Hamas's repression in Gaza and the silence of those who claimed to support the Palestinians

In recent weeks, there have been demonstrations in several countries whose organizers claimed to defend the human rights of Palestinians.

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However, the ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas has given way to a brutal crackdown by the Islamist terrorist organization. A few days ago, a spokesman for a Hamas-enemy group in Gaza reported "hundreds" of killings in that strip amid a wave of Hamas revenge attacks against its enemies in the territory. These crimes have been condemned by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), but far-left organizations that defame Israel do not seem interested in denouncing them.

Some people seem to forget that both Gaza (controlled by Hamas) and the so-called West Bank (i.e., Judea and Samaria, controlled by the PA) are dictatorships that have not held elections since 2006 and where human rights violations have been committed by the Palestinian groups that control both territories. Gaza has been the more brutal of the two dictatorships. Palestinian law provides for the death penalty for a wide variety of different crimes and Gaza is where the most executions take place, many of them extrajudicial.

In May 2022, before this war began, the Palestinian Human Rights and Democracy Media Center (SHAMS) reported that the PA controlled seven prisons in the West Bank and Hamas controlled five in Gaza, noting: "many prisoners, not just ones who were recently arrested, are kept incarcerated in detention centres for long periods of time. One person has been waiting for 12 years without any sentence, while another has been awaiting trial for almost eight years in a detention centre." SHAMS added the following regarding the executions in both territories:

"There are 77 punishable crimes by the death penalty according to the Palestinian Law. Since the establishment of the PNA in 1994, some 260 death sentences have been issued: around 230 in Gaza and 30 in the West Bank. In the same period, 41 executions were carried out: 39 in Gaza and two in the West Bank. Prisoners sentenced to death are not kept separate from other prisoners, as we saw during our visit in Jericho in 2016. Detention conditions are dreadful for the whole prison population."

SHAMS also spoke about the conditions in Hamas and PA-controlled prisons in Gaza and Judea and Samaria:

"Both prisons and detention centres do not comply with international human rights standards: they are overcrowded, unhygienic, with no air conditioning and poor quality of food. There is no access to healthcare, prisoners are not allowed to contact their families and the legal duration of detention is not respected. Prisoners are subject to ill-treatment during interrogation by internal security forces, confessions and statements are frequently obtained by torture. The authorities focus on the blockade and the conflict with Israel, so much that detention conditions are forgotten and come as last priority."

No Western leftist organization protested this, even though many wrap themselves in the Palestinian flag and many of their activists wear Palestinian scarves around their necks to show their solidarity with that people. However, it never bothered them that Gaza and the West Bank were dictatorships and that their authorities violated human rights, just as it doesn't bother them now that Hamas is unleashing a widespread wave of repression in the Strip. In reality, the Palestinians don't matter to them: they have been merely an excuse to display their anti-Semitism, that hatred of Jews that leads them to falsely accuse Israel of "genocide" while turning a blind eye to the atrocious Russian crimes in Ukraine and the massacres of Christians in Nigeria.

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Image: Excerpt from a video released by Hamas's Sahm Unit showing Hamas terrorists executing civilians in Gaza after the ceasefire of October 13, 2025.