The headline is my summary of this piece published today by the Free Press. 

Ever since the Hamas attack on Israel last October, there has been an ongoing argument over whether or not Palestinians (in Gaza and elsewhere) are responsible for the actions of Hamas or merely additional victims of those actions.

My sense of the media landscape is that most national news outlets see Palestinians as victims of Israel with some acknowledgement that Hamas is responsible for Israel's reaction to the October attack. But even so, the general argument has been that Palestinian civilians are mostly innocents who aren't responsible for the actions of Hamas.

It's considered bad form and maybe even an outrage among those on the center-left to suggest that Palestinian civilians are complicit in this. But there really is some evidence that most of those civilians support this. In March I wrote about a poll which found that 71% of Palestinians supported the attack on Israel. They were also convinced that the 10/7 attack, including the murder of civilian women and entire families, did not constitute a war crime.

Despite the fact that Hamas fighters filmed themselves committing murders of Israeli civilians including women and children, Palestinians universally agree that only Israel has committed war crimes: "As we found in the previous poll, almost all Palestinians (94% think Israel has committed war crimes during the current war. By contrast, only 5% (compared to 10% three months ago) think Hamas also committed such crimes."

All of this came back to me as I read this interview Bari Weiss did with a Palestinian who successfully found a job with an Israeli tech company prior to 10/7. Given his background, this was a very unlikely outcome. He actually didn't know Israel had a startup sector until he read about it during a trip to South Korea. That convinced him to return home and try to get a job with one of these companies.

ANON:I found an Israeli program that helps Palestinian students from the West Bank and Gaza find internships in Israeli high-tech companies. I got an internship. And actually, during the interview, it was the first time ever that I met an Israeli that was not wearing a uniform. And we have been friends ever since. He’s like family to me.

So I got accepted into this company, and I did the internship for about five months. And then I applied to Tel Aviv University.

He struggled to get through school. Because of the security checkpoints, It took 5-8 hours to travel from his home in the West Bank to Tel Aviv University, a distance of 50 miles. He couldn't get an apartment in Israel because he was Palestinian. No one would rent to him. So he couch surfed with friends. Even so, he eventually ran out of money and, in desperation, sent out blind letters to 100 people asking for help and money to finish school. One person, a Jewish man, responded and offered to pay his tuition and help him get a dorm room.

At this point, I was actually expelled from the university for not paying the funds, and he swooped in to cover the rest of the tuition, and he helped to get me reinstated. Not only that, but he let me stay at his house until he helped get the university to give me a dorm room, and he covered that as well. He’s famous in Israel: David Broza. He just responded to my message, “Hi, how are you? Would you like to grab a coffee?” He didn’t do a background check; he didn’t know anything about me. He saw someone who’s determined, someone who wanted to succeed, and he helped. And if I say thanks to him from now until the day I die, it won’t be enough for him.

Having these experiences, working with Israelis and making friends with many of them, the 10/7 attack was shocking to him. He felt compelled to say publicly on social media that he hoped his Israeli friends were okay. Almost instantly, hundreds of Palestinians cut him off and refused to speak to him. Then he was labeled a traitor, a word which can have serious consequences in Palestinian territory.

BW: I want to read what you posted: “What sad and horrible news to wake up to. I’m out of words and unable to digest what’s going on right now. I’m Palestinian and firmly stand against this terror. I pray for the safety of my friends, colleagues, and their loved ones and everyone else affected.” How did people react to that post? 

ANON: My Israeli friends appreciated my post. They felt it was sincere. They felt that they had someone on their side. But on the other side, I started seeing the numbers of my connections and friends decrease. I couldn’t understand that reaction. I was very disturbed by it. Many people removed me and stopped talking to me. I reached out to ask, “Why did you delete me? What happened? Can we have a conversation?”

And I remember one person told me, “You are a traitor.” And after that, three other people called me a traitor. And in the West Bank and in Gaza, if you are labeled a traitor, it means you are in danger. It means you’ll be hanged or killed. And this is what I have been fearing ever since.

He's still trying to get out of the West Bank by finding a job that will allow him to travel. He's very worried that if he doesn't get out, he will be killed eventually. So the bottom line is that if you're Palestinian, you cannot be against Hamas or their murder of Israeli civilians, not if you want to live.

Of course they are still civilians and in a war you're not allowed to attack civilians intentionally, only their military. Still, this is just another data point which strongly suggests that Palestinian civilians aren't innocent victims of Hamas. On the contrary, most of them supported Hamas before 10/7 and happily supported them after 10/7. They support Hamas to the point that anyone who disagrees with Hamas' murderous attack on Israeli civilians is likely to be murdered themselves. It doesn't exactly fill me with home for the future or the possibility of a stable 2-state solution.

As many have already said, who exactly is Israel supposed to make peace with here? At the moment, the literal answer is Yahya Sinwar, the person who planned the 10/7 attack. So long as he lives and so long as the majority of Palestinians support his actions, there will never be peace.