Mohamed Hadid, a Palestinian American business tycoon who has a personal connection to Gaza, having been born in Nazareth in 1948 and becoming a refugee due to the Israeli occupation, has lashed out at Arab and Muslim countries after Israel unleashed a new wave of terror on Palestinians in Gaza, breaking the truce and killing hundreds in the ongoing strikes.
It "breaks my heart what's going on. Use your Influence. You have an amazing influence all over Europe, all over America, all over the Arab world, all over the Islamic world. Where are you to help these Palestinians who are dying on a daily basis?" Hadid asked in a video on Wednesday.
"How can you allow yourself and your family to allow this and be comfortable with it?"
The truce in effect from January 19 and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan had provided moments of joy as Palestinian families held communal sunset meals ending each day's fast without the fear of bombardment.
But Israel unilaterally destroyed the chances of peace early on Tuesday by reneging on the ceasefire deal and bombing besieged Palestinians in their sleep.
The indiscriminate bombardment on tents of displaced people and already bombed homes left more than 400 Palestinians dead, hundreds wounded and resumed Israel's genocidal war — now in its 530th day.
Israel has since October 2023 killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, wounded another 115,000 and uprooted millions of Palestinians, who now face expulsion from Gaza, part of the dangerous plan cited by US and Israel in recent months.
"You cannot eat dinner without, without knowing that these people are dying, suffering. Hungry. Living in shelters. On what grounds? How dare you?" Hadid asked.
"How dare you, all of you, all the Muslim communities around the world, the Islamic communities around in the Arab world? Where are you? How can you not talk to anybody?"
Mohamed Hadid, the father of Palestinian-American supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid, compares the exodus of Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza and heading south due to Israel’s war on the besieged enclave to what his mother experienced 75 years ago during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes by Zionist militias.
He said Israel is not a religious state while calling Judaism "a safe and a very evenhanded religion."
"This is Zionism. These are criminals. Criminals, their leaders are all going to jail and they should go to jail, and the IDF (Israeli military) should go to jail. I hear a lot of IDF soldiers. There are saddened what they have done."
Hadid has previously compared the exodus of Palestinians fleeing Gaza inside the besieged enclave to what his mother experienced 75 years ago during the "Nakba," or catastrophe, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes by Zionist militias.
Hadid is the son of Anwar Mohamed Hadid and Khairiah Daher.
During the Nakba, the Hadid family first fled to Lebanon and then Syria.
In 2015, Hadid said, "We became refugees to Syria, and we lost our home in Safad (now in northern Israel) to a Jewish family that we sheltered when they were refugees from Poland on the ship that was sailing from country to country and no one would take them ... They were our guest for two years till they made us refugees and they kicked us out of our own home."
Touching on the subject in an interview with Anadolu Agency, Hadid recalled that his mother, realising they were now refugees, attempted to take a blanket from the house so her children would not be cold on the road. Still, the Jewish family did not allow them inside, not permitting her to take the photo album.
"The Zionist state should stop the killing of my family and my people in Palestine. Stop Arab world, do something. Europeans, do something. The world should stick together against this oppression, this occupation, this mass killing. This genocide must stop," Hadid urged in the latest video.
