The Israeli military warned everyone to evacuate northern Gaza, then proceeded to bomb the middle and south…. If that is the case, we’d say that means Ahmed’s family was murdered (or even massacred).

One should not forget that at the time Alnaouq’s family was killed, Hamas and their colleagues were launching missiles in multiple barrages into Israeli civilian areas from across the Strip.The launch sites are legitimate military targets. Is Alnaouq neglecting to tell readers that some family members were Hamas operatives or that the building in which his family lived housed weapons caches or Hamas offices, for example? If so, then his family home may not have been “indiscriminately” bombed at all.

Reuters reports that, while the IDF urged the civilian population to move south in advance of the impending ground invasion, they also said that they were targetting Hamas operatives and infrastructure throughout the Strip. And

Wherever a Hamas target arises, the IDF will strike at it in order to thwart the terrorist capabilities of the group, while taking feasible precautions to mitigate the harm to uninvolved civilians [which Alnaouq’s family did not heed]… homes where militants live are ‘legitimate targets’ even if civilians live alongside them… [and t]he so-called private home is not a private home,…

Therefore, while I am sad about the deaths of all innocents, and my heart breaks when I see injured and dead children, I will not apologize for this. Uninvolved Gazans will have to look to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups if they want to find justice for their losses. Not to Israel.

Regarding the before-Oct 7th Gaza and after-Oct 7th Gaza, along with Alnaouq, I also mourn the loss of the clean beaches, the restaurants, malls, homes, broad avenues, and more. I mourn the lost possibilities they symbolize for the Gaza that could have been had the Gazan population decided that it was more important for them to build good lives for themselves rather than seek to eradicate the Jewish People from the Land of Israel (and everywhere else on Earth).

I mourn the good people of Kibbutz Nir Oz and others whose naivety led them to trust their Gazan neighbours, relations that proved to be contemptuous exploitation until the Jews could be killed off. How that ringing slap across the face must be excrutiating for those who survived and those left behind.

And I also wonder what damage to the environment follows from the destruction of so many cement buildings and roads because cement is not biodegradable and I can only wonder if cement recycling plants can handle all the rubble we are seeing in Gaza.

The only thing I can say to Ahmed Alnaouq is that I hope that Israel gets to rebuild Gaza in our own image. Perhaps you will be able to visit as a tourist and really mourn the losses caused by the stupidity and hatred of Hamas and all who support these terrorists. I hope your envy doesn’t eat you up alive when you truly understand the enormity of your mistakes.

Feature Image is a screenshot of Ahmed Alnaouq’s “X” profile heading.