The anti-Hamas protests that erupted last week in the Gaza Strip are a testament to what many of us from Gaza have been saying for years: The people of this besieged enclave are exhausted by Hamas’ rule and ready to break free from the terrorist group. Since Oct. 7, 2023, pundits, news outlets and social media accounts have been asking why Gazans have not protested Hamas during the ongoing war. The answer is painfully simple: How can people protest when they are being bombed, starved and displaced? When every act of defiance is met with brutal retaliation? Every Gazan family has suffered unbearable loss ‒ many have lost sons, daughters, entire lineages. They have been bombed, displaced and left to fend for survival with little to no resources. Despite this devastation, thousands took to the streets to protest. How Hamas punishes dissent: imprisonment, torture, execution What critics fail to understand is the brutal reality of life under Hamas’ iron grip ‒ where dissent is met with imprisonment, torture or execution. They also fail to see Gazans as they truly are ‒ not as perpetrators, but as victims of both Hamas’ oppression and the war that has ravaged us and our land for 18 months. Some observers ask: Why now? Where are the women? Imagine being a woman in Gaza, trying to make your voice heard in a Hamas-controlled, male-dominated society while simultaneously struggling to secure food and shelter for your family. Even then, the young men, the elderly and all those brave souls who have risked their lives to defy Hamas in the streets are carrying a message much greater than themselves. They are the voice of countless others who share their sentiment but fear the repercussions and consequences of speaking out. For three consecutive days, thousands of Gazans risked their lives to raise their voices against Hamas, yet their efforts have been overlooked by the so-called pro-Palestine movement in the West and by most of the news media as well. As someone who once tried to protest Hamas and ended up in their jails and torture chambers, I understand what this neglect feels like. I know the deep sense of betrayal that has touched every protester, the painful realization that they have been abandoned, left alone with no one willing to hear them. It's as if the world has resigned them to a fate of living under Hamas’ rule, as if their suffering is too inconvenient and does not fit into the Western narrative of Palestine, which is why they have forsaken the actual people of Gaza, like me. Last week's protests were a watershed moment for Gazans, when so many in Gaza finally understood the true meaning of fake solidarity ‒ that to the Western "pro-Palestine" movement, Palestinians are not seen as real people with real struggles but as tools to be used in their ideological battles. Not only were the protests ignored by "allies" in the West, but so were the lives of the protesters and all they represent. 'Pro-Palestine' activists protest for Columbia student. Where are they for protester killed by Hamas? Hamas wasted no time in going after the leaders of the protests, threatening, torturing and even killing them. The family of Oday Nasser Al Rabay, 22, says the protester was tortured to death by Hamas simply for demanding a free Gaza ‒ free from Hamas and free from war. Where was the outrage from the "pro-Palestine movement" activists? Where were the protests in Western capitals for Oday? Nowhere. Because he did not fit into their ideological framework because his killing was not useful and too inconvenient to their narrative. Meanwhile, when a protester with a distinctly different profile ‒ Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student ‒ finds himself detained in the United States, the pro-Palestinian activists who claim to advocate for the oppressed wasted no time in flooding Western streets with protests calling for his release. His arrest became an emblem of resistance, sparking global campaigns to bring him home. But what about the young Palestinian from Gaza who, without the protection of international institutions, was tortured to death for his dissent? Oday was left to rot in obscurity, his brutal murder by Hamas nothing more than an inconvenient fact for the same movement that fervently defended Mahmoud. This stark contrast is not only a failure of solidarity ‒ it's also an indictment of the hollow, opportunistic nature of the so-called pro-Palestine movement. Mahmoud, a student in the West, was elevated to the status of martyr. Oday, a young man from Gaza, was left to die at the hands of the very regime that Western allies refuse to confront. The hypocrisy is staggering. If the pro-Palestinian movement is unwilling to stand with the Palestinians in Gaza ‒ those who are risking everything to break free from the shackles of Hamas ‒ then what kind of movement is this? If the pro-Palestine movement cannot recognize the bravery, the sacrifices and the legitimate demands of those fighting to end the reign of terror in Gaza, to end this war and to rebuild their city free of Iranian influence, then it exposes itself as nothing more than a vehicle for political expediency. It is a movement that uses Palestinian lives when convenient and discards them when they are inconvenient. If this is the solidarity these "allies" offer, then it is an insult to the struggle for justice, an empty gesture that does nothing to advance the cause of true liberation. Hamza Howidy is a Gazan anti-Hamas advocate who helped lead the 2019 protests against Hamas in Gaza, for which he was jailed and tortured. Today he is a writer, speaker, human rights advocate and a member of the Realign For Palestine project at the Atlantic Council.