Israel Matzav

'Hundreds' arrested in Gaza as 'collaborators'

The Christian Science Monitor reports - sympathetically - on the arrest of 'hundreds' of supposed 'collaborators' with Israel in the Gaza Strip. While many of those 'collaborators' allegedly undertook to help Israel in return for their relatives being admitted to Israeli hospitals for medical treatment (a claim we hear all the time, but which I frankly find not believable), what the Monitor finds 'shocking' is that the top echelons of 'Palestinian society' are involved in 'collaborating.'

The campaign to root out spies for Israel has near unanimous support in Gaza. Nearly everyone agrees that collaboration is a serious problem and the spies should be found and brought to justice (the death penalty is widely supported for collaborators). And few are surprised that poor Gazans who need medical treatment outside the enclave would provide information in return for permission to travel. [And therefore deserve the death penalty? CiJ]

What has shocked people, and caused worry, was the arrests of doctors, engineers, and even members of the Hamas government, who are reported to be collaborators.

“I don’t trust anyone anymore,” says Ihab El Helu, a nut seller in Gaza City’s market. “After this campaign we discovered some of the most respected people in society were collaborating with Israel. So who can we trust anymore? If the elite and intellectuals are involved, who else? Who is not involved?”

But nothing has been discovered or proven. Most of these cases have nothing to go on other than the fact that 'someone' turned them in. Eventually, they will all be tortured into signing 'confessions' (the Monitor hints at that but glosses over it) and they will all be put to death although many of them may not have even collaborated. We don't know how many of these people really are 'collaborators' and how many were turned in by vindictive spouses or angry relatives or acquaintances.

On the other hand, one cannot be surprised by the fact that the Strip's intellectuals are willing to work against the Hamas 'government.' Perhaps if Hamas had used the international aid that it received and continues to receive to build decent medical centers - so that people don't have to go to Israel or Egypt for treatment - rather than using it to create an Islamist terror state, doctors and other intelligentsia of the society would not feel the need to work against Hamas by any way possible, including 'collaborating' with Israel.

The picture at the top is a 2006 execution that took place in Samaria. The person lying on the ground is the 'collaborator,' the white bag standing over him and spitting on him is his mother. Details of that execution (which was carried out by the 'moderates' of the 'Palestinian Authority') are here.

Labels: collaborators, Hamas

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:41 PM