A year after Oct. 7, some Gazans rail at Hamas for causing devastating war
While many celebrate massacre as a victory for the ‘resistance,’ others curse Sinwar who fled into his ‘rat hole’ and terror leaders who live safely abroad while civilians languish
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
On the first anniversary of the October 7 attack, Gazan social media featured considerable criticism of Hamas for bringing devastation upon the Strip and its people, and of its leaders for living in safety while civilians endure hunger and displacement. Still, the vast proportion of Arabic social-media posts hailed the terror group’s rampage.
Starting on Sunday, various Gazan social media users began sharing posts and images recalling the invasion and slaughter in southern Israel, some of them critical. Gazan X user “Roufaida,” for instance, wrote that the night of October 6, 2023, was “the last we were considered human beings, before being turned into numbers, and then into tools to apply pressure [on Israel], and God knows what we will become next.”
On October 7 itself, the overwhelming majority of Arabic-language social media posts celebrated the savage onslaught by Hamas, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Among the most popular accounts that hailed the massacre was Palestinian Al Jazeera anchorman Jamal Rayyan, who has 2.3 million followers on X. Rayyan, one of the Qatari channel’s veteran figureheads, pinned on X an image of rockets resembling fireworks flying out of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, with a shining number 7 in the middle.
“This is the day that restored the nation’s dignity and prestige,” Rayyan wrote in the caption. The post had over 1.2 million views.
He published a slew of other messages hailing the “Al-Aqsa flood,” the term with which Hamas designated the October 7 attack, and insisting that the “resistance” is not defeated.
A considerable number of Gazan netizens, however, appeared to disagree with Rayyan’s celebratory outlook.
Some referred to October 7 as the “first anniversary of Gaza’s martyrdom.”
A Gazan X user under the username al-Aqra’ (“the bald head”) with 5,000 followers, wrote in his bio: “October 7 is a curse that robbed us of all our loved ones, our memories, our comfort and security.”
In a searing post against Hamas, he wrote: “[We have been living] a year in tents, you sick people, you bloodsuckers, who seized the money of Arab countries in the name of the resistance, you have millions in your bank accounts.”
In another comment, “The bald head” wrote: “May God curse October 7 and everyone who planned it and supports it. Screw you, [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar. Screw you, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. May God let us all die and be relieved of all we are living through and seeing.”
Many of the posts railing against Hamas carried the hashtags in Arabic “#the_seventh_of_my_shoes” (in lieu of “the seventh of October” – shoes are associated with dirt and humiliation in Arab culture) and “#we_are_not_your_people” — a message to Hamas leaders who claim to have carried out the unprecedented terror operation in the name of and for the sake of Palestinians.
A satirical account with 2,200 followers called “The Sieve” published a series of sarcastic posts against the terror group’s leadership.
The account shared an image of Sinwar fleeing through a tunnel, with the comment, “A year since the rat entered his hole. Happy new year to all Hamas supporters.”
عام على دخول الفأر إلى جحره…
كل عام وانتو بخير يا الحمساوية ????#السابع_من_كندرتي #لسنا_شعبكم pic.twitter.com/IHIw6yAwvY— المنخل (@almonkhol) October 7, 2024
Irony appeared to be a coping mechanism adopted by many Gazans, both in the Strip and abroad. A popular Facebook account of an anti-Hamas activist living in Belgium with over 122,000 followers wrote: “People around the world renew their gym subscription, or their bus pass. In the Gaza Strip today, we renew our subscription to war for another year. Congratulations to us.”
Another Gazan account under the name Kareem Jouda, with 2,600 followers on X, railed at Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, who lives in Doha and released a statement on the eve of October 7 praising the “steadfastness” of the Palestinian people and claiming the unprecedented attack had brought Israel “to its knees.”
Jouda wrote: “Khalil Al-Hayya is giving us sermons about victory and steadfastness on the anniversary of the seventh of our shoes, and he is addressing us assuming that we are his people. But we are not your people, Khalil!! You are just an Iranian mercenary who gambled with his people and the result was displacement, loss, catastrophe, a nakba and a naksa [the mass displacements of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, respectively].”
The account also lashed out at Doha-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who declared on Monday that the October 7 operation took Israel back to “square zero” and “threatened its existence.”
In response, Jouda wrote: “October 7 gave the people of Gaza absolute defeat, and victory for Khaled Mashaal in Qatar. A leader does not burn down his country with its people. A leader protects his people and leads them to safety.”
Criticism of the terror group on the first anniversary of the October 7 onslaught was not limited to the Palestinian arena. “Nafea bin Kalib,” a Yemeni X account opposed to the Houthis and the Iranian axis with over 100,000 followers, noted that right before the brutal attack, Saudi Arabia was about to conclude a normalization deal with Israel that would stipulated that the Israeli government establish “a pathway” for the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Yemeni account tweeted: “October 7 is a black day in the history of Palestine that brought destruction […] at a time when the Emirati and Saudi diplomacy were making intense efforts and achieving progress toward the recognition of a Palestinian state.”
The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee also marked the one-year anniversary of Hamas opening hostilities against Israel with a video highlighting the devastation the terror group brought upon Gaza and its people.
ما قبل #السابع_من_أكتوبر وما بعده حكاية دواعش ارهابيين من حماس جلبوا لأنفسهم الدمار والخراب والنكسة والهزيمة ليبقى هذا اليوم – يوم وكسة حماس ووصمة عار على جبين كل ما خطط ونفذ وأشرف وساند ودعم هذا العمل الارهابي الوحشي الهمجي. حماس ستبقى مهزومة ولن ينعم قادتها القلائل الذين ما… pic.twitter.com/UdoCkOTVtl
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) October 7, 2024
The first half of the short clip, styled as a tourism ad, showcased scenes of happy Gazans on the beaches and markets of the coastal enclave before October 7. The second half showed clips of Hamas’s brutality from October 7, and scenes of havoc and bombed-out buildings.
“What came before and after October 7 is the story of Hamas-ISIS terrorists, who brought upon themselves devastation and displacement. That day will go down in history as the moment of Hamas’s defeat and a stain of shame on those who planned, executed and supported this barbaric act. Hamas will remain defeated and its few surviving leaders will find no safety,” Adraee wrote.
