Happy birthday to Moumen al-Natour (born 12 December 1995)! Al-Natour is a Palestinian lawyer and activist from the Gaza Strip who has been a harsh critic of Hamas. He has been arrested by the group at least 20 times. As a lawyer, he has represented journalists arrested for criticizing Hamas, and women seeking to leave abusive marriages. As an activist, he has been an organizer of the We Want to Live movement, which has organized protests against Hamas, and the founder of Palestinian Youth for Development, which has organized aid distribution to Gaza residents since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
I hope that he and his family remain safe, and that his next birthday sees a Gaza Strip free of oppression and violence from any army or political party.
No but seriously he is so amazing?! I didn’t know he had been arrested TWENTY FUCKING TIMES, but I knew he was part of the We Want To Live movement, which already makes him extremely badass.
Palestinian Youth for Development is also amazing. In a place controlled by a brutal dictatorship that continually steals aid, and shoots Gazans in the legs and feet if they try to get it back, and which is known for claiming people are “collaborating with the occupation” and executing them, this guy has managed to put together a group that organizes Gazan youth and helps them get leadership skills by distributing aid, without working with or getting plundered by Hamas??
He’s basically training youth to be independent leaders, in a place that has never gotten to have such a thing. In between being threatened, harassed, imprisoned, and tortured.
He should be the fucking president of Palestine.
I cannot believe how hard it is to get the pro-Palestinian movement to support the activists in Gaza.
amhrancas 