Life in Gaza Living Under Hamas

The folks in Gaza have been busy creating monsters for the past 50 years.  They may have intended to create monsters that would be willing to go after Jews and destroy Israel.  But it would appear that the monsters have turned on anyone who disagrees with them.  Hence the term, “monsters”.  You can never quite trust them to control their hate and only direct it at those you created them to hate.

Read this article about life in Gaza, then give thanks to the Lord that most of us live in America where we can say bad things about Democrats in charge but still sleep at night knowing we won’t be dragged out of bed, tortured and imprisoned.

Another example of the cancerous blight that Islam is.  It creates nightmares and misery everywhere it takes hold.  America should wake up...but we won’t because too many Americans believe that all religions are peaceful.

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I was born in Gaza Strip in the late 1990s, one of six children. At the time, the Palestinian Authority was the ruling party. My father, like most people in Gaza, was sick of the PA's corruption and was waiting for any alternative. Hamaspromised "change and reform" and they won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. One year later, I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Hamas gunmen were fighting Fatah, and they ended up killing of more than 600 Palestinians. It became clear very quickly that Hamas was not the "change and reform" that we hoped for.

To silence dissent, Hamas terrorized the citizens of Gaza. On the way to the Dar-Alarqam school I attended in the al-Shujaiya neighborhood near the Israeli border, a group of masked men carrying Kalashnikovs would check each car. At the end of the year, masked men opened offices in our school to promote Hamas's military camps and register students.

I graduated and began my studies at the Islamic University of Gaza, along with future Hamas leaders and current members. All art classes were replaced with radical Islamic teachings, and the elections of the student councils and clubs were only open to Hamas members, who hoarded all the privileges and distributed all the grants between themselves.

A huge social gap opened between the wealthy elite who belong to Hamas and the rest of the population who were increasingly living in driving poverty. Public sector jobs were limited to Hamas members, and taxes were increasing on necessities day by day, even as the cost of living skyrocketed.

Many of us could no longer bear it. I was one of them.

Though we knew dissenters were subject to imprisonment, torture, and even murder, in 2019, a few of us decided to join forces and form a protest to voice our opposition to Hamas. We called it the "We Want to Live" demonstration. Our demonstration elicited an extreme reaction by Hamas. They violently cracked down on the protests and we were all arrested.

Voicing dissent was not an option. Hamas has a no tolerance policy for criticism or objections to any of its policies. Even discussion is forbidden Any journalist who objects or criticizes a policy is suspended and investigated. Demonstrations are strictly prohibited. Freedom of speech in Gaza is a fantasy. The dirtiest tool Hamas uses to silence citizens is character assassination through online campaigns accusing dissenters of working for hostile bodies or committing immoral acts. Hamas also routinely breaks into the homes of people deemed disloyal and humiliates them in front of their family and neighbors.

I observed all this with growing horror as a student. And as Hamas's oppression of the Palestinian citizens of Gaza increased, the quality of life deteriorated. Hamas's aggression toward Israel resulted in fewer and fewer job permits and limits on the electricity in Gaza, which we only got for eight hours a day. The economy cratered. Social and economic conditions collapsed.

I will never forget my first day in jail—walking up the steps listening to screams of my colleagues, most of them fellow students, who had been arrested before me. I was held under arrest for 21 days and subjected to various types of torture. I was beaten with batons and sprayed with cold water in the late winter night hours. My friends didn't fare much better. A Christian friend was in the next cell and I could hear them screaming at him, "You are a Christian and you don't like the situation? Then go to another country!"

After we were released, most of those who participated in the demonstrations emigrated away from Gaza. There was no hope for any change in the current situation. We suffered ongoing harassment by Hamas members. Some died trying to leave, like Tamer Al-Sultan, a pharmacist whose crime was asking for a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

 https://www.newsweek.com/hamas-tortured-me-dissent-heres-what-they-really-think-palestinians-opinion-1857169