Andrea van Veen 🎗️

During the worst of the days of the hunger crisis in Gaza in the past six months, Hamas deliberately hid literal tons of infant formula and nutritional shakes for children by storing them in clandestine warehouses belonging to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The goal, as I said then, was to worsen the hunger crisis and initiate a disaster as part of the terror group’s famine narrative in a desperate effort to stop Israel’s onslaught against Gaza and force the return of the UN’s aid distribution mechanism, and away from the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Now, activists in the Strip are documenting the waste and deliberate disposal of tons of infant formula, nutritional children’s shake, and children’s powdered milk, which Hamas had hoarded away, given the saturation of the coastal enclave with humanitarian aid after the ceasefire two months ago. When countless other Palestinian activists and I from Gaza said this back in July, August, and September, we were villainized, attacked, threatened, and made into pariahs by the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex and activist mafias, even though for Gazans, the evidence was so clearly apparent before our eyes. What those in the West continue to fail to understand is that there is no being pro-Palestine without also having a serious vigilance against Hamas’s continued manipulation of international public opinion to hide behind the Strip's civilian population's suffering, something that the terrorist organization’s own actions have led to and created. Never allow yourself to be a useful idiot in Hamas’s propaganda. You can have compassion for the real suffering of the Palestinian civilians of Gaza, and demand Israeli action to facilitate aid entry into the coastal enclave, while still holding Hamas accountable for its part in causing a hunger and starvation crisis in the first place.

Het is een schande dat de met belastinggeld betaalde publieke omroep — AVROTROS met steun van de NPO — dit besluit heeft genomen. Het Songfestival had altijd de bedoeling boven de politiek te staan. Door deze beslissing maakt de AVROTROS het juist politiek. Er is momenteel notabene een wapenstilstand tussen Israel en Hamas, terwijl Hamas nog steeds niet de lichamen van alle gegijzelde Israëliërs heeft overgedragen. Nadat AVROTROS er in 2024 voor zorgde dat we als Nederland niet mochten meedoen omdat we werden gediskwalificeerd, ontzegt AVROTROS nu onze deelname omdat het de eigen politieke opvattingen voorop zet. De Nederlandse televisiekijker is niets gevraagd. CIDI herinnert AVROTROS eraan dat de Nederlandse televisiekijker de Israëlische inzending vorig jaar de meeste punten gaf.