Hamas’ Torture Videos – Commentary Magazine

It's difficult to shock an Israeli military interrogator, but Yahya Sinwar did it. A former Shin Bet investigator was once asked what he remembered about the late Hamas leader's interrogations decades ago, and he replied that it was Sinwar's admission that he had forced a Palestinian to kill his own brother alive buried. Sinwar had feared that the man was “collaborating” with Israel.

“His eyes were full of joy as he told us this story,” Israeli Michael Koubi told the Associated Press.

Sinwar's nickname ended up being the Butcher of Khan Younis. Which meant he was slaughtering Palestinians.

Koubi's story came to mind this week when the IDF released hours of footage of Hamas officers torturing Palestinian civilians. The footage was recovered in Gaza and received much more press outside the United States this week than it did here at home. Journalists and activists have asked why this is so.

Koubi's conversation with Sinwar all those years ago provides an answer: We all already knew this about Hamas. But the American media (and to some extent Western media more broadly) and the progressive activist class have chosen sides in the war between Israel and Hamas – and have done so with their eyes wide open. The film of Hamas torturing gay men won't change the minds of anyone who camped at a tentifada or marched through the city streets chanting “From the river to the sea.”

The press is therefore reluctant to remind the world that so many of them have happily sided with the most evil people on the planet.

The videos have important historical value as evidence of what we cannot pretend we don't know. The Daily Mail describes some of its contents. A few examples:

“The harrowing videos show male prisoners with bags over their heads, tied to the floor and ceiling in painful positions.”

“Men writhe in agony as they are beaten on the soles of their feet with sticks.”

“An interrogator lies in a chair, arms folded behind his head, in front of a chained prisoner who is hanging from the ceiling by his arms.”

“In another film, there is a man wearing a red sack over his head, tied so clumsily that he can barely put one foot on the ground. Later, a kidnapper appears to brutally choke the man.”

A man from Gaza (it is not clear whether he appears in any of the videos) told the newspaper that he had been kidnapped and tortured by Hamas thugs every few years since they discovered he was gay.

In addition to gay Palestinians, Hamas's most popular torture targets appear to be those considered suspected “collaborators.” An Israeli intelligence officer spoke of people being “electrocuted on electricity poles or dragged from a vehicle by a chain until they died.” Some victims had plastic melted onto their bodies.

It wasn't just gays and people with Jewish contacts who were kidnapped and tortured by Hamas; the same applied to suspected adulterers. Maybe one of the American activists in the Handmaid's Tale costume could spare a tear from the victims of the actual dystopian government from hell. But unfortunately that would be the same torture that many of them and their comrades advocate.

That's the story here; that's that Why. We don't hear much about the videos of Hamasniks doing what one Gaza-born activist called “a fundamental part of Hamas' governing strategy.” Because It is a fundamental part of Hamas's governance strategy. To acknowledge this is to acknowledge that no one cares less about Palestinians than legions of so-called “pro-Palestinian activists” in the West. It means acknowledging that many Americans are drawn not to the justice of a cause but to displays of murderous indifference to life.

Likewise, these are not skeletons in Sinwar's closet. They are the foundation of his life and career. They are the reason for each of his promotions, for his choice to ultimately represent Hamas to the world and to the Palestinians in Gaza. Discussing these videos means confronting the fact that we in the West have a serious problem and have no strategy to reclaim the principles of liberal democracy before the Sinwar generation buries those principles alive.