In Defense of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

A breath of fresh air in the deadly Israeli-Palestinian arena

The Palestinian-American Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib has gained prominence this year for his refreshingly pragmatic and practical take on the war and wider conflict. His family hail from Gaza, having originally been displaced from Hamama and Ramla in 1948. Aged 34, he was born in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as a UN doctor. His family returned to Gaza in 2000. When he was 11, he was injured in an Israeli airstrike, which killed three of his friends and left him with permanent hearing loss in one year. In 2005, aged 15, he spent a year in Pacifica, California, where he participated in a project called the Living Room Dialogue. It was the first time he had spoken to Jews or Israelis.

Unable to return to Gaza because Rafah was closed, he received asylum in the United States, where he finished high school and went to university. Since then, he has emerged as a commentator and activist and is currently a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council. He currently has over 60,000 followers on X.

Thirty of his extended family have been killed during the war, mostly from Israeli airstrikes, but he has attracted attention from Jewish audiences because of his criticisms of Hamas (an “Islamic death cult living in Doha”) and Palestinian rejectionism more broadly:

There’s a reason why the Palestinians have no state 75 years after the establishment of Israel. It’s their awful leadership that goes back to the pan-Arabism of the Nasser days, and that has adopted different ideologies – the secular PLO, the Marxist PFLP, or Islamist Hamas – to sell different versions of the same narrative: We’re going to liberate all of Palestine, we’re just the perpetual victims, we have no responsibility.

He is equally critical of Palestinian incitement:

The incitement on the cultural, religious, and educational level is absolutely detrimental and is immensely harmful. Not just to Israel. It is keeping us as a people frozen in time, frozen in a narrative, a set of declarations and views that are getting us absolutely nowhere. These people have been doing the same thing for 75 years. How many wars are we going to go through before we realize we need to try something different?

This is music to the ears of many, but Alkhatib is no “pro-Israel Arab” and has also been scathing towards Israel. Recently, for example, he wrote:

Day after day, dozens and dozens of children are killed throughout the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north. Of course Hamas are criminals and are the main reason why this tragedy persists and goes on; but there is no way that Hamas is somehow right next to every single one of these children who are being killed in massive and unbelievable numbers. How can the Israeli military and government claim to be “doing their best” to minimize civilian casualties?

How can the IDF claim that its responses are indeed proportional and targeted against the threat when daily footage confirms an unacceptable rate of civilian deaths that demonstrate persistent, reckless disregard for targeting and the application of firepower? The current strategy may succeed in eliminating some militants off the battlefield, but it is going to breed ferocious generational resentment and backlash, even among anti-Hamas Palestinians and those who want to pursue a different future. Reckless endangerment is a war crime.

Posts like these led to a backlash from some Jews who had previously supported Alkhatib, even though he also wrote about Hamas preventing civilians evacuating to southern Gaza, resulting in his Linkedin account being removed because he shared an article from the New York Times. Reflecting on this, he wrote:

Some have been trying to undermine me professionally and have gone to great lengths to delegitimize the entirety of my ethos, and others have entirely personalized their disagreements with an opinion that I have…

While I appreciate the support from many Israeli and Jewish allies, this episode casts a dark light upon the unfortunate reality that's part of the breakdown of this discourse: for a long time, Palestinians and their allies have faced incessant censorship, attacks, delegitimization, and isolation for views that are even slightly critical of Israeli policies and actions. Nothing I ever did, said, or believed mattered once I committed "blood libel" by sharing a report of dozens of independent medical professionals who saw firsthand the conditions and horrendous deaths and suffering of thousands of children in Gaza.

Alkhatib does not seek the destruction of the State of Israel. He seeks a two-state solution and a pragmatic resolution of the refugee problem, in which most of those returning would be settled in the West Bank, Gaza, or elsewhere. He does not blame all the Palestinians’ problems on Israel, and he is outspoken in his criticism of Hamas, which presumably exposes his remaining family in Gaza to a certain amount of risk.

Many Israel supporters say that they simply seek Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist, but this often feels like an excuse. The reaction to Alkhatib is proof of this – for many supporting a two-state solution and emphatically opposing Hamas isn’t sufficient, because he also criticizes Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. If someone like Alkhatib isn’t kosher enough, then one might as well admit that the issue isn’t Palestinian opposition to Israel’s existence, but the very existence of the Palestinians. In other words, it is a preference for permanent conflict, rather than to even concede the possibility that it could be addressed diplomatically, however fantastical that feels right now.

In the meantime, Alkhatib backs up his rhetoric with impressive practical action. For example, he met with Scooter Braun, an American entrepreneur who sponsored and brought the Nova Exhibition to the United States.

I connected with survivors and their families who lost loved ones during Hamas’s murderous massacre that killed over 1,200 Israelis. Importantly, I shared my experiences with these families and described the horrors that my family has lived through in the Gaza Strip and how I have lost dozens of them in three separate airstrikes. Mr. Braun demonstrated immense capacity for empathy and kindness, acknowledging the tragedy of what took place for my family in Gaza while supporting me in my pursuit of connection with a compassion for Israeli victims of Hamas’s terrorism.

It would be a mistake, I think, to dismiss this as “bothsidesing.” It takes tremendous bravery, in the middle of this war, to reach across the divide in this way, and it should be acknowledged as such. Mr. Braun subsequently donated $100,000 to the International Medical Corps, which runs a field hospital in Gaza. “This is what pragmatic engagement, dialogue, conversations, and empathy look like and can achieve,” Alkhatib wrote.

Of course, Alkhatib would be the first to admit that his positions aren’t representative of the wider Palestinian public: “Unfortunately, we have some horrible intellectuals, media, and activists who proclaim to support the Palestinian people. But instead of helping our people see things differently, they just parrot the slogans, thinking that that makes them worthwhile allies, while I genuinely think that makes them detrimental and harmful.”

In this piece I’ve only provided a small sample of Alkhatib’s ideas, and I encourage everyone to read more of what he has to say, for example on X or Facebook. The fact that views like these are so rarely heard in public makes it even more important to amplify them and engage with them. This doesn’t mean one must agree with everything he says and writes, but he should be taken seriously. The only path away from annihilation is through these kind of pragmatic, forward-looking ideas; rejecting them is a path towards annihilation. As he himself writes:

Finding common ground and achieving healing & reconciliation are not kumbaya; they are pragmatic steps that, at times, require agreeing to disagree, holding multiple truths, and accepting differences of thought and approach while always having a shared vision for a better/different future. This is what’s needed to get past the worst periods in the Israel and Palestine discourse. I am not here to fulfill anyone’s expectations but my own – which are to bring people together as best as possible given the circumstances in Gaza and beyond, while also challenging entrenched narratives and viewpoints which worsen the dehumanization trends between Palestinians and Israelis.