Major Retailers Selling Book by Alleged Hamas Front
"Voices of Gaza’s Youth,” out April 24, is produced by Euro-Med Monitor—a group facing allegations of Hamas ties through its founders and staff
Several major booksellers—including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org—are now offering a new book titled We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth. The book is edited by Ahmed Alnaouq, co-founder of the eponymous We Are Not Numbers project (WANN), on which the book is based.
Although marketed as a storytelling platform for young Palestinians, both Alnaouq and the organization overseeing WANN have alleged ties to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization in both the U.S. and E.U., raising questions about the book’s true purpose.
Alleged Hamas Ties Behind the Literary Facade
WANN is fiscally sponsored in the U.S. by Nonviolence International and registered in Gaza under the umbrella of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (EuroMed), for which Alnaouq also works as the Outreach and Advocacy Officer.
According to the NGO Monitor watchdog group, EuroMed’s founder and current chairman, Ramy Abdu, along with former chairman Dr. Mazen Kahel, were both named in a 2013 list released by the Israeli government identifying Hamas operatives and affiliated institutions in Europe. Another watchdog group, Honest Reporting, has described EuroMed as a “Hamas front org.”
In March 2025, Abdu inadvertently disclosed that he is the brother-in-law of deceased senior Hamas official Muhammad Daoud Ismail al-Jamassi, as Jewish Onliner previously reported.
Moreover, Abdu publicly divulged that he is childhood friends with Assad Abu Sharia, the founder and leader of the Mujahideen Brigades—a Hamas-affiliated terrorist group that played a key role in the kidnapping of the Bibas children during the October 7th massacre.
Vincent Chebat, a Senior Researcher at NGO Monitor, told Jewish Onliner that concerns about EuroMed extend beyond its alleged ties to Hamas. “Beyond multiple links to Hamas,” Chebat explained, “EuroMed Human Rights Monitor has championed fake news, conspiracy theories, and blood libels since the October 7th attacks. The group has notably accused the Israeli army of ‘organ theft’ and the ‘systematically use [of] police dogs to brutally attack, rape Palestinian civilians.’”
“Releasing a book featuring ‘a chorus of young Palestinian voices’ is certainly another attempt to promote Hamas propaganda against Israel,” Chebat concluded.
We Are Not Numbers’ Founding
WANN’s other co-founder is American journalist and activist Pam Bailey, who initially encouraged Alnaouq to launch WANN “to celebrate his brother’s legacy by writing about him.”
Yet as noted by the investigative outfit GnasherJew, Alnaouq’s brother, Ayman Alnaouq, was an active member of Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, and was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014.
Ayman’s membership in the Qassam Brigades was known to Bailey. In an archived version of WANN’s website, Bailey describes her early communications with Ahmed, in which she notes the “positive” influence Ayman had on him:
“It turns out that Ayman was a resistance fighter with the Al-Qassam Brigades – so quickly assumed to be ‘terrorists’ even by many pro-Palestinian activists. Yet the few little tidbits of information Ahmed shared made me want to get to know him better.
Ayman clearly had played a very positive role in Ahmed’s life, and there was a reason why fighting the Israeli occupation with whatever weapons were at hand seemed to be the only option to the young man. It was, I believed, a critical story to tell – and share.”
Additionally, Ahmed Alnaouq’s posts have included comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, and explicit calls for the dismantlement of Zionism.
These affiliations raise serious concerns about whether the book is serving as a vehicle for propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization—now gaining legitimacy and distribution through mainstream Western platforms.
A Literary Project for Soft Propaganda?
The “Voices of Gaza’s Youth” book, which is scheduled for release on April 24 in the UK by Hutchinson Heinemann and in September in North America by Interlink Publishing, compiles 74 essays and poems from young writers in Gaza. While positioned as a literary anthology, the book is an extension of EuroMed. Maha Hussaini, EuroMed’s Strategy Director, described the book as EuroMed’s on X.
Despite the book’s controversial affiliations, it has been praised by public figures including Naomi Klein, actor Riz Ahmed, and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Due to WANN’s institutional and personal links to Hamas, the book may represent a strategic communications tool for Hamas dressed in the language of art and human rights.