Hamas media explains why they released the video of captive Avera Mengistu now

Israeli pundits are falling over each other to explain why Hamas chose to release the video showing that captive Avera Mengistu is alive, when they normally don't give proof of life without demanding something in return.

But Hamas media has its own analysis, which is probably more accurate because, well, they are controlled by Hamas.

Majid Al-Zibda writes in Hamas' Al Resalah that Hamas is trying to exploit supposed Israeli racism against its Ethiopian Jewish population at a time when Israelis are already divided.

By publishing the video message of the soldier [sic] Mengistu, the Palestinian resistance succeeded in scoring a point in its favor in the context of its ongoing psychological battle with the occupation. On the one hand, it provoked Netanyahu's extremist government, which is keen not to raise the issue of the captured soldiers in light of the exacerbating internal conflicts it faces, and at the same time this message deepens sectarian conflicts within the entity by provoking the sect of "Falasha Jews" to whom the soldier "Mengistu" belongs, and who suffer from a state of deliberate marginalization from the occupation governments.

Other reasons are given: as a response to Itamar Ben Gvir's crackdown on Palestinian prisoner perks, 

as a message to the incoming IDF Chief of Staff (which is explicit in the video,) to stoke Israeli hope that Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul might still be alive as well.

But stoking racism really seems to be Hamas' main goal. This video released by Hamas' Felesteen newspaper, "Who Is Avera Mengistu," claims that Israel negotiated for the return of other soldiers  but not Mengistu, because they are racist and he is black. (Mengistu was never a soldier.) 

The video also says that "racist rabbis" never accepted Ethiopians as Jewish. 

Hamss has tried the race card before, tweeting in 2015 that Israel doesn't care about people of color.

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