I dare you to cancel me

Hamas, at heart, are freedom fighters.

There, I said it. And now I'll probably pay for it.

Bcause there are boundaries around how we can talk about Oct 7. You can support the Palestinians: yes. But showing any sympathy at all for Hamas, is beyond the pale — you'll get doxxed, cancelled, vilified as an antisemite and worse.

But fuck it, I'll say it anyway: They're freedom fighters!

What these young men actually did on Oct 7 was brutal and barbaric and in many cases impossible to defend. But why they did it, that's easier to understand. When you put a certain kind of person in a chokehold for long enough, they go off in ways you're not going to like. Imagine you — and your people — are fenced in, caged up in an open-air prison for sixteen years. You have no hope, no dignity, no future. You're mowed down by remote-control machine guns if you wander too close to the razor-wire fence. Your daily caloric intake is restricted to near-starvation levels. Your children routinely have suicidal thoughts. And there's no light at the end of this — you're trapped like an animal.

So what do you do? You burst out of your cage with feral ferocity — you're a barbaric terrorist yes, yes, yes — but fuck it, you're a freedom fighter too.

— Kalle Lasn

Adbusters Media Foundation, 1243 West 7th Avenue,
Vancouver, BC, V6H 1B7, Canada