“I saw walls, stretching for miles, built to keep them in”

When the racing driver Lewis Hamilton went to Rafah on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza, what he saw there disturbed him. He wrote,

“The past three years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is appalling. It’s an injustice for people to being denied their freedom, their safety and their dignity. No human being should be treated as though their life matters less.

I saw walls, stretching for miles, built to keep them in. Standing there, outside what felt like an open-air prison, all I could think about was getting in to help.”

Those walls are indeed enormous and intimidating, and they were built to keep the Gazans in. But there was one detail about those walls that his hosts forgot to mention and about which Mr Hamilton neglected to ask. Drew Pavlou explains,

“Lewis Hamilton stood next to Egypt’s heavily fortified border wall with Gaza and blamed Israel for building Egypt’s fortified border wall”.

Lewis Hamilton stood next to Egypt’s heavily fortified border wall with Gaza and blamed Israel for building Egypt’s fortified border wall

Smart guy pic.twitter.com/luoA3z4Lko

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇫🇷🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) November 12, 2026

Hen Mazzig adds,

“Lewis Hamilton, the Formula 1 driver and Kim Kardashian’s boyfriend, visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing this week, shown around by the governor of North Sinai. He wrote that he saw walls stretching for miles, built to keep Gazans in, and in the post to his 44M followers he blamed Israel.

Except those walls are Egyptian. Egypt razed the homes of their own people near the border to make room for them, and reinforced them during the war so that Palestinians fleeing the fighting could not cross into Sinai.

He stood in the country that built the wall, next to the official who runs the province it sits in, and never thought to ask who put up the wall or why.

He’s not wrong about aid and how Palestinians need it, but advocacy sort of loses its efficiency when you show that you are either entirely ignorant about the situation or lying to feed a narrative.”

In this post I am using the tag “self-ownership” in its alternative meaning.