The Washington Post and NY Times both report that Hamas has executed two men. The Post’s headine correctly puts the term ‘Collaborator’ in quotes. Given the lack of due process we really don’t know if the men were gulity as charged or if they were simply inconvenient for one reason or another as noted back in 2003.
The Palestinian Authority, established in 1994, now puts suspected collaborators on trial. But vigilante killings are also still common, and Palestinians have slain more than 70 in the past three years, Mr. Eid said.
An Israeli security official insisted that most of those killed were not informers, and Mr. Eid confirmed that many of the killings were actually score-settlings that are passed off as executions of collaborators.
However both made the same mistake. Here’s the Post:
The killings also came amid persistent tension in Gaza, where the Israeli army is continuing military operations to try to stop rocket fire into Israeli communities. They marked the first time the Hamas government has executed “collaborators” since the movement took control of Gaza in 2007.
Well actually there weren’t the first killing of collaborators by the Hamas government since 2007. During Cast Lead Ethan Bronner and Taghreed el-Khodary of the NY Times reported:
In the fourth-floor orthopedic section, a woman in her late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending to transfer him to another ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head.
Mr. Hajoj, like five others killed at the hospital this way in 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges; when Israel destroyed the prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their trials were short-circuited.
A crowd at the hospital showed no mercy after the shooting, which was widely observed. A man in his 30s mocked a woman expressing horror at the scene.
Given that Shifa served as headquarters for Hamas’s leadership during Cast Lead:
During a cabinet meeting a week ago, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said senior Hamas officials found refuge in the hospital basement because they know Israel would not target it, due to the patients in the upper floors. Palestinian sources told Haaretz that not all the senior Hamas leaders are hiding in one place.
I can’t believe that the uniformed executioners did their dirty work without authorization.
So this week’s executions for “collaboration” were the first since 2007 if you’re only counting executions that were carried out after Hamas actually went to the trouble of first convening kangaroo courts to convict the unfortunates. That’s not to say that there weren’t other executions carried out with the approval of Hamas during the past three years.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
