An open letter to Hamas supporters
Say hello to your 'freedom fighters'.
Unlike most Muslim-majority countries, in the West you have the freedom to agree or disagree with anything you like. This freedom of thought is one of the precious rights that makes Western countries so special.
Regardless of the fact that the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Israel, New Zealand and the European Union have designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation, you are entitled to your own opinion on that. I’m not saying that it will age well claiming aloud that Hamas were ‘freedom fighters,’—but it’s your right to say it.
Opinions however are not facts, so I thought I would bring a few uncomfortable truths to the table, just so that you are aware of the type of group that you are claiming solidarity with. Because research and truth matters right?
Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) and was founded in December 1987 during the First Intifada.
In 1988, Hamas published its charter, advocating for the destruction of Israel.
So let’s be clear about this. The goal of Hamas was not to liberate their people from living in third world conditions, it was to exterminate the Jews from the land. No mention of a two-state solution, just the Islamisation of Israel.
'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' (Article 7) —Hamas Charter
In 2006, Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and assumed administrative control of Gaza Strip and West Bank. Sounds very democratic doesn’t it? It wasn’t.
At the time Gaza was a particularly unsafe place to be. So as it went, the people mostly voted in opposition against Fatah — against corruption, against nepotism, against the failure of the peace process, and against the lack of leadership.
Hamas promised reform. They promised to end corruption and to deliver healthcare, education, and aid to the poor—especially in Gaza. They pledged to restore law and order, and promised to restore Palestinian rights and dignity. Their platform also included promoting Islamic values in governance and society.
'[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.' (Article 13) —Hamas Charter
After winning the 2006 elections, Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and started murdering their opponents and ousting Fatah in a bloody conflict marked by executions and torture.
Dozens of Fatah members were killed, and institutions affiliated with the Palestinian Authority were dismantled. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza without elections, silencing dissent through arrests, intimidation, and control of the media, effectively establishing a one-party authoritarian regime that has deepened the political and geographic divide between Gaza and the West Bank.
Despite the pre-election promises, under Hamas rule Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have experienced significant suffering, economic hardship and fear-based authoritarian governance.
In contrast, the leadership of Hamas have become rich. While the people languish in poverty and are treated as human shields, the leaders of Hamas have lived billionaire lifestyles.
Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal alone were worth a staggering total of $11 billion and enjoyed a life of luxury in Qatar1 while millions of ordinary citizens of Gaza lived in abject poverty.
The unemployment rate in Gaza is over 47 per cent and more than 80 per cent of its population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations. Hamas, however, has funded an armed force of thousands, equipped with rockets and drones and built a vast web of tunnels under Gaza. Estimates of its annual military budget range from $100 million to $350 million, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources.2
So where do all these billions come from?
From 2014-2020, U.N. agencies spent nearly $4.5 billion in Gaza, including $600 million in 2020 alone, add to this is an estimated $1.3 billion from Qatar, and millions sent from Egypt, Iran and the United States.3
So next time you donate money to a Gaza relief fund, know that Hamas has control of exactly where that money goes, and by the look of Gaza, very little is filtering through to the people.
It has been well documented that Hamas uses their own civilians as pawns. Hamas’s senior leadership has openly admitted to using human shields since gaining control of Gaza nearly 20 years ago, and similarly during the 7 October war. Hamas leaders have also boasted about their willingness and tactic to sacrifice civilian lives in what they consider an acceptable cost in their war against Israel.4
Hamas has deliberately and systematically exploited Gaza’s civilian infrastructure to shield its military assets from attack by the IDF, violating the prohibition of the use of civilian shields under the Law of Armed Conflict.5
In other worlds, your ‘freedom fighters’ purposefully hide weapons and artillery in hospitals, schools, civilian buildings and mosques—rendering them fair game under the International laws of war. The only people that don’t seem to understand this is you. Hamas openly state that they sacrifice civilian life for western sympathy—and you bought it.
We’ve all heard about the underground terror network, but let me make a few things clear. The miles and miles of tunnels are longer than the entire London Underground train network. And they are sophisticated—a warren of interconnecting passages that stretches below Gaza’s streets, extending for hundreds of miles into almost every area of the enclave. Literally billions of dollars spent on this underground maze.
Officials estimate that there are nearly 5700 separate shafts leading to the underground system.6 In their search for hostages, the IDF discovered a shaft originating in a child’s bedroom, with Disney characters painted on the walls.
A terror tunnel shaft entrance in a child’s bedroom. These are your heroes?
Before Israel began their retaliation for October 7, the IDF took measures to evacuate civilians from the North of Gaza. Of course these mass evacuations would not be necessary if Hamas acted like a normal Government, or even a moral army, but they don’t. They hide in civilian infrastructure and wear civilian clothes, making it a near impossible task to to engage Hamas without mass casualties—which of course is their plan.
During the evacuation of the Northern Gaza Strip, Palestinians reported bing shot at by Hamas terrorists for attempting to evacuate to a safe area. Many civilians were treated at the evacuation point by the IDF.
Yahya Sinwar was the chief architect of the 7 October 2023 massacre, which of course triggered the preceding war. So from your point of view he was the leader of the ‘freedom fighters.’
So who was this man? Dubbed the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’ Sinwar was feared amongst Palestinians for his role in interrogating, torturing, and killing his own people thought to be informants.
At the age of 25, two years after Hamas was founded in 1987, Sinwar set up the group's feared internal security organisation, the al-Majd.
Al-Majd gained notoriety for punishing those accused of so-called morality offences, as well as hunting down and killing anyone suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Apparently grifting billions of dollars in aid was far less of a moral crime for Sinwar than the sin of homosexuality—but we will get to that.
Anyone suspected of collaborating with Israel was brutally murdered, many by Sinwar’s own hands he proudly bragged. In 1988, Sinwar was arrested and convicted by Israel for the murder of 12 Palestinians and given four life sentences.
Not sure who’s freedom he was fighting by killing his own people—but I digress.
Sinwar spent a large part of his adult life, over 22 years in Israeli prisons, of which he utilised his time by grifting off the good graces of the Israeli prison system where he pursued academic studies through the Open University. Sinwar took full advantage, completing 15 courses in the humanities and social sciences departments.
While incarcerated, the prison dentist Dr. Yuval Bitton noticed that Sinwar seemed off balance and forgetful, and arranged for him to go to an Israeli hospital where he was diagnosed with an abscess in the brain. He was operated on, which no doubt saved his life.
On leaving prison in a prisoner exchange for an Israeli hostage, Sinwar told Bitton that he owed him his life, and that he would repay him one day.
During the October 7 pogrom, Hamas murdered Bitton’s nephew Tamir. Tamir is survived by his wife, Hadas, children Asaf, 7 and Neta, 3.
It is no surprise that homosexuality is outlawed in Gaza, but how do the Hamas ‘freedom fighters’ deal with homos within their own ranks?
Secret documents from Hamas have revealed that they tortured and executed their own "terrorists" who allegedly had same-sex relations.7
Despite multiple reports of terrorists raping Israeli men, Hamas members believe that committing the crime of sodomy is a crime punishable by at the very least “stoning to death.”8
Who’s going to break the news to Queers for Palestine?
In fact Mahmoud Ishitwi, once the leader of the terror group’s elite Zeitoun battalion, is said to have been tortured for more than a year before being executed in 2016 on orders from Yayha Sinwar, for “behavioural and moral violations”, a euphemism for homosexuality.
And let’s not forget what your ‘freedom fighters’ did on October 7. Or maybe we should start with what they didn’t do. They didn’t target military targets, they didn’t target only military aged men. They didn’t send text messages, or drops hundreds of thousands of flyers. They didn’t create humanitarian corridors for women and children to pass through to safety, nor did they set up aid stations to care for the wounded.
They targeted peaceful communities, indiscriminately killing entire families along with their family pets. The entire Siman Tov family – Yonatan, 36, Tamar, 35, five-year-old twins Shahar and Arbel, and Omer, two, and Yonatan's 70-year-old mother, Carol.9 from the Nir Oz kibbutzim that ironically was strongly wedded to socialist and leftwing principles. And the Siman Tov family was one of many.
Several of Nir Oz’s older peace activists, such as Oded Lifshitz, 84, and Ada Sagi, 75, were taken hostage on 7 October. Nothing says ‘freedom fighter’ like kidnapping an 84 year old. The Bibas baby 10 month old Kfir and 4 year old brother Ariel, were also stolen from Nir Oz and taken hostage, along with their frantic mother.
The bodies of the two boys were returned to Israel in February in black coffins, alongside a coffin that was meant to hold their mother—it did not—it contained the remains of a random Gazan woman instead of Shiri Bibas.
How do you justify the death of a 10 month old baby and a 4 year old boy? The day the Bibas boys died, so did any any credibility around claiming of Palestinian ‘resistance.’
Although the beautiful redheaded Bibas boys received world wide attention, they were not the only children murdered on the seventh. A total of 38 children were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led slaughter. Among them, three were under the age of three, and four were between the ages of three and six.
Additionally, 42 children were abducted to the Gaza Strip by Hamas and other terrorist organisations; nine of these children were under the age of five.
Forensic evidence released by Israeli authorities revealed that 27 children between the ages of 0 and 17 were shot and burned alive during the attack.
How is burning children alive fighting for freedom?
The treatment of women alone by Hamas militants should give you a pretty good indication of their aspirations regarding freedom. I find it fascinating how feminists have embraced the Palestinian cause, without addressing any of the issues of repression and subjugation suffered by the women under Islamic rule.
Hamas, is an Islamist political and militant group that governs through a conservative interpretation of Islamic law—which results in a totally shit deal for women.
A 2011 survey by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) indicated that 51 per cent of women in Gaza had experienced some form of gender-based violence. Added to these woeful statistics is data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) which indicated that in 2014, approximately 30 per cent of women aged 20–49 in Gaza were married before the age of 18.10
I understand that reading this type of data must conflict with your narrative of Hamas and the Palestinians as the good guys, but I’m sorry, facts are facts. Hamas and every Islamic militant group, otherwise known as Terrorists use violence, torture and intimidation to control the very people they are meant to protect.
They are not ‘freedom fighters,’ they are psychopathic assholes, drunk on a distorted religious ideology and fervour that allows them to justify the slaughter of 38 children with glee. The Hamas October 7 massacre was uniquely shocking, both in its brutality and due to the unbridled joy that the perpetrators delighted in when committing these atrocious acts. It’s very difficult to understand how ordinary people can support such barbarity—but here we are.
I can only deduce that if you believe that Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’ that you are either grossly uninformed, or you too are a psychopathic asshole. Or maybe both.
https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-live-luxury-lives-in-qatar/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-plagued-poverty-hamas-no-shortage-cash-come-rcna121099
https://apnews.com/article/business-middle-east-israel-foreign-aid-gaza-strip-611b2b90c3a211f21185d59f4fae6a90
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/HJS-Hamass-Human-Shield-Strategy-in-Gaza-Report-WEB.pdf
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/HJS-Hamass-Human-Shield-Strategy-in-Gaza-Report-WEB.pdf
Adam Goldman, et al., “Israel Unearths More of a Subterranean Fortress Under Gaza”, The New York Times, 16 January 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/us/politics/israel-gaza-tunnels.html.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/04/world-news/secret-hamas-documents-reveal-torture-execution-of-gay-terrorists/
https://nypost.com/2025/02/04/world-news/secret-hamas-documents-reveal-torture-execution-of-gay-terrorists/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/04/time-stopped-here-on-7-october-life-in-kibbutz-that-endured-unimaginable-loss-one-year-ago#:~:text=The%20entire%20Siman%20Tov%20family,residents%20have%20started%20to%20return.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/under-the-haya-joint-programme-un-women-and-unops-partner-to-support-high-quality-gender-based-violence-shelters-for-palestinian-women-and-girls-press-release/
You forget the main ingredient about their supporters in the west....apart from glomming onto the most ignorant parts of Soviet propaganda about "settler-colonialism" which was only created to try to undermine western democracies, these western Hamas supporters simply hate Jews. That's it, in a nutshell. They are simply Nazis in keffiyehs instead of jackboots.
You've said EVERYTHING that should be said. This should go out to every college as part of an orientation package relating to antisemitism on campus.