Protester sets himself on fire in demonstration marking 1 year since Hamas terror attack on Israel

A man set himself on fire in Washington, D.C. Saturday during an anti-Israel protest attended by approximately 1,000 people. The protest was apparently intended to mark the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s horrific and deadly attack on Israel, in which they killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 more, many of whom have died in captivity. 

This was a “peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration,” according to The Washington Post, which wrote that the person who set himself on fire was Samuel Mena Jr. The fire was quickly extinguished, according to The Post, and Mena was taken to a hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries. 

A friend told the Post that Mena uses they/them pronouns. The Post cited his personal website, which lists no pronouns and it includes plans “to demonstrate” on Saturday “with as much of my conviction as I possibly can.” Yet The Post regularly refers to Mena as a man. 

The Post article cites his website as saying that “Mena is a journalist who had become disenchanted with the profession over coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and guilty about what he saw as his role in it.”

They quote him, again from his website, “How many Palestinians were killed that I allowed to be branded as Hamas?” Mena wrote. “How many men, women, and children were struck with a missile cosigned by the American media? Cosigned by ‘Samuel Mena Jr?’”

The protesters said they were marking “one year of genocide” and “one year of resistance,” according to the outlet. 

The Post then writes that “Israel has denied that it is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. The conflict in the Middle East has intensified after Israel’s escalating military offensive in Lebanon, including the recent assassination of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.”

There is nothing in the article noting that Israel was the target of more than 10,000 missiles fired from Lebanon into Israel, and that what intensified the conflict on that front was a Hezbollah missile that hit a playground killing 12 Israeli children. There is nothing in the article explaining that this is not a genocide of any sort by Israel, but that Hamas’s covenant calls for the destruction of Israel: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble)

Israel is facing a seven-front war, all paid for and orchestrated by Iran. Yet it is Hamas, which commits war crimes daily through its use of civilians as human shields, often in hospitals, schools and mosques, and by targeting civilians in Israel. 

Israel, on the other hand, in its attempt to wipe out Hamas, goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, even though that is not always possible. The numbers of dead and injured are also dubious when they come from the Gaza Health Ministry, as it was shown early on in the war. But news organizations like The Washington Post and CNN constantly treat Israel as the villains in this war, and the Palestinians and others who want to defeat and destroy Israel are considered the victims.