War
- Thread starter Creeperpark
- Start date
GenghisKush
Well-known member
Hamas leader’s torture tactics revealed in IDF tunnel raid
A file found by Israeli troops in a former HQ in Gaza shows what happened to the former Hamas commander Mahmoud Ishtiwi after his arrestAnshel Pfeffer, Jerusalem
Sunday March 10 2024, 8.35pm GMT, The Times
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, tortured one of his commanders, recovered files show
LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT/GETTY
Eight years after his execution, the name of Mahmoud Ishtiwi is still whispered in the Gaza Strip by those in Hamas who oppose the iron rule of Yahya Sinwar, its chief in the territory.
Executions within Hamas are hardly rare, but that of Ishtiwi was different. He was no ordinary operative accused of “immoral” acts or passing on information to the Israelis but the commander of the Zeitoun battalion, one of the battle-hardened units in Hamas, and came from a family whose members had all been prominently active in the movement for decades.
Unlike other suspects who were quickly executed, he remained under arrest for more than a year after allegations of embezzlement were raised. His family made entreaties for his release, but in vain: he was executed in 2016.
Mahmoud Ishtiwi was imprisoned for more than a year before he was executed by soldiers
YOUSEF MASOUD/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY
It was a signal from Sinwar, then still a relatively new leader, that he would brook no opposition in the ranks. Sinwar, now seen as the mastermind of the October 7 attack on Israel, has so far eluded capture in Gaza but new allegations have emerged of how viciously he treated his perceived enemies within the terrorist group.
A few weeks ago Israeli troops operating in the Strip uncovered a cache of documents in a Hamas headquarters. These included a file containing documents that, according to Israeli intelligence, are connected to Ishtiwi’s lengthy interrogation. Some are notes written by Ishtiwi himself, describing the torture he was undergoing to get him to confess to allegations that he had not only embezzled money but also passed on intelligence to the Israelis.
In the statement after his execution Hamas said only that he had been sentenced to death “for behavioural and moral violations [a euphemism for homosexuality] to which he confessed”.
In notes written by Ishtiwi in an exercise book he also mentions this threat, but suggests that it was a forced confession. “The fear gripped me without end. I know that I’m lying to who is at the top of the pyramid,” he wrote. “I know that Muhammad Sinwar [Yahya’s younger brother, a senior Hamas commander] is renowned for his cruelty. He almost buried me in Gaza, in the Shati camp.”
The files were found in tunnels which the IDF say Hamas have used to hide and travel — this image shows what the Israelis say is Sinwar in a tunnel
ISRAELI ARMY/AFP VIA GETT
He detailed his torture: “They would beat me 400-500 times … they held me blindfolded for five days … there were days in which I was beaten for 20 hours, and sometimes 48 hours … I was suspended by my arms and legs, swinging while four men whipped me … I confessed more than once under torture.”
The file found in Gaza also contains a letter that the Ishtiwi family wrote to Ismail Haniyeh, the leader-in-exile of Hamas’s political wing, describing how he was taken to an open grave and told: “This is your tomb. We will pour concrete on you until it reaches your mouth — and it won’t be the first time we’ve done this.”
Sinwar, 61, was in the mid-1980s one of the early members of al-Majd, a secretive group enforcing moral standards in Gaza. When Hamas was officially founded in 1987, al-Majd became the internal security department of its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.
In his early years in the movement, Sinwar’s focus was initially on sources of “immorality” in Gaza, burning down video-cassette rental shops, but he quickly moved on to counterintelligence, tracking down Gazans suspected of working with Israeli intelligence.
In 1989 he was arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of four collaborators. In prison he continued his role of internal enforcer and is believed to have ordered the execution of fellow prisoners he suspected of collaboration, although these cases against him were never proven.
In 2011 he was released as part of the deal with Israel in which 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for one Israeli soldier. In 2017 he was elected as Hamas’s political leader in Gaza, winning re-election in 2021.
Hamas Commander, Accused of Theft and Gay Sex, Is Killed by His Own
Hamas Commander, Accused of Theft and Gay Sex, Is Killed by His Own -…
archived 16 Oct 2023 11:14:00 UTC
The funeral of Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a former commander in the armed wing of Hamas, at a mosque in the Gaza Strip in February. Credit Wissam Nassar for The New York Times
By Diaa Hadid and Majd Al Waheidi
March 1, 2016
GAZA CITY — The death of Mahmoud Ishtiwi had all the trappings of a telenovela: sex, torture and embezzlement in Gaza’s most venerated and secretive institution, the armed wing of Hamas.
Mr. Ishtiwi, 34, was a commander from a storied family of Hamas loyalists who, during the 2014 war with Israel, was responsible for 1,000 fighters and a network of attack tunnels. Last month, his former comrades executed him with three bullets to the chest.
Adding a layer of scandal to the story, he was accused of moral turpitude, by which Hamas meant homosexuality. And there were whispers that he had carved the word “zulum” — wronged — into his body in a desperate kind of last testament.
His death has become the talk of the town in the conservative quarters of Gaza, the Palestinian coastal territory, endlessly discussed in living rooms, at checkpoints and in cabs. But to astute Gaza observers, this was more substantive than a soap opera.
Mr. Ishtiwi, who is survived by two wives and three children, was not the first member of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, to be killed by his own. What was unprecedented was the way his relatives spoke out publicly about it.
The family was considered Hamas royalty for having sheltered leaders wanted by Israel, including Mohammed Deif, the Qassam commander in chief lionized by Palestinians. Mr. Ishtiwi’s mother even sent Mr. Deif, who has lost an eye and limbs but has survived repeated assassination attempts by Israel, a tearful video message in which she entreated him to release her son.
Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a writer close to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, said the situation spotlighted shifts since Yehya Sinwar was elected in 2012 to represent Qassam in Hamas’s political wing, a role akin to defense minister. Mr. Sinwar’s actions, he said, showed that even senior figures were not sacrosanct.
“He is harsher than other leaders — he wants his army to be pure,” Mr. Madhoun said in an interview. “Those who are in the Qassam are the most important people in Gaza. There is a need, they say, to show that these people are not untouchable.”
Qassam put out a statement on Feb. 7 announcing Mr. Ishtiwi’s execution, but its spokesman, and those of Hamas over all, have refused to comment since. A senior Hamas official, however, confirmed some facts and the broad contours of the case on the condition that he not be identified, saying he did not want to be seen as meddling in an affair considered embarrassing for the Hamas movement and tragic for the family.
Human Rights Watch investigated the death; the group and an international aid worker who closely followed the case have offered details. Mr. Ishtiwi’s mother and 11 of his siblings were also interviewed for this article, alongside two Gaza-based human rights activists who followed parts of the story.
Mr. Ishtiwi’s mother, right, and one of his sisters stood by a poster of him at their home on Feb. 17. He is also survived by two wives and three children. The family was once considered Hamas royalty for sheltering leaders wanted by Israel.Credit...Wissam Nassar for The New York Times
Mr. Ishtiwi was 19 when he joined Qassam, following three of his five brothers into the force. One, Ahmad, was killed in an Israeli strike in 2003.
He became a commander in Zeitoun, his own gritty neighborhood in Gaza City. During the 2014 war, Israeli bombs smashed his family’s apartment building and his second wife’s house.
It was five months after that deadly battle subsided, on Jan. 21, 2015, that Mr. Ishtiwi was summoned to an interrogation by Qassam military intelligence officials. Officers doing a kind of after-action investigation of the war suspected that he had diverted money allocated to his unit for weapons. “Do you have money?” he was asked, according to relatives. “How do you spend it?”
He admitted that he had kept money meant for the brigades, and thus, said his sister Buthaina, 27, “began the telenovela of torture.”
The Hamas official said Mr. Ishtiwi’s quick confession had aroused suspicion that he was hiding something bigger.
A dragnet investigation began, drawing in Mr. Ishtiwi’s soldiers. Qassam officials found a man who claimed he had had sex with Mr. Ishtiwi and provided dates and locations. They concluded that the missing money had been used either to pay for sex or to keep the man quiet. If Israeli intelligence officials knew Mr. Ishtiwi was gay, the officials surmised, perhaps he had given them information in exchange for keeping a secret that, if uncovered, would have made him an outcast in his society.
Rumors rippled out that Mr. Ishtiwi had given Israeli forces the coordinates for an Aug. 20, 2014, assassination attempt on Mr. Deif, which killed one of the elusive man’s wives and their infant son. But no proof ever emerged that Mr. Ishtiwi had done so.
On Feb. 15, 2015, two of Mr. Ishtiwi’s siblings visited him at a Qassam base.
“Mahmoud, we heard the things they are saying about you! Is it true?” his sister Samia, now 39, recalled asking. Mr. Ishtiwi nodded yes.
Suspicious, Samia turned to the two guards flanking him. “ ‘Is he agreeing because you filled him with beatings?’ ” she recalled asking. “They said, ‘He confessed without us giving him even a slap.’ ”
But then, she said, she saw her brother raise his hand, revealing the word “zulum” written in pen three times on his palm. She did not have a photo to prove this.
Still, Mr. Ishtiwi sought to reassure her. “Let the brothers take their procedures,” Samia recalled him saying of Hamas. “Put a summer watermelon in your stomach,” an expression that means “don’t worry.”
Video
Mother of Prisoner Begged to See Her Son
Samira Ishtiwi sent a tearful video message to Mohammad Deif, who also goes by Abu Khaled, to release her son, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, sometimes known as Abu al-Majd.
In his next meeting with relatives, on March 1, Mr. Ishtiwi told his brother Hussam that he had been tortured since his fourth day in detention. Six weeks later, when his wives visited, they sneaked out a note, of which Human Rights Watch shared a photograph. “They nearly killed me,” it says. “I confessed to things I have never done in my life.”
By June 7, when Samia visited her brother at a Qassam base near Gaza City’s used car market, Mr. Ishtiwi “looked destroyed,” she recalled.
“I asked, ‘Why are you crying, brother?’ ” she said. “And he said, ‘I have been wronged, wronged.’ ”
Relatives said Mr. Ishtiwi had told them he had been suspended from a ceiling for hours on end, for days in a row. He was whipped, and guards blasted loud music into his cell, banishing sleep.
Samia said he had raised his trouser leg to show her that he had carved the word “zulum” into his skin with a nail, as a message in case he was killed. This could not be confirmed.
She also said Mr. Ishtiwi had given her two pages crammed with writing, describing the abuse and proclaiming his innocence. The family would not share the letter, but several of Mr. Ishtiwi’s siblings said that it listed episodes in which rival commanders had made errors that led to the killing of Qassam fighters in the 2014 war, and that it accused them of orchestrating his detention.
Buthaina and Samia said they had shown the letter to Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, at his home on June 15. (Mr. Haniyeh did not respond to requests for comment.) They said they had asked Mr. Haniyeh if their brother could have a lawyer. No. Red Cross visits? No. An internal committee to review his case? Perhaps.
They returned on July 2 with dozens of relatives and neighbors and tried to pressure Mr. Haniyeh by chanting outside his home against Hamas, a rare event. Police officers hit some of the demonstrators, people who were there said, and a senior Hamas spokesman publicly accused them of being violent.
After a sleepless night, Buthaina posted about the situation on Facebook, breaking months of silence. “We are children of this movement,” she said. “We thought that we would resolve the matter between us.” Instead, she said, “The trust was broken.”
Aug. 10 was the last time the family saw Mr. Ishtiwi.
Later, his mother sent her emotional eight-minute video to Mr. Deif, the Qassam chief, begging him to save Mr. Ishtiwi’s life. She reminded him that she had sheltered him at great personal risk. She pleaded, “Free my son!”
Mr. Ishtiwi’s family continued to press officials for his freedom. The last such meeting, with a senior Hamas preacher and two other men at the family’s rented home in Zeitoun, lasted until 2 a.m. on Feb. 7.
It was later that very day, after Mr. Ishtiwi said afternoon prayers, that he was killed.
So Hai
Well-known member
There is nothing original about this piece - nothing. To me it shows the irony of having spent your life as hyped grafitti artist, living and breathing propellant gas, and then trying to use the brain you had.
GenghisKush
Well-known member
Hamas has never wanted lasting peace or basic human rights or anything from Israel, besides non-existence. As you've mentioned Hamas are on record about this -- recently and in their founding documents.
Imagine how different the situation could be if half of the left does not go all-in on Palestinian Nationalism instead of Universal Rights and Dignity and instead realizes that the force brutalizing, oppressing, exploiting, and betraying the people of Palestine is Hamas. I think there might be far fewer dead Palestinians and far less suffering altogether.
So enjoy your new fairy tales.
Look out.
I tried that.
I am now a hypocrite and warmonger.
Good luck with this crowd.
Moose is the guy advocating violence and giving shit to the pacifists.
Get the truth out there!!
It certainly diverts funds that enhance lives, family, and homes.
Since Hamas is made up of Palestinian resistance that lives inside of a 20+ year long blockade where they do not have any autonomy or rights.
Feb 7th 2024 - Hamas called for a 4.5 month truce and release of hostages. Israel called it "delusional" lol.
The news timeline is dominated by the word ceasefire it's hard to search up stuff but I'm pretty sure this isn't the only time Hamas specifically has called for a ceasefire, especially since Oct 7.
Some more historical examples;
how are they gonna have elections while living under a blockade with brutal sanctions? they have to smuggle KFC and basic goods into gaza through tunnels for fucks sake.
if they held new elections (which i am in favor of) and hamas once again wins and with no foul play, what then?
utterly deranged genocide apologiaif Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire, then i guess they are going to give up their weapons & attacks too....right? no more rockets, no mortar shells falling, nobody getting cut with knives ...this has got to go both ways, or that dog aint gonna hunt. they HAD a chance for a two-state solution and turned it down. waiting for "perfect" means you'll never get "pretty good".
coming from you, that's a compliment. thanks...
You do realize that that style of arts ambition is to get a reaction.
He obviously succeeded with you, reading your post you do not argue the basic truth of his message you merely attack the messenger.
Fuck war.
do you normally advocate for oppressed groups to lay down their arms and give up to their oppressors?coming from you, that's a compliment. thanks...
african slaves shouldnt have revolted and killed their oppressive slave masters. they should have just accepted their new reality.
native americans should have laid down their weapons. freaking savages.
Do you normally advocate for oppressed groups to resort to terrorism; murder and rape of civilians including children? Do you advocate for oppressed groups to then resort to hiding amongst their own populations, hence making them a target and increasing further civilian casualties? Do you advocate for people to distort their religious texts in order to justify their atrocities?
Yes, I am aware that some of that applies to Israel as well, which is why I am not taking sides.
