
A mural shows jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on April 16, 2023. [Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto]
Hamas has demanded the release of three top Palestinian leaders in any hostage swap deal with Israel, Israeli media reports revealed yesterday.
Hamas insists Marwan Barghouti, Ahmed Saadat and Abdullah Barghouti be released in any new deal, Yedioth Ahronoth has said.
Barghouti, 64, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, is most favoured to chair the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Palestinian opinion polls.
He was arrested by Israel in 2002 and handed five life sentences.
Barghouti “can change the face of the Palestinian Authority,” the newspaper said. Despite his imprisonment, Barghouti enjoys strong support and has been able to affect events on the ground in the occupied West Bank.
Saadat, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was arrested in 2008 and jailed for 30 years in connection with the killing of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001.
Abdullah Barghouti is a top Hamas leader and is in jail serving multiple life sentences for alleged attacks on Israelis.
Israel refused to include the three leaders in a previous prisoner exchange deal with Hamas in 2011, which saw the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in return for over 1,000 Palestinian detainees.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government on the report.
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Cairo on Wednesday amid Egyptian efforts to mediate a new hostage swap deal between the Palestinian group and Israel.
However, Al-Qassam Brigade spokesperson, Abu Obeidah, said yesterday that the movement refuses to engage in any prisoner exchange talks before Israel stops its war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
During a week-long humanitarian pause in Gaza from 24-30 November, Hamas released 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners in exchange for 240 Palestinians, including 71 women and 169 children.
Nearly 130 Israelis are being held as prisoners of war in Gaza.
December 22, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Fighters from Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, ambushed and killed at least seven Ukrainian mercenaries who were fighting with the Israeli army in Gaza, Quds News Network reported on 21 December.
According to sources speaking with the network, Qassam fighters targeted the mercenaries on 14 November after spotting them on Hassanein Street in the Shujaiya neighborhood, one of the main centers of Palestinian resistance to the ongoing Israeli ground invasion.
The sources added that “the occupation army did not include the dead among the numbers it acknowledges about its losses among soldiers in Gaza,” and that the ambush killed soldiers from the Israeli army as well.
According to the sources, a video that circulated on social media of a unit of Ukrainian mercenaries in a Shujaiya school was recorded on the same day as the attack.
The video showed one mercenary writing in the Ukrainian language on a chalk board in the school.
It also showed a group of Ukrainian mercenaries in a neighborhood of Gaza City, hiding behind a wall.
Ukrainians fighting for Israel is a reversal of a dynamic that appeared in 2022, as reports emerged of hundreds of Ukrainian-born Israelis and several native Israelis traveling to Ukraine to join volunteer units after the Russian invasion.
The Quds Network report comes as the Israeli military announced the deaths of three additional soldiers on Thursday, Lavi Gehati, Omri Schwartz, and Yacoub Elian, during battles in the Gaza Strip. This brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed to more than 136, according to Israel, since the start of its ground invasion in Gaza on 27 October.
However, as The Cradle has reported, Israeli military leaders seeks to hide many of their soldiers’ deaths, and the number killed and wounded is likely much higher than the military’s official acknowledgements.
Hamas has released a flurry of combat videos in the past week showing its fighters targeting Israeli troops, armored personnel carriers, and tanks. This indicates that while Israel has caused massive destruction in Gaza, the Qassam Brigades are still strong militarily and are inflicting heavy losses on the Israeli army.
December 21, 2023
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Hamas political leaders are in talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) about how to govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war with Israel ends, with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 20 December.
“We don’t fight just because we want to fight. We are not partisans of a zero-sum game,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Doha-based political bureau, stated. “We want the war to end.”
The Hamas leader’s statement marks a change from 7 October, when the armed wing of the group led an assault on Israeli military bases and settlements in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed, both by Hamas and Israeli forces themselves due to the Hannibal Directive.
Hamas wished to break the 17-year siege on Gaza and put the Palestinian issue back on the table in the international arena.
During the attack, Hamas took over 200 Israeli soldiers and civilians captive hoping to exchange them for the freedom of thousands of Palestinians long held in Israeli prisons.
Now, after Israel has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas’s political wing is seeking an end to the conflict.
“We want to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Badran said.
Badran also stated Hamas wishes to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which represents Palestinians at the United Nations and other international forums.
“It will be a national dialogue,” Badran said. “We have always said the PLO should contain any Palestinian faction.”
Badran and other Hamas officials say the talks have also included Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza security chief with close Emirati and Egyptian support, and former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
“I am no friend of Hamas,” Dahlan said. “But do you think anybody is going to be able to run to make peace without Hamas?”
The Hamas political leaders indicated they would be willing to join the PLO and support negotiations for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
But Badran said that Hamas had no plans to recognize Israel as long as the occupation continues. “The world has no right to ask when people are being killed,” he said. “It’s not logical to ask this question at this time.”
Badran denied rumors of a division between Hamas’ Gaza branch and its political leadership in Doha. “The leadership of Hamas, both inside Gaza and outside it, is in complete agreement on strategies and political positions across various issues,” he said.
Badran says Hamas is seeking a full-scale ceasefire and a full exchange of captives from both sides. “If there is a ceasefire, our stance is crystal clear: We want an exchange of all-for-all,” he said.
Israel has for years sought to foster divisions between Hamas and the PA, led by Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he has for years approved Qatari payments to Hamas in Gaza, while ensuring the PA remained weak and unable to win the establishment of a Palestinian state through peaceful diplomatic means.
Israel has also sought to use the PA security forces to dismantle Palestinian resistance groups in the West Bank.
The US and Israel appear to disagree on a final solution for Gaza. The US wants a PA security force to crack down on Hamas after the war and to administer Gaza, said Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian peace negotiator. “They essentially want the PA’s role as Israel’s security subcontractor in the West Bank to be expanded into Gaza,” she said.
Buttu said the US is willing provide renewed financial and political support for the PA to maintain what New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman this summer called the “shared fiction” of a Palestinian state. “There is a longstanding and continuing false promise of Palestinian statehood,” Buttu added.
However, Israel has vowed it will not allow the PA to take control in Gaza. Numerous Israeli political and military figures have called for destroying Gaza, forcing its 2.3 million residents to flee to Egypt or Europe as refugees, and to rebuild the Jewish settlement in Gush Katif on the Gaza coast that was evacuated in 2005.
December 20, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Dramatic news reports, claims and videos have emerged from both sides involved in the Gaza fighting throughout the past week.
The week started with the Israeli army releasing several videos of Palestinians stripped to their underwear being marched through urban ruins. Israel’s PR machine disregarded the Palestinian outcry that followed. Israel staunchly asserted that the men were Hamas fighters and that their alleged mass surrenders signified that the end of the Palestinian group was close, even as many Palestinians and independent observers insisted that the men were civilians who had been treated against the laws of war by being publicly humiliated.
For its part, Hamas stuck to its usual practice of pushing its cause through video releases – skilfully edited to enhance the desired effects – purporting to confirm its constant and numerous successes against Israeli invaders, mostly showing hits scored against armoured vehicles.
Then came the news that stunned Israel and put a big question mark on its official line of Hamas being on the verge of collapse. First, nine soldiers were killed in a single operation in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City on Tuesday. That shock was followed by another one on Friday, with the Israeli army admitting that it killed three Israeli captives, having mistaken them for enemies – even though they held white flags.
So what is really happening on the ground in Gaza?
Nothing we did not predict weeks ago: The war has entered a difficult, unpredictable and bloody phase of full-scale urban warfare where gains are small and slow, and losses can be huge.
Combat in narrow and cramped streets of old cities is known to be one of the most difficult ways to fight a war. Classic military theory calls for defended cities to be surrounded and blockaded by units just strong enough to prevent the defenders from breaking out, while the main force continues advancing and taking territory.
But the fight in Gaza is not about conquering fields and beaches – Israel’s proclaimed goal is to destroy Hamas. To do that, the first step is to control the ground where the enemy operates: the cities.
In the old days, cities needed strong walls to defend themselves, but in the last 100 years, weapons have advanced at a rapid rate, causing a change in tactics. Successful resistance against enemy attacks no longer depends on huge, expensive static bastions. Nowadays, small but potent man-portable weapons whose destructive power is hugely disproportionate to their size, such as anti-tank rocket launchers, grenade throwers, small mortars, assault rifles and many others, allow the defenders to turn each house and every street into a formidable defensive position.
From the 1940s to this day, almost all attempts to conquer cities held by determined defenders have ended in failure. The few victories attackers achieved were so costly that they often ended the offensive capabilities of those armies pushing into cities.
In their own ways, Stalingrad, Warsaw, Berlin, Dien Bien Phu, Vukovar, Sarajevo, Grozny and Fallujah – some successfully defended, others eventually succumbing to attacks – all confirmed the military wisdom that urban warfare should be avoided whenever possible.
Israel could not avoid urban warfare in Gaza. To have a chance of destroying Hamas, it has to deny it its operating ground, the three biggest urban agglomerations in the strip: Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.
The second phase started with Israeli forces reaching the suburbs, first of Gaza City and then, after the temporary ceasefire expired, of Khan Younis. Treading slowly and carefully in expectation of a concentrated Hamas response, the Israeli military completed the encirclement of those two urban areas.
It would be naive to assume that Israel’s generals hoped that by isolating the two biggest built-up areas in the Gaza Strip, they would seriously impair the ability of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, to fight back.
In reality, the encirclement of the two city centres is not a classic one where troops within the blockade cannot be reinforced nor receive any supplies. Hamas still has an unknown but probably major part of its tunnel network intact and can move in and out. They have some difficulties in doing so but Hamas fighters are not locked in.
Aware of the menace that tunnels present but also of the grave hazard of taking the fight into them, Israel has tried several approaches. It has destroyed as many tunnel entrances as it has found, mostly in the areas under its control, but many others that remain keep the danger acute.
After several attempts to send troops underground that ended in disaster, with troops falling casualty to Hamas booby traps, the high command abandoned that approach. It then reportedly mulled the idea of filling tunnels with seawater, claiming that the test-flooding was successful but it has not yet decided to mount a full-scale deluge operation.
This week’s Israeli actions on the ground strongly suggest that the Israeli army leadership realises that the only way towards achieving its proclaimed goal of annihilating Hamas is by taking, holding and controlling the ground throughout the currently surrounded centres of Gaza City and Khan Younis.
That in itself would not guarantee victory but could create conditions to squeeze Hamas fighters into tunnels, after which Israeli forces could block and destroy all entrances.
Flushing Hamas out would probably take weeks of heavy urban warfare with many more instances of massive losses – on both sides.
The more Israeli soldiers get killed in inner cities of Gaza, without still being able to claim the destruction of Hamas, the more the support for the continuation of the military operation would ebb. At some point, calls from Israel to stop the war could become louder than those encouraging it to continue.
December 19, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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The European Union announced on Monday that it was taking “formal infringement proceedings” against Elon Musk’s X social media platform over a recently implemented law intended to crack down on illegal content and disinformation online.
The announcement of the probe comes weeks after X (formerly Twitter) was asked to provide assurances that it was complying with the terms of the European bloc’s Digital Service Act. Under the law, which came into effect in August, a company can be fined up to 6% of its annual global income or banned from operating in the EU if it is found to have breached the sweeping legislation.
“Today we open formal infringement proceedings against X,” Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner responsible for the law’s enforcement, wrote in a post on the social network on Monday.
Breton added that the move had been taken in response to a “suspected breach of obligations to counter illegal content and disinformation; suspected breach of transparency obligations,” and “suspected deceptive design of user interface.”
The probe will also look at the effectiveness of X’s ‘community notes,’ in which users can fact-check or provide comments on the accuracy of certain posts.
Responding to the charge on Monday, X said it was “cooperating with the regulatory process,” and added that it was “important that this process remains free of political influence and follows the law.”
The platform, which was subject to a multi-billion-dollar takeover by Elon Musk last year, said it was focused on “creating a safe and inclusive environment” for its users, which it said it balances against “protecting freedom of expression.” At the time of the takeover, Musk branded himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
On October 10, the EU warned X in a formal letter that it had received “indications” that the social media platform was “being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU” related to Hamas’ attack in Israel on October 7.
In a letter to Breton, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino responded to say the firm was “working to address the operational needs of this fast-moving and evolving conflict.” She added that X had removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the service.
Earlier this year, X was among several tech giants to sign up to an EU code of conduct to prepare for the launch of the Digital Services Act in August. However, X withdrew from the agreement in May, prompting backlash from Breton. “You can run but you can’t hide,” he warned Musk and X.
December 18, 2023
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Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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The Hamas Movement has accused the Israeli occupation army of using different types of internationally prohibited ammunition and bombs in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and persisting in its indiscriminate bombardment of homes, shelter centers, tents and hospitals.
“All this is happening in full view of the world, with support from the US, Britain and some European countries,” senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut on Saturday.
Hamdan criticized the failure of the international community and the UN to stop the brutal Israeli aggression against Gaza as a result of the US use of its veto power to support what he called the “neo-Nazis” in their crimes and massacres.
“About 19,000 citizens of our people have been martyred and about 52,000 others have been injured, while there are approximately 800 missing persons — 70 percent of them children and women,” Hamdan pointed out.
Hamdan said that a staggering 45 percent of the martyrs in southern Gaza are displaced persons, which contradicts the Israeli occupation’s claims about the presence of safe zones.
“There is no safe place or safe passages in the Gaza Strip. These are lies the occupation keeps repeating and every official of the US administration keeps parroting. The entirety of Gaza, from its northernmost to southernmost areas, is targeted by the Zio-American weaponry,” Hamdan underscored.
“The war trio and losers, Netanyahu, Gantz and Gallant, achieved nothing of their aggressive goals and their ongoing Nazi war against the Gaza Strip … Their dreams and illusions will be shattered on the land of proud Gaza,” he said.
December 17, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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Over half of US adults from ages 18 to 24 believe the ongoing crisis in Gaza should be resolved by abolishing the state of Israel and turning it over to Hamas and the Palestinian people, a new poll has found.
The Harvard-Harris poll, conducted this week and released on Friday, showed that 51% of young Americans believe the Israeli state should be “ended,” compared with 32% who favor a two-state solution. Just 17% said Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians to resolve the conflict. Among all age groups, six in ten Americans call for a two-state deal, while only 19% want Israel to be given to the Palestinians.
The survey marked the latest poll showing a dramatic divide between Americans young and old on issues relating to Israel and the Jewish people amid the ongoing war between West Jerusalem and Hamas. An Economist/YouGov poll released last week found that nearly half of US adults under age 30 either believe the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany is a myth or are not sure that it happened.
Two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds in the Harvard-Harris poll said they agree that “Jews as a class … should be treated as oppressors.” By contrast, 73% of Americans in all age groups – and 91% of respondents ages 65 and older – disagreed with the anti-Jewish statement. Similarly, half of the youngest respondents said they support Hamas in the war, while 81% of overall participants favor Israel. Six in ten young adults – but only 37% of overall respondents – believe Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza.
Americans are similarly divided on identity politics. For instance, 79% of young adults believe that “white people are oppressors” and that non-white people should therefore be shown favoritism in college admissions and employment, the poll found. Among all age groups, 65% of Americans oppose such anti-white discrimination.
Just 42% of Americans approve of how US President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war, down from 45% in November, the poll showed. Only 32% believe that the country is on the “right track,” and 33% see the nation’s economy as heading in the right direction.
Such perceptions may bode poorly for Biden as he seeks reelection in 2024. The president has a net favorability rating of minus 10%, the poll showed. By comparison, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the highest favorability rating among all political figures listed in the survey, at plus 18%.
The poll found that if the election were held today, former President Donald Trump would defeat Biden by a margin of 43% to 35%, while Kennedy would garner 17% of the votes. More than seven in ten Americans believe that a vote for Biden would essentially be a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because the 81-year-old incumbent wouldn’t likely complete a second term.
December 16, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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NAZARETH – Israeli ex-detainee in Gaza, Chen Goldstein-Almog, said that she and her three children were treated respectfully and not physically harmed or maltreated during their detention by Hamas fighters.
According to The New York Times, Goldstein-Almog had long conversations with her captors, sometimes for hours. “We talked about our families and the extreme danger we all faced.”
She explained that they were mostly detained in an apartment in Gaza, but she and her children were transferred during their detention period — which lasted 7 weeks — to different apartments, tunnels, a mosque, and even a destroyed supermarket, adding that during their movement between those places, the situation was terrifying due to the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
She also said that the commander of the guards appeared educated and spoke Hebrew, pointing out that the guards taught her son 250 words in Arabic to keep him busy, brought him a notebook for study, regularly discussed with them what to eat and invited them to participate in cooking meals in kitchens.
She said that a Hamas fighter apologized to her for the killing of her husband and one of her daughters by other individuals, telling her that what had happened was wrong.
Goldstein-Almog affirmed that before her release, a guard told her “don’t go back to the Gaza envelope because we are coming back” and told her to go further.
Goldstein-Almog, 48, and her three children were captured on the first day of Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7.
They were released in late November as part of a prisoner exchange between the Hamas Movement and the Israeli occupation during the temporary humanitarian truce.
December 16, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Al-Qassam Brigades announced yesterday that its fighters had completely or partially destroyed 79 Israeli military vehicles in Gaza City over a 72-hour period.
“Our fighters have booby-trapped a tunnel entrance in the Sheikh Radwan area, and as soon as an Israeli force advanced on it, it was blown up. As a result, members of the Israeli force were killed and wounded,” the Brigades said in a statement on Telegram.
In separate statements, the Brigades said resistance fighters successfully killed two soldiers in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, and another two soldiers, with locally-made rifles northeast of the city of Khan Yunis.
“Our fighters clashed with an infantry unit consisting of six soldiers, killing and wounding them, and seized a robot they had and targeted two tanks, east of the city of Khan Yunis,” Al-Qassam said.
The resistance fighters also targeted an infantry unit consisting of 15 soldiers, killing and wounding many of them, east of the city of Khan Yunis.
The fighters targeted a military bulldozer, a Merkava tank and a military excavator east of the city of Khan Yunis and bombed a group of soldiers penetrating the northern and eastern axes of the city.
In the northern Gaza Valley, the Brigades said it had targeted Israeli command rooms in the southern axis of Gaza City with 114mm calibre short-range rockets.
Israel has intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip since the temporary truce came to an end on 1 December.
Defence Minister Yoav Galant acknowledged on Tuesday that the army has paid “very high prices” since the war on Gaza.
On Thursday, Israeli media outlets claimed that the number of military deaths has risen to 92 since the start of the ground invasion of Gaza at the end of October. The Palestinian resistance says the actual number is significantly higher but Israel does not want the public to know about the casualties as it would affect the government’s approval ratings.
December 8, 2023
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestine |
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The fair treatment of Israeli captives by Hamas has become part of the information war between Palestinians and Tel Aviv

The issue of Prisoners of War (POWs) taken captive by Hamas-led Palestinian resistance forces has become one of the key justifications for Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip.
While western audiences are often presented with the image of these groups as bloodthirsty terrorists, a closer look reveals that Hamas and other factions may have treated Israeli captives more humanely than how Israel treats Palestinian political prisoners.
While the Israeli POW issue spans eight weeks, the plight of Palestinian captives has persisted since at least 1967. There are said to be some 137 Israelis that are currently being held captive in Gaza, whom Hamas claims all are males and/or soldiers.
In the seven-day truce struck in November between Hamas and Israel, the Palestinian resistance released 108 women and children held captive in Gaza. In return, Israel was to release 300 Palestinian women and children held in detention and permit much-needed aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Stanley Cohen, a US attorney who has represented both Hamas and Hezbollah members, tells The Cradle that “the laws of war do not limit Prisoners of War to State actors.” He says that “all the laws of war apply, whether it’s state actors or non-state actors.”
This would mean that the same legal obligations on the treatment of POWs should apply to both Hamas and Israel, despite there being a greater moral expectation often placed on UN member states.
How Hamas treats Israeli POWs
Access to interviews with detainees is limited due to Israeli government restrictions on media interaction with the recently freed captives, especially since the embarrassing PR blunder in late October when one of the four Israelis unconditionally released before the truce – 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz – said at a presser that “they treated us very well” in Gaza, but had endured “hell” while being taken captive.
But despite the challenges in obtaining their full stories, certain facts stand out. Recent audio recordings quoted by Israeli media have revealed statements from freed prisoners who claim they were more fearful of Israeli actions than those by Hamas. One former detainee, criticizing the Israeli government, highlighted the lack of support and the challenges faced during their captivity:
“We were sitting in the tunnels and we were terribly afraid not that Hamas but Israel would kill us, and then they would say – Hamas killed you.”
Another former Israeli captive went further in expressing disdain for the Israeli government’s responses on and after the events of 7 October:
“The feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us. The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and were wounded. Not including the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza. You claim that there is intelligence, but the fact is that we are being shelled. My husband was separated from us three days before we returned to Israel and taken to the tunnels. And you are talking about washing the tunnels with sea water? You are shelling the route of tunnels in the exact area where they are.”
Reports on the health of detainees suggest that there was a gradual decrease in food quantity inside Gaza, with claims that prisoners lost between 10 to 15 percent of their body mass. Dr Yael Mozer-Glassberg, an Israeli pediatrician, described the children’s experience as “psychological terror,” though her account should be viewed with some healthy skepticism.
Mozer-Glassberg’s accounts are the closest thing to a detailed explanation of how the freed Israeli captives were treated. According to a report published by Haaretz, the doctor repeated the following story of two children, stating that “the older one wouldn’t eat until the younger had finished eating and felt full,” adding that “these are the kind of stories I heard from my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor.”
When reading the language she employs to describe the conditions of the former captives, it is quite apparent that her account is geared towards exaggeration and that the doctor is not a neutral source.
Conflicting claims
On the other side of the spectrum are the Hamas-released videos showing the handover of mostly Israeli detainees to the International Red Cross. The footage is characterized by high-fives, smiles, waves, hugs, and even Arabic expressions of gratitude to their captors – visuals the Israeli government dismisses as propaganda.
Government spokesperson Eylon Levy said that Hamas “releases footage of crowds terrorizing the hostages in their final moments of captivity,” stating that the videos show how the group “continues to document its own atrocities.” Levy’s portrayal was a clear exaggeration, to say the least.
Tel Aviv’s health ministry has even gone as far as to suggest POWs were administered “drugs” to make them appear happy. Yet contrary to Mozer-Glassberg’s portrayals of terror, these videos provide more direct insights into the experiences of the freed Israelis.
Emily Hand, a 9-year-old Israeli girl who was held by Hamas, was returned to her father during the recent prisoner exchanges. Her father, Thomas, who had been paraded across western media after incorrectly being informed that his daughter was killed on 7 October, stated that “she [Emily] has lost a lot of weight, from her face and body, but generally doing better than we expected.”
Thai negotiator Dr Lerpong Sayed asserted that those he helped release were well cared for, receiving shelter, clothes, food, and water, with mental support provided equally to Thai and Israeli detainees – who he said were held together. There have also been reports of friendships blooming from within the Palestinian resistance groups’ detention tunnels, one between an Israeli woman and a Thai Worker. Claims of intentional injuries during transport and a letter expressing gratitude from a released captive’s family remain contested and unverified.
Hamas alleges that Israeli airstrikes have killed around 60 Israelis they were holding captive, including their Palestinian guards, with 23 of the bodies still trapped under rubble. The Israeli army, blaming Hamas, has discovered two of these corpses.
Amid varying accounts from families and doctors, it appears that conditions in the facilities where Israeli detainees were held were unpleasant, possibly exacerbated by Israel’s cutoff of all essential services at the start of the war.
A lack of hygiene, water, food, medicine, and electricity are all realities for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza right now. If anything, the conditions that the Israeli captives faced were consistent with, if not better, than those faced by Gaza’s civilians.
How Israel mistreats Palestinian Prisoners
Unlike the Israeli detainees, freed Palestinian political prisoners have spoken directly to the international media and provided horrifying accounts of physical abuse, including torture, beatings, and even rape. According to a number of Palestinian women and children who were freed in the latest exchanges, they were threatened by Israelis not to speak out about their treatment in detention.
“There are no laws. Everything is permitted,” Lama Khater, a freed Palestinian captive, told the media. “I was led to the investigation handcuffed and blindfolded, I was threatened with being burned, I was explicitly threatened with rape and with deportation to the Gaza Strip,” she added.
Palestinian journalist Baraah Abu Ramouz, who was also freed from Israeli detention, gave the following testimony of what she witnessed:
“The situation in the prisons is devastating. The prisoners are abused. They are being constantly beaten. They’re being sexually assaulted. They are being raped. I’m not exaggerating. The prisoners are being raped.”
Mohammed Nazal had his fingers broken, his back bruised, and hands fractured by Israeli prison guards. “One week ago, we were savagely beaten with metal bars. I put my hands on my head to protect it from injury, but the soldiers did not stop until they broke my hands,” the 18-year-old freed prisoner said. Despite his clear injuries and horrifying testimony given to the media, where he said he was left lying on the floor in pain and was denied medical treatment, the Israeli authorities tried to claim he was a liar and released a video claiming he was unharmed. His testimonies and medical reports were later verified, revealing that Israel had lied and not Mohammed.
Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian icon and activist who was being held without a charge, looked shaken and weak following her release, stating:
“The circumstances in the prison are very difficult, with daily abuse against female prisoners. They are left without water or clothes, sleeping on the floor and being beaten… The Israeli authorities threatened me with [targeting] my father if I spoke about anything that happens in prison.”
Their testimonies consistently highlight that conditions inside Israeli prisons further deteriorated after 7 October. Freed detainees spoke of physical and psychological abuse, and deprivation of essentials such as food, water, medical care, and proper sleeping arrangements.
Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, Adameer reports that over 7,600 political prisoners are held in Israeli military detention, with more than 3,000 of these civilians captured since 7 October – far surpassing the total number of Israelis held in Gaza.
The overlooked Palestinian struggle
Tel Aviv’s claims that these Palestinians are all “convicted terrorists” is a farce. Israel’s military court system maintains a near 100% conviction rate for Palestinians, while thousands more are held under what is called “administrative detention” — jargon for those individuals detained without any charge. One testimony, which I recorded last year, came from now 22-year-old Abdul-Khaliq Burnat, who told a harrowing story from when he was held in Israel’s notoriously brutal al-Moskobiyya detention center:
“They shouted at me, beat me with their fists, slapped me and used tools. I was restricted with a plastic zip tie which cut into my wrists, whilst I was strapped to a chair in a stress position for 20 hours of the day … for three days they had me in a smelly, tiny cell; it was so cold in there and there wasn’t any light, I was stripped of all my clothes for the whole time and tied up naked, they didn’t give me any food and I couldn’t even use the bathroom.”
During his detention in May of 2021, Abdul-Khaliq says that he was informed daily by Israeli interrogators about how many women and children were being killed in Gaza at that time. His captors then brought his then 17-year-old brother Mohammed to the same detention center and beat him so severely that he was hospitalized on three separate occasions.
Mohammed Burnat still languishes in Israeli jail, where he has been held without a charge since his 2021 arrest. Abdul-Khaliq, who was first held captive for 13 months, at the age of 17, has again been taken captive by Israeli forces following the 7 October operation, and is currently being held in administrative detention.
When taking into consideration that the plight of Palestinian political prisoners represents one of the most important issues in contemporary Palestinian society, one can begin to understand the rationale and strategic thinking behind the resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation to capture Israeli POWs.
Since 1967, Israel has detained over 1 million Palestinians, including tens of thousands of children, according to the UN.
Cases of torture, sexual abuse, and psychological trauma have been well documented throughout decades of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and detention of its people, yet this has not received a fraction of the media attention afforded to the Israelis imprisoned only two months ago.
December 7, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Israel’s plans to flood the resistance’s tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater are part of its “psychological warfare” tactics and are unrealistic, retired Jordanian Colonel and military expert, Mohamed Al-Muqabla, has said.
During an interview with Quds Press yesterday, Al-Muqabla said Israeli occupation forces are “engaging in psychological warfare against the resistance and the people of Gaza. They are constantly discussing plans and tools that could be used to neutralise the effectiveness of the tunnels, weaken the resistance, and undermine its popular support.”
He added: “For the past two months, the Israeli occupation has been unable to discover the main tunnel entrances, despite having sensitive devices. All they have discovered are secondary tunnel entrances, which are often booby-trapped. The previous occupation’s talk about pumping gas into the tunnels to kill the resistance fighters was easier for them than using water, but for two months they have done nothing because they do not know the reality of the tunnels, which are not connected, and therefore the step of flooding the tunnels with water is unrealistic.
December 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | Hamas, Israel, Palestine |
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GAZA – The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced US president Joe Biden for adopting the Israeli narrative that accuses Palestinian resistance fighters of committing sexual assaults on October 7.
In a statement on Tuesday, Hamas said Biden’s sexual violence claims against its fighters reflected his moral decline and his adoption of Israeli propaganda.
Hamas said that Biden was “supposed to have a minimum level of objectivity and avoid repeating empty and baseless accusations and adopting cheap Zionist propaganda.”
“Repeating such a blatant lie is a Zionist behavior aimed at covering up the ethnic cleansing and genocidal crimes that are being committed by the criminal Nazi occupied army against our people, with American cover and weapons,” Hamas underscored.
Hamas also described Biden’s remarks as “an attempt to mislead the public opinion after the world has seen the good treatment the detainees received from the resistance.”
The Movement called on the international media outlets to side with the truth and debunk the new Zio-American claims against the Palestinian resistance, as they did before when they exposed the lies of beheading children and using Al-Shifa Hospital as a command and control center.
December 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hamas, Israel, Joe Biden, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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