Hamas’ use of cruelly choreographed hostage release ceremonies — where hostages who have been tortured and starved for over a year are forced to thank their captors for their “good treatment” — show the Jew-hating, anti-working-class character of the Nazi-like group. It’s using the releases to promote the myth that it is broadly supported by the people of Gaza.
On Feb. 20 Hamas handed over the bodies of four of those it kidnapped after parading their caskets on stage. Then the bodies of Shiri Bibas, and her two children — Kfir, less than 9 months old when he was grabbed, and Ariel, only 4 years old at the time — and 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz were handed to the Red Cross.
Two days later Hamas released six living hostages, including Avera Mengistu, an Israeli Jew of Ethiopian descent, and Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin Arab citizen of Israel, who have been held by Hamas for over 10 years. The others were kidnapped Oct. 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led pogrom that slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel.
In a sick message, Hamas put labels on the caskets of Shiri Bibas and Lifshitz that called the Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom their “date of arrest.” It turned out it wasn’t even Bibas in the coffin. The next day Hamas sent the correct remains.
The Bibas’ family and Lifshitz were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Hamas claimed that the mother and two sons were killed by Israeli bombing in Gaza in November 2023. But forensic examinations by the Israel Defense Forces showed that Jew-hating thugs killed the two children with “their bare hands” and also murdered Shiri Bibas.
Lifshitz, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, was a well-known peace activist and decadeslong supporter of Palestinian rights. For years he drove every week to the Erez crossing on the Gaza-Israel border to pick up sick Palestinians and drive them to Israeli hospitals.
He was shot in the arm while holding the handle of his safe room when the terrorist thugs attacked Oct. 7 and then held captive in Gaza by Islamic Jihad.
Hamas: Kill Jews, destroy Israel
Why shoot and hold hostage a man in his 80s known for his defense of Palestinian rights? Because to Hamas and its allies all Jews are evil. The objective of the Nazi-like group is to kill all the Jews or drive them from the region, stop any possibility of solidarity between Jews and Arabs and destroy Israel.
That also explains their cruel treatment of Mengistu and al-Sayed. Both men have psychological disorders and were seized by Hamas after wandering into Gaza.
Al-Sayed was the only hostage not put on display during the choreographed “ceremonies.” Hamas claimed he was released privately “out of respect” for his “Palestinian roots.”
Sayed’s family says that’s nonsense. “They didn’t want the world to see him because it would expose their lies,” his father, Sha’ban al-Sayed, told the press. “He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t have a voice. He can’t remember anything. It’s like he hadn’t been with other human beings.”
Photos of the latest rally posted on Hamas’ internet sites — showing hundreds, not thousands, of participants — express the fact that support for Hamas is not what it claims. Palestinians there are all too aware of how Hamas has destroyed any semblance of democracy in Gaza and used them as human shields.
“The Gaza Strip population that supported the murder, rape and burning of our brothers and sisters, and still supports Hamas killers and their goals, has lost the right to remain there,” the Feb. 20 issue of the daily Israel Hayom claimed.
That echoes Hamas’ claim that it speaks and acts for all Palestinians in Gaza. In fact, the reactionary bourgeois group narrowly won election in 2006 after Israel pulled out its citizens and soldiers there and handed the territory over to Palestinian Authority rule. Hamas then crushed all opposition in bloody fighting and installed a brutal dictatorship.
Is Hamas popular in Gaza?
Hamas broke strikes by trade unions, restricted women’s rights and with the complicity and funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency imposed a schooling system that indoctrinated children in Jew-hatred.
In spite of that, Gaza residents found ways to protest against Hamas before and after Oct. 7.
Israel’s I24 TV News broadcast a Feb. 19 interview with Khaled, a Palestinian living in Gaza who speaks for many others in opposing Hamas. They blurred his face and distorted his voice to prevent Hamas reprisals.
Most people in Gaza “do not want a radical, oppressive, Islamist rule that terrorizes the residents in the name of God,” he said. “They want to live alongside the people of Israel.” Many long for a return to before Oct. 7, 2023, when thousands of Gazans worked in Israel, often developing relations with Israeli co-workers.
“Hamas terrorizes anyone who openly opposes it, or who expresses opposition on social media or just on the street,” he said. “People have been tortured and beaten by Hamas operatives.”
According to Khaled, Hamas’ base of support is its 30,000 or 40,000 “operatives” and a similar number of its government operatives, out of a population of more than 2 million.
That doesn’t mean that most Palestinians in Gaza understand that Jew-hatred and pogroms are built into what Hamas is, and that Hamas is a deadly threat not only to them, but to working people across the Middle East.
But if Israel succeeds in dismantling Hamas and its structures, it would remove the central obstacle to opening the door to working people in Gaza, Israel and beyond — Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Arab, Druze and more — finding ways to work together.
“There needs to be a people-to-people dialogue,” Khaled said.