Allen Edel

🧵1/ I’m back from a short trip on a social network with photographs and videos from Gaza, with some brief personal conclusions. First, it is quite clear that there are those in Gaza who know how to make extensive use of the networks and social media for the purposes of emotional extortion and also false propaganda, exactly like they live streamed the October 7 massacre and somehow turned it into “justified resistance”, they use quite a few Western buzzwords such as “genocide”, “occupation”, “oppression” and “Zionism”- and this is the simplest way to distinguish between Hamas propaganda posts and authentic people in Gaza, whom I’ve known all my life, who use much simpler words and not this indoctrinated manipulation bullshit. I was looking for THESE authentic people - the real voices. And I think I found a few. So first of all, what do I think there is NOT happening in Gaza? There is no genocide and no famine. Yes, there is quite a lot of suffering, shortages in some places and lack of decent shelter etc. And there’s a lot of cynical exploitation of it for propaganda purposes. I’m saying it because you can see children are getting payed for it, you can see the absolute control of distribution and you can see how basic needs and the way out is blocked with money- Israel is not taking money for any of it, the West is sending free aid, so the money is demanded by those who want to control the suffering and use it. You should know, that before the war - there was already quite a lot of very poor population in Gaza, but now the economic difficulty has greatly increased for two main reasons: one, the war damaged many sources of livelihood and the second - a major source of livelihood was working in Israel and this option was closed for a long time now, since October 7, and is now much less operational. So in fact the main source of income is donations and funding from Hamas for control purposes of course. This is how, among other things, Hamas uses the population to "work for them", and also to smile or cry for the cameras on demand. Now on the issue of claimed famine- famine is when there’s NO food and water, enough for the population. As I said, my personal conclusion is that there is no shortage of food and water in Gaza at all. The problem is that the food is not distributed equally, it is controlled by those who are powerful (usually Hamas operatives) and then sold at high costs to the population without them having sources of livelihood. Food that should be distributed for #free is actually sold at a high price, the shelter tents are also paid for and the exit from Gaza is particularly expensive (5000$ that are paid to the transporters). There are quite a few who refer to Gaza as a "prison" but Gaza is not a prison, Hamas has simply created a situation where it is very expensive to leave it - and thus the poor and the new poor are completely dependent on Hamas and other clans (Hamulas) in everything to do with food, shelter and exit, and they play with them as pawns. If Gaza is a prison - then it’s because Hamas are imprisoning it. All the suffering in Gaza started because of #Hamas it continues and increases because of #Hamas, but the main point is that #Hamas is also the one factor that can stop it. If Hamas surrendered unconditionally and released the Israeli hostages, as done in any war in which you are forced to admit defeat - they would truly liberate Palestine. Remember- this is a war that #Hamas started, a war that on Oct. 7 was celebrated in the streets of Gaza. But #Hamas prefers to keep the Palestinians captive so that it can showcase suffering (which they create) and use it as a tool for financial donations, manipulation of the West and a messianic jihadist war that will never end for them. If the West doesn’t wake up to this ongoing manipulation- they will never help the Palestinians in Gaza or in general, and they will bring this jihadist chaos to their doorstep From Gaza >