Most Palestinians that Jewish American comedian Zach Fox spoke to in Ramallah for the “Wild West Bank” – the name of his newly released video – expressed unwavering support for Hamas, antisemitic views, and an antipathy towards a two-state solution, he told the Jerusalem Post.
The comedian and entrepreneur, who spoke with the Post on Tuesday night, traveled to Ramallah to speak with residents on the ground, something that is not possible for most Israeli citizens who are banned from entering the city.
“It was shocking,” he told the Post, “There was not one person who didn’t like Hamas – not even – I didn’t meet one person who didn’t love Hamas I think.”
“It was unequivocal. All of them hated Jews with every bone of their body.”
Fox was accompanied by a translator, producer and cameraman. He did not reveal his Jewish identity.
Some of the footage from the visit has been lost, as the team were threatened with death unless they deleted it.
He told the Post that he wanted to film the video because “no one has really gone to Palestine.”
“I wanted answers to the questions we are all sitting here asking.”
In Ramallah
“Are you supportive of Hamas?” is the first question Fox asked the Palestinians in the video. The answer was a resounding “yes” from most, and an “of course” from one woman.
Fox followed up by asking them if this were true for most Palestinians.
“Palestinian people like Hamas,” answered one man.
“I’m with the resistance” a woman responded.
Fox queried as to whether they saw the videos posted by Hamas on October 7.
“Everything,” declared one woman, with confidence.
“And you are okay with everything they did?”
“With everything they did,” she confirmed.
One resident seemingly justified the murders and claimed that Gazans live under occupation, but was corrected by Fox who mentioned that Israel left Gaza in 2005.
When asked whether they felt that Hamas should release the remaining Israeli hostages, there was a resounding ‘no’ from all the Palestinians.
Seated at a table with an older man, Fox mentions that Hamas “killed innocent Israelis” to which the man shakes his head and says no.
“Give me a picture for rape” he responded, to which Fox showed him the video footage of hostage Naama Levy being led away, blood on the crotch area of her clothes. Fox told the Post that the man said nothing further on the subject.
The man told Fox that when Israeli prisoners were released from Gaza, “they were smiling.”
Fox asked if if they were genuinely smiling, or if they were scared for their life. “Who put this in your brain?” the man responded.
“It’s not like these were stupid people,” Fox told the Post. “It’s just how indoctrinated they are. This man had a master’s degree.”
In the US, when people saw the photos of the hostages smiling when being released, they thought it was the “psychological torture these people were under”, Fox continued. But this man “he actually believed [they were smiling], he was using that as evidence.”
The man, who spoke to Fox for a while, spoke of his time in Israeli prison.
“I felt sympathy for him,” Fox said. “But he didn’t feel the slightest drop of sympathy in his heart.”
Fox told the Post that one of the most interesting parts was that the man showed him his phone, his feeds, his algorithms. “He’s seeing Hamas propaganda being fed to him because of his algorithm.”
Fox mentioned that he even saw posts on the man’s phone praising Putin; “it’s the internet ecosystem that scared me the most, it made me realize that a big enough misinformation campaign you can indoctrinate people globally.”
History
Fox drew comparisons with campus protests, where misinformation spreads online, creating algorithmic echo chambers.
Both in those campus environments and there in Ramallah, there was historical revisionism, he said.
“Nothing is named Israel,” said one younger man.
Fox negated him, saying that the Quran mentions Israel over 100 times, and asks him if Palestine was mentioned. The man admitted it wasn’t.
A woman with uncovered hair blamed Britain for bringing “all the criminal Jews since 1948” and another woman said Jews could go back to “Poland, Iraq.”
“Jews have not been killed or exposed to any struggle or any violence,” said the first.
When Fox told her that Jews were forcibly kicked out of nearly every Middle Eastern nation, she asserted “if they are kicked it’s because of their own actions. They steal, they do all awful deeds.”
Threats of violence
One of the most interesting parts, Fox said to the Post, was that they had to recover a lot of the footage as they were forced to delete it when threatened.
He recounted the incident, in which he was interviewing a girl, and a Palestinian man came over and started shouting in Arabic. Fox’s Arabic-speaking colleagues told him the man was upset that the girl was being interviewed, believing it to be immodest.
Fox moved on to speak to someone else, but the man interrupted again, and then called over more men.
“All of a sudden, he comes up and says we have to delete the rest of our footage. I went back and forth with him for ten minutes. I caved. My cameraman said, ‘I’m very scared, they are threatening to kill us if we don’t delete this.’”
“We tried to get the footage back, I went to several cyber places, and while we got some we couldn’t get it all.”
“I’ve been making videos for 15 years, and I’ve never had to delete videos because someone’s threatened to kill me.”
Peace
“Do you want to live with the Israelis in peace?” Fox asked some women.
“No. I want one state solution. No Israel. We should delete Israel.”
“So you would not be okay with a two state solution?”
“Of course not,” came the reply.
“Sometimes in my videos there are little glimpses of hopes – when I bring the facts in front of people they might change their mind – but this didn’t even come close,” said Fox.
“But all of them hated Jews with every bone of their body.”
He spoke to the Post of the dissonance of seeing a relatively normal city, with kids wearing designer clothes and nice apartments, where he estimated 10% of women had their hair uncovered, and yet the residents expressed no desire for peace.
“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.” said Fox.
“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 tonnes of sympathy for Hamas.”
“That was the range” he said, “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; the temperature is so high.”
While Fox drew several comparisons between the residents and the views of campus protesters, the main difference, he told the Post, 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.”
So why did he do it? “Since I’m not afraid, I’m going to go and ask the questions that people around the world want to ask the protesters.”
“Any American journalist can go and ask those questions, and they will get the same answers. Why won’t they?”
Fox told the Post that he wanted to shed light on the prevalence of such hatred to Jews, not to show peace was impossible, but to show reality.
“Reality is what we’re taught, and their reality is 1948,” he said.
“These people have so much hate in their heart for my people, I have nothing but love in my heart for them.”
This, Fox said, made it the most important video he’s ever done.
“I feel less optimistic about peace than ever, but I realize now that peace is more important than ever.”
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