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Tuesday, 20th January 2009
Further evidence is surfacing that, far from having enhanced its reputation in the eyes of the people of Gaza, Hamas has been shown up as brutal thugs to their own people but cowards who run away when confronted by a proper army. The Jerusalem Post reports: From the perspective of the people of Gaza, Hamas simply abandoned the arena and fled into the crowded neighborhoods. Once there, since the second day of the campaign, Hamas fighters have hurriedly shed their uniforms. Many of them simply deserted and returned to their families, taking their guns with them. In some locations, Hamas prevented civilians from leaving neighborhoods that were in the line of fire; overall, it invested great effort in blocking civilians who wished to flee to the south of the Strip.
Hamas forcefully appropriated the few international aid deliveries, hijacked ambulances in order to move from one location to another, and carried out public executions of Fatah activists. In many cases, Hamas fighters showed ‘forgiveness’ and made do with shooting the Fatah men in the legs.
All of this was going on while the entire political leadership of Hamas was hiding in the basements of hospitals such as Shifa in Gaza City or Kamal Adwan near Beit Lahiya. Sporadically, they released videos from their places of hiding. The rather pathetic impression they created is that of a leadership that abandoned its population and was busy trying to save its own skin.
Khaled abu Toameh reports that since the ceasefire, Hamas has been carrying out massacres of Palestinians: A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added. The official said that the perpetrators belonged to Hamas's armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, and to the movement's Internal Security Force. According to the official, at least three of the detainees had their eyes put out by their interrogators, who accused them of providing Israel with wartime information about the location of Hamas militiamen and officials.
Eyewitnesses said that Hamas militiamen had turned a number of hospitals and schools into temporary detention centers where dozens of Fatah members and supporters were being held on suspicion of helping Israel during the war. The eyewitnesses said that a children's hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into ‘torture centers.’
A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas's house-arrest orders. ‘What's happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah,’ he said. ‘Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?’
And where now is the BBC or Channel Four News? Where is the UN, or Human Rights Watch? Or don’t murdered or tortured Palestinians count when it’s other Palestinians doing the killing? (Don't all answer at once).
Now here’s how Reuters reports some Gazan reactions to the war:
The gains and losses of Hamas’s policy are a major point of discussion among Gazans, many of whom instinctively support Palestinian resistance against Israel, but question the cost in lives and destruction of the past three weeks. ‘Rockets must end. What did we gain from them?’ said Lama, a secretary for a Gaza company, who would not give her full name. ‘Now Hamas is negotiating a truce. They were given an offer to renew it in December but they refused. Now after thousands of casualties, how does Hamas explain that?’ she asked.
On the other hand, the main lesson of the war for other Gazans is to find more efficient ways of killing Jews: ‘I have always been a supporter of rockets and all forms of resistance,’ said Aziz, the taxi driver. "But maybe Hamas needs to renew martyrdom operations instead,’ he said, referring to suicide attacks. Hassan, the father of five, said there was little point in firing rockets if they were not effective. ‘Rockets -- I think this issue needs to be stopped for sometime and restudied,’ he said. ‘Once we have a missile that can reach the heart of Tel Aviv and blow up a building, maybe they can resume fire.’
In the midst of all this derangement, not least in Britain, what a relief to find one sane, decent observer – and one who knows what he’s talking about. Interviewed here on the BBC during the fighting, Col Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and military adviser to the British government, said Israel had no choice but to defend its own people by such an operation. Asked about the reportedly high toll of civilian casualties, Col Kemp said this: I don’t think there’s ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.
When you look at the number of civilian casualties that have been caused, that perhaps doesn’t sound too credible: I would accept that. However, Hamas -- the enemy that they are fighting -- has been trained by Iran and Hezbollah to fight among the people and use the civilian population in Gaza as a human shield; and Hamas factor in the use of the civilian population as a major part of their defensive plan. So even though, as I say, the IDF is taking enormous steps to reduce these civilian casualties it’s impossible, it’s impossible to reduce these civilian casualties when the enemy is using them as a shield.
Can you imagine British government ministers or Tory front-benchers putting Israel’s actions in such rational, factual and moral perspective, or giving the IDF such an encomium? Exactly. The Britain which Col Kemp has devoted his life to defending is dying before our eyes.
