Jewish-American comedian Zach Sage Fox traveled to Ramallah to speak with Palestinians on the streets and find out their views on Hamas. It should be noted that it is extremely dangerous and a violation of Israeli law for Israeli citizens or identifiably religious Jews to enter Ramallah. In fact, Fox wrote on his Instagram account that he was lucky he made it out of Ramallah alive [and that was without anyone knowing he was Jewish]. “Free Palestine?” he wrote. “I went to see ‘Palestine’… and almost didn’t make it out alive.” “After asking questions on the streets of Ramallah for less than an hour, a group of Palestinian men threatened to kill us if we didn’t delete our footage. This is what we were able to recover…Welcome to the WILD WEST BANK.” All the Palestinians he spoke to without exception said that they support Hamas. When he asked one “innocent” Palestinian civilian whether she saw the videos of the atrocities Hamas carried out on October 7th, she enthusiastically answered that she saw everything and “was okay with everything they did.” Conversely, some denied that Hamas committed any atrocities on October 7th and at least one denied the existence of Israel altogether. Another one said that the Jews should go back “to Poland or Iraq.” Others may not have denied that Israel exists but expressed their desire for a “one-state solution” – for Israel to be wiped off the map. And of course, every single one of them displayed complete ignorance about basic historical and political facts, just like their supporters on US campuses. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post following his publication of the video, Fox said that “all of them hated Jews with every bone of their body.” “Ramallah was a well-built-up city. Northface, designer clothes. Some of it didn’t look that different to Israel. And I thought to myself, peace could be so easy.” “But their love and admiration for Hamas is so strong and, in the best case scenario, the most moderate people I spoke to still had tons of sympathy for Hamas. That was the range – sympathy to deep admiration. I never heard a negative thing about Hamas.” “It was an eye-opening experience, a shock to the system to see such an ingrained level of hatred, particularly towards Jews.” Fox added that the main difference between Palestinians in Ramallah and campus protesters in the US was the Palestinians’ “openness to say bad things about Jews specifically, not under the guise of Zionists.’” “I couldn’t get one person out of a random sample to condemn Hamas.” (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)