‘If We Burn, You Burn With Us’: TikTokers Liken Israel-Hamas War to ‘The Hunger Games’

Israel is “the Capitol,” Prime Minister Netanyahu is President Snow, and Gaza is District 13: These are the parallels TikTokers are alleging between the blockbuster “Hunger Games” series and the Israel-Hamas war. The TikTok videos are being posted ahead of the November 17 premiere of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel set 64 years before the original dystopian trilogy. The original fiction series follows protagonist Katniss Everdeen as she leads a rebellion against the antagonist, President Coriolanus Snow, and “the Capitol,” which rules the districts of Panem and forces tributes from each district to participate in an annual fight to the death where only one tribute survives.“I’m calling it now, the Hunger Games movie is going to result in a huge uptick of protests in support of Palestine in the younger generations in America,” one TikToker says in a video that has already garnered more than 234,000 views.“If you know anything about the lore and history and meaning of the Hunger Games series, toppling fascist regimes is really the core of the message there, fascist, apartheid regimes where people are separated into factions and kept behind gates and starved,” she adds. “I don’t think this is going to do well for the IDF’s propaganda machine.” TikTok has come under fire in recent weeks for its algorithm, which seemingly makes it more profitable to create and share pro-Palestinian content than pro-Israeli videos, as the Sun has reported. Despite calls to ban the app, 26 percent of adults younger than 30 use TikTok as a regular news source, Pew Research data show, and that trend is growing.Data from the app’s creator center show videos labeled “#standwithpalestine” have an overall total of 4 billion views, while videos labeled “#standwithisrael” have 380 million views. “You know what’s crazy? The eerie similarities between the Hunger Games and Palestine,” one TikToker writes. “In Hunger Games, the 75th Hunger Games was marked as the beginning of the revolution to overthrow The Capitol and they did it! Meanwhile this year marked 75 years of Israel’s illegal occupation in Palestine territory and everybody around the world is protesting, marching, and demanding for Free Palestine.”“When will y’all realize that Palestine is District 12, Israel is Panem, and Hamas is the rebellion that Katniss leads?” another video says. Unlike Hamas, whose brutal acts of terrorism include cooking a baby alive in an oven, calling for global attacks, and boasting of murders of the Jews, Katniss Everdeen’s character was beloved for her selflessness. In the series, she volunteers to take her sister’s place at the Hunger Games competition, fights to save the lives of other innocent tributes, and in the third book, “Mockingjay,” calls out her best friend, Gale Hawthorne, for being willing to sacrifice innocent lives for the rebellion’s cause.Yet, famous Katniss Everdeen quotes are being used in TikTok videos while displaying images comparing Israel to the dystopian capital: “I have a message for President Snow. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground. But do you see that? Fire is catching. And if we burn, you burn with us,” a video says.“We will look Israel dead in the eye and tell them you can take our life, you can spill our blood, you can bomb our hospitals and our schools and our mosques and our churches, but you will never take our freedom,” a protest leader yells, referencing the famous “Braveheart” line in one video, while the “Hunger Games” soundtrack plays in the background of the TikTok. In 2014, when the original “Hunger Games” series was still being released in theaters, an article by the Jewish Chronicle raised concerns that the “Mockingjay” movie could be seen as “a parable of Israel’s perceived subjugation of the Palestinians.” “If I were an ardent Palestinian sympathiser (and I do have sympathy for them) in London what would I be seeing? Those fully kitted out soldiers would look to me an awful lot like IDF soldiers in riot-control mode,” the article says. “Those aggressive jets could be Israeli F-16s, couldn’t they?”The piece notes, though, that it’s “not a true comparison.” “Israel doesn’t tyrannise the (self-governing) Palestinian territories, they react against attacks,” the piece notes, adding that Israel’s wall and defense are necessities to protect against “thousands of suicide bombings within Israel.” “The film underlined for me again the brilliant Palestinian use of iconography, and the way the bare pictures work against Israel,” the piece notes.Nearly a decade later, as the prequel is set to open in theaters, the same iconography is being used by anti-Israelis to justify the barbaric acts of Hamas in the name of rebellion.The upcoming “Hunger Games” prequel does not include the stars of the original series, Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, or Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne, as the movie is set before their characters were alive. The prequel features Rachel Zegler, who will also star in Disney’s now-delayed release of “Snow White.” The movie and Ms. Zegler have faced backlash that the remake is too “woke,” as the Sun has reported. The actress has said in the past that “it will always be free Palestine.”

‘If We Burn, You Burn With Us’: TikTokers Liken Israel-Hamas War to ‘The Hunger Games’

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