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With ‘Let It Be Morning’ and ‘Cinema Sabaya,’ Israeli filmmakers are winning awards for portraying Palestinian stories

(JTA) — Years ago, the Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem took a class led by director Eran Kolirin, best known as the maker of “The Band’s Visit.” This month, movies by both filmmakers are getting theatrical rollouts in the United States.

On a recent Zoom call, Palestinian author Sayed Kashua joked: “Was that his class — how to use a Palestinian story?”

Kashua was smiling on Zoom as he said it — he is, after all, known for his often fatalistic sense of humor, particularly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the author had given his blessing for Kolirin to make an adaptation of his novel “Let It Be Morning,” and said he loved the final result. 

But like most jokes, this one had a kernel of truth: Israel’s two most recent Oscar submissions, hitting New York’s Quad Cinema within a week of each other, both — to varying degrees — tell Palestinian stories. 

“Let It Be Morning” is a dark comedy about an Arab Israeli village that has suddenly and with no explanation been cordoned off from the rest of the country by the Israeli military. This event forces its Palestinian residents, including a protagonist trying to return to his comfortable middle-class life in Jerusalem, to reckon with how their dignity as citizens has been denied to them by the mechanisms of the Israeli occupation. At the Quad, the film is accompanied by a retrospective of Kolirin’s work, including “The Band’s Visit,” the basis for the Tony Award-winning musical; the retrospective is sponsored by the Israeli consulate in New York.

The all-female cast of “Cinema Sabaya,” a mix of Jewish and Arab actresses, in a film directed by Orit Fouks Rotem. (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)

The following week will see the opening of Rotem’s film, “Cinema Sabaya.” It follows a group of eight women, some Jewish and some Arab and Palestinian, who bond with each other while taking a filmmaking class in a community center in the Israeli city of Hadera. Cast member Dana Ivgy, who plays the class’s instructor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the filming experience “felt like how living in Israel should feel,” adding, “We have more women in the film than in the Israeli government.”

Stylistically, the two films couldn’t be more different. “Let It Be Morning” is a tightly plotted narrative with boldly realized characters; almost all of its dialogue is in Arabic. “Cinema Sabaya” is a loose, heavily improvisational piece that is almost entirely set in one room, and is mostly in Hebrew (although in one tense early scene, the characters debate whether to conduct their class in Hebrew or Arabic). One is a dry, Kafkaesque satire; the other is an intimate, naturalistic drama.

But together, the films provide a snapshot of the delicate dance Israeli filmmakers must perform in the current climate. On the one hand, these art-house directors are being feted on the international stage for their empathetic storytelling that incorporates or even centers entirely on Palestinian characters. But on the other, they’re being attacked by government officials for their perceived insufficient loyalty — and their films’ very status as “Israeli” is being questioned, too, sometimes by their own cast and crew.

“Everyone can call it what they want,” Rotem said of her film. “I’m an Israeli and it’s in Israel, but I have partners who call themselves Palestinians, and some of them call themselves Arabs, and each one defined herself. I think it’s really how it should be.”

“A film does not have an identity,” Kolirin insisted in an interview with JTA. “It is a citizen of the screen.”

Eran Kolirin accepted the award for Best Director for “Let It Be Morning” at the 2021 Ophir Awards in Tel Aviv on October 5, 2021. (Tomer Neuberg/ Flash90)

Kolirin isn’t a fan of the label “Israeli film” in this case, even though that is how “Let It Be Morning” was categorized at its 2021 Cannes Film Festival premiere; its own press notes also list Israel as the “country of production.” That Cannes screening took place shortly after Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas that killed more than 250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and around a dozen Israelis. The events turned Cannes into a political firestorm when the film’s Palestinian cast refused to attend the premiere.

“We cannot ignore the contradiction of the film’s entry into Cannes under the label of an ‘Israeli film’ when Israel continues to carry its decades-long colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and apartheid against us — the Palestinian people,” the cast’s statement read in part. 

“Each time the film industry assumes that we and our work fall under the ethno-national label of ‘Israeli,’ it further perpetuates an unacceptable reality that imposes on us, Palestinian artists with Israeli citizenship,” the statement continues, calling on “international artistic and cultural institutions” to “amplify the voices of Palestinian artists and creatives.”

Kolirin himself supported the cast’s action. He knew they were grieving over the outbreak of violence in Gaza and didn’t want to put themselves in a situation where “some politician is going to wave a flag over their head or whatever.” 

What’s more, he said, the status of “Let It Be Morning” as an “Israeli” film, despite the fact that around half the crew was Palestinian, was not his decision: “The film was not submitted to Cannes as an Israeli film,” he said. “You know, you fill in the form: ‘Which were the countries that gave money?’” In this case, the answer was Israel and France.

Most of the cast later did not attend the Ophir Awards ceremony, Israel’s equivalent to the Oscars voted on by its filmmaking academy, where “Morning” won the top prize (which automatically made it Israel’s Oscar submission for that year). In solidarity at the awards, Kolirin read aloud a statement from his lead actress, Juna Suleiman, decrying Israel’s “active efforts to erase Palestinian identity” and what she called “ethnic cleansing.”

Orit Fouks Rotem (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)

“Cinema Sabaya” hasn’t played host to as much offscreen controversy, but its vision of Israeli multiculturalism is still inherently political. Rotem’s mother is a local government adviser on women’s issues in Hadera, and the film was inspired by her experience participating in a photography class designed to unite Jewish and Arab women. Rotem herself later led filmmaking classes in a similar vein as research for “Sabaya.” 

In the film, Ivgy’s character, who is modeled on Rotem, instructs her class to film their home lives, while secretly hoping to make a movie from their efforts. When her desire to do so is revealed, the women in the class feel betrayed: They thought they were just making films for themselves, not for their stories to be told by someone else.

Similarly, Rotem said that working with Arab and Palestinian actresses made her “aware to the fact that I can’t really tell their story.” Her solution was to allow the performers — some of whom are well-known activists who had to think twice about appearing in an Israeli movie — to voice their own opinions, and to establish the necessary trust to allow them to be unscripted on camera.

She theorizes that “Cinema Sabaya” has been so well received in Israel because “it doesn’t say ‘occupation, occupation, occupation.’ It says ‘humanity,’ so people are less afraid.” (She also noted that, in real life, the women who attended her filmmaking classes bristled at her initial suggestion to make a documentary about them, telling her to fictionalize their stories instead — which she did.)

Lately the Israeli government has a tendency to view its filmmaking class as agitators unworthy of national support, particularly when they make films criticizing the occupation. Former Culture Minister Miri Regev often disparaged films she thought were bad for Israel, including celebrated international hits such as “Foxtrot” and “Synonyms.” Her current successor, Miki Zohar, has already threatened the makers of a new documentary about the West Bank city of Hebron, saying the movie smears the military and that the directors might have to return government funds. 

In recent years, Israel’s culture ministry has pushed two new controversial proposals: a grant program earmarked for those who make films in settlements, which are considered illegal under international law; and a form pledging not to make films “offensive” to Israel or the military that filmmakers would be required to sign in order to apply for certain grants, which many directors have likened to a loyalty oath. For years, some of the country’s largest grantmakers have required applicants to sign a form promising to represent their projects as Israeli on the national stage.

There has also been an effort among some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government to end funding to public broadcaster Kan, which the country’s film industry views as another attack on its free expression.

“Kan has all this dialogue,” Ivgy said. “It has Jewish and religious and Arab and Palestinian, for kids and for grownups. And nothing is taboo there. I feel that it’s very dangerous to close that option down.”

Many Israeli filmmakers are fighting back. Hundreds, including Kolirin and Rotem, have refused to sign the ministry’s pledge, and many have also protested the settlement grant program. Nadav Lapid, one of the country’s most celebrated and outspoken directors, harshly critiqued government restrictions placed on his own work in the 2021 drama “Ahed’s Knee,” which went on to win a special prize at Cannes.

Kolirin said he had recently been on a call with several Israeli filmmakers looking to further organize against artistic restrictions, and that it had given him hope. “I had this feeling of some optimism, which I didn’t have for a long time,” he said. But he didn’t mince words when discussing Israel’s new governing coalition, which he likened to “a circus of mad dogs unleashed.” 

Rotem said that the current government is “very, very bad and scary,” but that it has only strengthened her resolve to make political films.

“For me, it’s also political to show women in Israel in a deep way: I mean Arabs and Jews,” she said. “Because I don’t think there are enough films that are doing that.”

For Kashua, a veteran TV writer and opinion columnist, the question of identity in Israeli and Palestinian filmmaking is even more pronounced. After a long career of trying to write about the Palestinian experience in Hebrew as a way of reaching Israelis, he left Israel for the United States in 2014, becoming discouraged by an incident in which Jewish extremists burned a Palestinian teenager alive as revenge after Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Now based in St. Louis, he has worked as a writer and story editor on Israeli series that center on both Palestinian and Jewish stories — including the global hit “Shtisel,” which focuses on haredi Orthodox Jews, and its upcoming spinoff, along with “Madrasa,” a young-adult series about a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school.

Israeli filmmakers choosing to center Palestinian stories can be its own radical political act, Kashua believes. He noted that the dialogue in “Morning” is almost entirely in Arabic, a language that Israel demoted from national language status in 2018 — doubly ironic as he had deliberately chosen to write his original novel in Hebrew. 

“The idea that this film is ‘Israeli’ — it really contradicts the idea of Israel being a purely Jewish state,” Kashua said. He added that, while he had initially hoped a Palestinian director might have adapted his novel, he was ultimately happy with Kolirin’s approach.

“I truly love the movie, and it’s barely Orientalist,” he joked, echoing Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said’s famous book about how a Western lens on Eastern cultures can be reductive and harmful. “Which is a big achievement for an Israeli filmmaker.”

—
The post With ‘Let It Be Morning’ and ‘Cinema Sabaya,’ Israeli filmmakers are winning awards for portraying Palestinian stories appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Why They Deny the Crimes of October 7

The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Even as they recorded their crimes in obsessive detail, the Nazis worked to deny and erase them. As the Shoah unfolded, they worked to conceal evidence: destroying documents, dismantling camps, burning bodies, and erasing traces of mass murder. Yet when the war ended and the scale of the Holocaust became undeniable, Nazis and their ideological fellow travelers did not retreat from denial. They escalated it. They sought to rewrite reality itself by denying, minimizing, relativizing, or distorting the crimes they had committed.

This eventually became a global phenomenon despite the Holocaust being one of the best-documented crimes in human history. Mountains of evidence existed: transport records, photographs, films, camp infrastructure, eyewitness and survivor testimony, perpetrator confessions, and the physical remnants of industrialized murder itself. None of it was enough for the deniers. Because Holocaust denial was never about evidence. It was about rehabilitating the perpetrators, delegitimizing Jewish suffering, and once again recasting Jews as manipulative liars, weaponizing victimhood for sympathy, power, or political gain.

Denial as Ideological Warfare

Today, something disturbingly similar is unfolding around October 7, particularly regarding the sexual crimes perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli women, men, and children.

A major new report by the Civil Commission, led by the inimitable Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, presented what CNN described as “the most comprehensive body of evidence yet” documenting systematic sexual violence during and after the October 7 genocide. The report draws upon survivor testimony, released hostages, eyewitness accounts, forensic evidence, therapists, medical experts, and first responders. Its conclusion is unequivocal: Hamas and affiliated terrorists used sexual violence as a deliberate weapon of war designed to maximize pain, humiliation, and terror.

The details are beyond horrifying. Women were raped beside the bodies of murdered friends. Victims were found partially naked, mutilated, tied to trees and poles, shot in the genitals, or executed after assault. Witnesses described gang rapes at the Nova festival. Former hostages spoke of sexual abuse, forced nudity, threats of forced marriage, and prolonged sexual humiliation in captivity.

Hamas terrorists and many Palestinian perpetrators recorded their crimes in sickening detail. Murders, kidnappings, torture, humiliation, and sexual violence were filmed, photographed, celebrated, and distributed online by the perpetrators themselves. In some cases, atrocities were broadcast through the victims’ own phones and social media accounts. Unlike the Nazis, Hamas’ violence was not hidden; it was publicized and glorified.

And yet denial persists.

Almost immediately after October 7, before the bodies were even cold, social media filled with claims that reports of rape were “Israeli propaganda.” Activists and commentators insisted there was “no evidence.” Others claimed Israelis had fabricated the allegations to justify war. Some demanded impossible evidentiary standards that are almost never applied to sexual violence anywhere else on earth. Even now, as testimonies accumulate and further evidence emerges, denial remains deeply embedded within parts of activist, academic, and media culture.

That is because, like Holocaust denial, this is not about evidence. Holocaust denial emerged despite overwhelming proof because the denial itself served a purpose. It protected the moral image of the perpetrators while transforming Jews from victims into deceivers. The denier does not simply reject facts. They reject the legitimacy of Jewish suffering itself. The same mechanism is visible today.

When Jewish Suffering Becomes Inconvenient

For many people invested in a worldview in which Israel represents absolute evil and Palestinians represent absolute victimhood, acknowledging the sexual crimes of October 7 creates tension. Jewish women cannot be permitted to exist as victims because their reality complicates the narrative. Israeli suffering becomes ideologically intolerable. And so it must be doubted, obscured, minimized, or erased altogether. This is why so much October 7 denialism focuses specifically on the sexual crimes.

Sexual violence carries a specific moral weight in contemporary society. To acknowledge that Hamas terrorists and their collaborators committed widespread and systematic acts of rape, mutilation, and sexual torture would require many activists to confront a reality: that individuals and movements they have celebrated, romanticized, excused, or sanitized committed acts of extraordinary brutality.

We should also recognize the profoundly anti-Jewish nature of this phenomenon. Jews are uniquely subjected to suspicion toward their suffering in ways that have become normalized across political and cultural life. The distrust of Jewish testimony has become so deeply embedded that many people no longer even recognize it as prejudice.

The Crime Continued Through Erasure

The tragedy is not only the crimes themselves, but what their denial reveals about the world Jews inhabit. After the Holocaust, many believed humanity had learned something: that there existed a moral obligation to listen to victims, document atrocities honestly, and ensure genocidal violence could never again be erased through propaganda and denial. Yet within hours of October 7, that promise began collapsing in real time.

The lesson of Holocaust denial should have taught us that evidence alone is never enough against ideologically motivated hatred. There will never be enough footage, enough testimony, enough witnesses, enough forensic evidence, or enough reports for those who have already decided that Jewish suffering does not count.

That is the real connection between Holocaust denial and the denial of October 7. Both ultimately rest upon the same underlying premise: that Jews are uniquely unworthy of belief, uniquely suspect in their suffering, and uniquely undeserving of moral sympathy.

Ultimately, when these crimes are denied, minimized, relativized, or erased, the victims are violated a second time. The murdered are stripped not only of their lives, but of the truth of what was done to them. The raped are stripped not only of bodily autonomy, but of the dignity of having their suffering acknowledged. Denial is never neutral. It is the continuation of the crime through erasure.

That is why speaking clearly about October 7, including the systematic sexual crimes perpetrated against women and girls, matters so profoundly. We cannot bring back those who were murdered. We cannot undo the horrors inflicted upon the victims. But we can refuse to abandon them to silence, distortion, and denial. We can bear witness. We can speak plainly. And we can ensure that those who suffered are not erased by a world that too often finds Jewish suffering uniquely difficult to acknowledge.

Founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, Ben M. Freeman is the author of Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People (2021), Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride (2022) and The Jews: An Indigenous People (2025). Educating, inspiring and empowering, his work focuses on Jewish identity and historical and contemporary Jew-hatred. A Holocaust scholar for over fifteen years, Ben came to prominence during the Corbyn Labour Jew-hate crisis in the UK and quickly became one of his generation’s leading Jewish thinkers and voices against Jew-hate. The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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Remembering Abe Foxman: My Time with a Hero of the Jewish People

ADL National Director Emeritus Abe Foxman. Photo: ADL

Hearing the news that Abe Foxman died last Sunday at the age of 86 triggered a slew of memories about the man now being memorialized as “one of the last great architects of postwar American Jewish public life.”

Historians will surely write books studying Abe and his half-century legacy of fighting antisemitism, including 27 years as national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

But as Foxman was being eulogized by Jewish and non-Jewish leaders around the world, I recalled the amazing experiences I had with him, as I witnessed his quixotic quest to eliminate the infectious plague of antisemitism from the planet.

I come to this exercise with a unique lens; I may be the only newspaper reporter who both covered Abe, and then later went to work for him as ADL’s Director of Interfaith Affairs.

That history afforded me the opportunity to interact with Abe as both an outsider and an insider.

I experienced the little human asides — the famous hugs, as a reporter being called “tattele,” Yiddish for “good boy” which was somewhat cringeworthy for a journalist, and that time during a black-tie fundraiser in West Palm Beach where he came up to me and whispered, “get me out of here.” (I was never quite sure whether he was joking or not.)

So here I share some highlights of my time with the man that many remember so fondly.

As a young Holocaust survivor from Poland who was rescued, raised, and baptized by his Catholic nanny, Abe fully understood the importance of positive interfaith relations for the long-term health and welfare of the Jewish people.

As a reporter covering religion and interfaith issues, he called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to Rome and meet the Polish Pope, John Paul II. I was sure he was joking. The next thing I knew, I was sitting with him in a large conference room in the Vatican with a small contingent of ADL officials and the Pope. It was clear from their honest, direct, and warm exchange that these two sons of Poland held each other with great respect.

Several years later, as ADL’s interfaith director, Abe called me into his office after hearing that the Pope had selected Timothy Michael Dolan, the Archbishop of Milwaukee, to be the next Archbishop in New York City.

Abe’s directive was clear: “Find out when he’s coming to New York and make sure we are the first organization to meet with him.” Several frantic phone calls later, I arranged for Dolan to meet with us in Abe’s office a couple of days after he arrived in Manhattan. Dolan was immediately taken by Abe’s charm and thoughtful gift. It was the start of a long and deep friendship for us, that despite various controversies, held fast over the years.

But when it came to defending Jews and their dignity, Abe the charmer became Abe the bulldog. Late one afternoon in February 2012, he summoned me to his office.

He was clearly upset. It was revealed that the names of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and his late father had been found in the genealogical database of the Mormon Church, now known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making them available for posthumous baptism. Abe told me he was immediately calling one of the highest officials at church headquarters in Salt Lake City and demanding they remove the names, apologize, and stop baptizing Holocaust victims. Abe had his direct number. The Church Elder picked up the phone and attempted to explain the situation in bureaucratic terminology. But Abe wasn’t having it, holding fast to his demand. Within a few days, the church apologized stating this was not their policy. Abe tasked me to work with their interfaith director to monitor the situation and make sure they kept their word.

Abe also dedicated himself to defending others — embodying ADL’s mission statement “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment for all.” When it became clear that local elected officials around the country were blocking Muslim communities from building or expanding their mosques by using questionable legal loopholes, Abe quickly approved my proposal to create an interfaith task force, ICOM, to support the rights of Muslim Americans to build their houses of worship. In addition, ADL’s civil rights division would file amicus briefs on behalf of the Muslim communities.

When it came to responding to haters of Jews and Israel, Abe generally criticized them with equal force, no matter the political party or the prominence of the person. In this age of polarization, this perhaps is the most important lesson to recall.

At his funeral at the ornate Park Avenue synagogue in Manhattan on Tuesday, more than 500 family, friends, current and former ADL officials, and New York and national Jewish leaders gathered to say goodbye to Foxman.

The funeral included video eulogies by Israeli President Issac Herzog, and Ambassador Susan E. Rice, who served as President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, who said she loved Foxman, and that he always had her back. Sara J. Bloomfield, the longtime director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., consistently referred to Foxman as “a giant.” New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman, who first met Abe in summer camp when he was a teenager and Foxman was his camp leader, called him a “modern Maccabee.”

Foxman was also remembered as “a man of gravitas and humor” and as a “person of consequence” — respected and listened to by presidents, prime ministers, and popes.

He especially was remembered as a man who put family above everything, as testified by his two children and four grandchildren, who provided many touching details of his love and devotion to each one of them, being in touch every day with a call or an email, and ending his messages with “LOL” — which despite their corrections, Foxman insisted meant “lots of love.”

His daughter Michelle even located her father’s 1958 high school yearbook from Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in Brooklyn. Standing on the bimah or platform in front of the synagogue pews, she read his moving essay about the importance of the State of Israel to the Jewish people after the Holocaust, and his “secret mission” — conceived as an 18-year-old — to spend his life defending it.

Park Avenue Senior Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who led the service, stated that with Foxman’s passing, it was now the obligation of the leaders in the room, and future generations, to continue the fight against exploding violent antisemitism and anti-Israelism, and the protection of American democracy.

Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg is ADL’s former national Director of Interfaith Affairs and Outreach, and a national award-winning journalist.

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The Media Keeps Treating Terrorists as Civilians — Here’s the Proof

Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.

Since October 7, 2023, the media has worked tirelessly to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting civilians.

Yet despite Israel’s extensive efforts to minimize civilian harm, the terrorist organizations it is fighting have systematically worked to ensure the opposite outcome.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah have embedded themselves deeply within civilian society, inflating casualty figures while obscuring the military identities of many of those killed.

In both Gaza and Lebanon, this strategy has produced what researchers describe as a “resistance society” — a system in which operatives simultaneously hold civilian professions that provide both legitimacy and operational cover.

Journalism is among the most visible examples.

In Gaza alone, more than 100 terrorists operating under the cover of journalism have reportedly been killed by the IDF since October 7. Meanwhile, Hezbollah-affiliated media figures in Lebanon are routinely portrayed by international outlets as innocent civilians or independent reporters.

But the evidence does not come solely from Israel.

Again and again, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah themselves publish martyrdom posters identifying deceased operatives not only by their military affiliations, but also by their civilian professions.

The pattern is striking: terrorists simultaneously serving as doctors, teachers, paramedics, police officers, lawyers, musicians, and journalists.

Hospitals as Operational Cover

International media coverage has consistently framed Israeli military operations near hospitals as attacks on civilian medical infrastructure. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad have repeatedly embedded operatives inside those facilities, stripping them of protected civilian status under the laws of armed conflict.

Hospitals in Gaza have allegedly functioned not only as treatment centers, but also as operational hubs, weapons storage sites, and cover for terrorist activity. Many individuals publicly described as “medical workers” were later identified by terror organizations themselves as operatives.

One prominent example is Marwan Al-Hams, identified as a Hamas operative who was detained in July 2025 over suspected knowledge regarding the whereabouts of fallen IDF officer Lt. Hadar Goldin.

Palestinian and pro-Palestinian media initially portrayed his detention as the “abduction” of a medical professional — coverage that largely disappeared once his Hamas affiliation became public.

Other documented cases include:

  • Ayman Abu Teir, identified as an Islamic Jihad commander.
  • Khaled Al-Rakiei, who led the Islamic Jihad in the western Gaza Strip while working as a doctor in Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital.
  • Murshid Abu Abdullah, identified as a commander in Islamic Jihad’s Khan Younis Brigade and the managing director of the al-Baraka Specialized Health Center, as well as a radiology technician at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
  • Rami Talal Mohammed Jarghoun, a commander in Islamic Jihad’s al-Balad Battalion’s Support Unit within the Khan Younis Brigade and an administrative supervisor at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.
  • Najm Abu al-Jibeen, a Qassam commander who worked as a nurse.
  • Salem Juma Ishaq Sharab, a commander in Islamic Jihad’s Military Ambulance Unit in the Khan Younis Brigade, a nurse at Nasser Hospital, and treasurer of the Palestinian Nursing Association.
  • Diaa Nafez Abdulhadi Felfel, a commander in Islamic Jihad’s Military Ambulance Unit in its Northern Brigade, and a nurse and the emergency room supervisor for the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza.

Ambulances and Emergency Services

The same pattern extends to paramedics and emergency medical services.

Hezbollah operates its own medical infrastructure through the Islamic Health Authority, whose personnel have been identified as Hezbollah operatives.

Evidence has suggested that the ambulances are used to transport terrorists between locations discreetly. The IDF has additionally released videos displaying weapons in ambulances.

Hamas has similarly exploited ambulances. Ibrahim Abu Tzakar, a Hamas-affiliated terrorist who participated in the kidnapping of an Israeli civilian, also worked as a paramedic.

The Classroom-to-Terror Pipeline

While Israel has been accused of “scholasticide,” mounting evidence points to extensive terrorist entrenchment within Gaza’s educational infrastructure.

Teachers and professors have repeatedly been identified as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Hezbollah operatives. Some UNRWA-affiliated teachers were allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks themselves.

Among the documented examples:

  • Muhammad Ghafour, an Arabic teacher in an UNRWA school and a Hamas member.
  • Fathi al-Sharif, a Hamas commander in Lebanon who also headed UNRWA’s teachers’ union there.
  • Dr. Riyad Abu Hashish, a university history professor, and Mahmoud Ahmed Abu Shamala, a physics teacher, were senior Islamic Jihad terrorists.
  • Ali Jaafar Marji, a Hezbollah operative, also worked as a​ physics teacher in Hezbollah’s independent education system.

The consequences extend beyond staffing.

Children as young as 13 have reportedly appeared in the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, underscoring the extent to which extremist ideology has permeated educational and social systems.

Hamas and Gaza’s Security Apparatus

Hamas’ integration into civilian institutions extends deeply into Gaza’s police and internal security infrastructure.

The terror group has reportedly sought to incorporate 10,000 police officers into a future governing framework in Gaza despite many officers maintaining affiliations with Hamas or other terror factions.

This overlap helps explain why Israel has repeatedly targeted police infrastructure during the war.

Cases cited include:

Terror Embedded Across Civil Society

The phenomenon is not confined to healthcare, education, or policing.

Terror organizations also benefit from embedding operatives in professions that carry social legitimacy or cultural influence.

Examples include:

These dual identities help terrorist organizations blur the line between civilian and combatant while strengthening their entrenchment inside society.

When terrorist organizations systematically embed themselves within civilian infrastructure, that fact is not incidental — it is central to understanding the conflict.

Much of the evidence documenting these affiliations comes directly from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah themselves. Their own martyrdom announcements repeatedly reveal that many individuals later described internationally as “civilians” were active members of terror organizations leading double lives inside civilian society.

The question is whether international media outlets are willing to acknowledge the pattern — or whether they will continue reporting only half the story.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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