Abu-Sittah has been accused by some groups in the UK of promoting terrorism and spreading antisemitism.
Abu-Sittah spoke at a ceremony for the one-year anniversary of the death of Maher Al-Yamani, the co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 2020.[22][23] A video showing Abu-Sittah appear to cry while delivering a eulogy at the event that includes the language “This is our only comfort: that even when Maher leaves, the Israelis will be afraid of Maher” is published on The Jewish Chronicle’s website.[18]
In March 2024, the British NGO, UK Lawyers for Israel (A UK-based, pro-Israel legal lobbying group) sent an open letter to Glasgow University which included a review of Abu-Sittah’s public social media comments. The letter accused Abu-Sittah of reposting “an image commemorating a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Nasser Abu Hamid, the day after he died, holding a machine gun, dripping with blood.”[24] He also wrote an article grieving for Abu Hamid, who had been convicted of multiple murders.[22]
The Times reported that Abu Sittah had compared Israeli leadership to “the psychosis of the Germans in the 30s and the 40s." The UK Lawyers for Israel letter also accused Abu-Sittah of re-posting “an antisemitic image featuring Hitler on one side and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu on the other side, both images smeared with blood, comparing Israel to the Nazis. The image was headed “Free Palestine (Palestinian Flag), Israel is a Nazi State”. The image compared the average pace of child killing of Hitler, at 127 children per day, to that of Netanyahu, which it put at 178 per day.”[24] Both of these instances have been interpreted by UK Lawyers for Israel as Antisemitism according to Example 10 of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of Antisemitism which proscribes "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Since receiving UK Lawyers for Israel’s letter, Glasgow University has launched an investigation into Abu-Sittah.
Having seen what the IDF is doing, at this point I have stopped considering Palestinian armed violence that targets Israeli military targets to be terrorism. No, fuck off, it’s legitimate armed resistance, Palestinians have the right to defend themselves ans their nations right to exist. IDF targets are legitimate targets.
And I will start caring about the occasional stink of politically insensitive imagery when a similar standard is applied to Israelis. The entire Israeli leadership has adopted openly genocidal language, while openly genocidal and dehumanizing cultural elements are shamelessly being promoted in Israeli society.
I will not hold Palestinians to an impossible moral standard while Israelis are massacring them. This man has seen first hand the results of Israeli war crimes, he has treated without anesthesia the children on whose bodies their shrapnels were embedded. So he made an unfortunate antisemitic reference. After Palestine is free I’m sure his grandchildren will be a bit embarrassed by their hero doctor grandad’s more extreme opinions.
He spoke at the conference via video chat, which the police used as justification to basically immediately shut down the whole conference, because apparently he’s also virtually banned from Germany.
It’s ridiculous. Countries like Germany are using censorship techniques from 50 years ago hoping to keep people ignorant when in fact their attempts just draw additional attention. We live in the Information Age - it doesn’t matter how many accounts Germany seizes or doctors they detain, the truth of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and who is complicit is going to go public.
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