Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat, a member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, stated that “the shooting incident that occurred in the U.S. capital, Washington, targeting employees of the “Israeli” embassy, is a natural consequence of the Zionist entity’s crimes in the Gaza Strip.”

Barakat added: “It is impossible to separate the reaction from the broader political and humanitarian context, by which we mean the ongoing Zionist massacre in Gaza for over twenty months — one of the most heinous genocidal crimes of the twenty-first century. It is a massacre that continues to this moment and will lead to further anger and violence toward the Zionist presence as a whole, and toward all those who support this entity in occupied Palestine and across the world.”

He continued: “‘Israel,’ with the support and complicity of Western governments — foremost among them the United States — has committed a series of crimes that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including thousands of children and women, through bombing, siege, and starvation, all amid a disgraceful international silence. Why do some express surprise at the human reactions to these horrific massacres? It is only inevitable that those who sow fire in Gaza should expect to reap a harvest of fire, in Gaza and in cities and capitals around the world.”

He concluded by saying: “This explosion of anger in the heart of the U.S. capital is neither isolated nor random, but one of the manifestations of pain and deep rage stemming from the international community’s disregard for the suffering of Palestinians, and its complicity in shielding the killers and granting them impunity. We affirm that the occupation is the original crime, and that those who seek to criminalize the reactions while remaining silent on the massacre are complicit in the ongoing crime.”