Al-Sayed is a Bedouin with mental health problems - but Hamas insists that he is an Israeli soldier.
Much of the anti-Israel Arabic media is happily parroting the claim, since it would look really bad for Hamas to have kidnapped a mentally ill Arab civilian whom their allies in the human rights community call "Palestinian."
According to Abu Ali Express, as soon as Hamas released this video Palestinians on social media started making fun of Hamas. They had been led to believe that Hamas had captured a Jewish Israeli soldier, and al-Sayed obviously is neither Jewish nor a soldier. They wondered about the timing of trying to pressure Israel to make a prisoner swap when the government is in limbo, they sarcastically asked whether he was on a hunger strike or whether his family could visit - showing the difference between Arabs in Israeli prisons and this Arab in Hamas custody.
Yet some are doubling down, still insisting that al-Sayed is a soldier. A Nablus academic is upset at the pushback, saying, "The cheap media underestimates the achievement of the Palestinian resistance and depicts it as murderous monsters who hold a mentally ill person for political purposes, even though the prisoner is a combat soldier!!"
