Likewise, he says that he realized that the “love” he felt for Palestine was nothing more than a visceral hatred for Israel. “We were sinners (as all people are sinners), eager to point out the sins of others,” he highlights. For him, Hamas is a group consumed by that visceral hatred.
Zubair emphasizes that Hamas is motivated by anti-Semitism and that a Catholic cannot and should never support that group. “Could it have been that this common hatred of an ‘enemy’, felt in much of the world, had helped revitalize Hamas?” the convert asks.
He also fears that this feeling has also driven the terrorist group to commit the massacre of October 7, 2023, because they felt protected by the supposed hatred that millions feel against the Jews. “Can any of us honestly say that what we have in our hearts is weightless?” he asks again.
For Simonson, Hamas’ propaganda efforts do great harm to the Palestinian people, who end up paying the price of the war with their innocent blood. “Thousands of Palestinian civilians have already died in the crossfire of the Gaza conflict. The list of those killed in the crossfire has been growing, over and over again, for 75 years,” he states.