Thread by @DrewPavlou

Thread on Refaat Alareer. I strongly disagree with his past statements defending October 7 and describing all Israeli civilians as combatants.

1. Refaat attacked the left wing Prime Minister of Nepal for condemning the shooting of Nepalis and other civilians on October 7

2. Refaat Alareer condemned Ilhan Omar and compared her to “an Israeli Nazi” because she denounced Hamas hostage taking and murder of civilians on October 7.

This is despite Ilhan Omar’s long record of criticising the Israeli government and supporting Palestinians

3. Refaat Alareer attacked the Prime Minister of Kosovo and Irish Foreign Minister simply because they condemned Hamas hostage taking and murder of civilians on October 7.

The Irish Foreign Minister was calling for a ceasefire on October 7 and Refaat condemned him for it

4. Refaat Alareer compared a Palestinian refugee from Gaza to an apologist for the Holocaust because the man wrote an opinion piece pointing out that most Palestinians in Gaza had nothing to do with Hamas and did not approve of them. Ahmed had personally lost innocent young family members to IDF bombing and wanted to show how many innocents were being harmed by Israeli policies of collective punishment

5. Refaat Alareer responded to news of a random terror attack on civilians in Tel Aviv by arguing that all Israeli civilians are justified military targets with “Palestinian and Arab blood on their hands”

6. Refaat Alareer explicitly celebrated the October 7 Hamas attacks on civilians.

He defended the Hamas attack on kibbutzim filled with civilians by writing “Israel uses third class Jews as human shields to protect white Jews”

7. Despite previously arguing that all Israeli civilians are legitimate military targets, Refaat Alareer switched to full blown October 7 atrocity denialism as the extent of Hamas atrocities became clearer in the days after the attack.

First he used softer language, arguing that “Israeli forces were responsible for *some* of their own civilian deaths.”

Then he claimed that Israel “systematically and deliberately murdered its soldiers and settlers including little ones who were held hostage.”

The evolution of this conspiracy theory is telling. As Hamas atrocities became more and more indefensible, it started off with the claim that at least some of hostages were accidentally killed by the IDF in cross-fire. It then mutates into blood libel, a claim that Israel systematically slaughtered its own babies and children as a false flag attack to manufacture consent for genocide.

Note that even here, while claiming Israel slaughtered its own civilians, Refaat still would not use the term “civilian,” instead using the term “settlers” to dehumanise the victims and imply that their deaths are to some extent deserved. He used the term “settler” even to speak about children

8. Refaat’s persistent and continued denial of Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians evolved to a point where he argued Hamas “attacked Israeli military bases and only military bases.” Two sentences later he flipped and admitted Hamas took civilian hostages but calls them “settlers” to dehumanise them and justify their hostage taking despite hostage taking being a war crime under international humanitarian law. He also denied Hamas’ use of rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women despite abundant testimony from witnesses and first responders

9. Refaat made vulgar jokes about Israeli victims in the course of denying Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians, sarcastically asking whether Israeli babies were cooked “with or without baking powder.”

Information about October 7 was fluid in early days and some horrific claims were later to be disproven. But young children were still killed, injured and taken hostage by Hamas so jokes like this on the part of Refaat were dehumanising and wrong

10. Refaat taunted traumatised Israelis, claiming frail and elderly women taken hostage at gun point by Hamas fighters had “bonded with their captors.” He claimed “ALL the rape allegations are lies.” As though Hamas fighters who filmed themselves parading the shattered, half-naked and contorted body of Shani Louk through the streets of Gaza while spitting on and slapping her corpse would not in a million years use rape as a weapon of war.

11. I understand Refaat Alareer grew up traumatised by persistent violence, brutality, occupation. I wish he had not been killed and I wish peace and coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis were possible.

Hatred and dehumanisation are not the answer. Neither Palestinians or Israelis are evil. These two societies have both been scarred and traumatised by more than a century now of bloody violence and massacres. It will drag on forever and claim so many more innocent lives unless a lasting political settlement is concluded. Mutual recognition of both Palestinian and Israeli humanity is the only path forward.

I condemn all attacks on civilians whether Israeli or Palestinian. I denounce all the horrific atrocities and endless rounds of revenge killing we have seen throughout the century of this conflict. I stand on the side of both Palestinian and Israeli civilians

12. Refaat attacked Mehdi Hasan - one of the loudest pro-Palestinian voices in mainstream media - simply because Mehdi Hasan condemned the hostage taking of Israeli children.

13. Refaat: “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are.”