“Hostages” for an “apartment and $10,000”: the terrible confessions of Hamas terrorists broadcast by Israel

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. But sometimes words can impact the mind as violently as an image. On Monday, foreign correspondents in Israel painfully watched videos of Hamas abuses. Faithful to its communications strategy, the Israeli army has also chosen to broadcast the interrogations of captured terrorists on social networks. In a grueling video lasting almost a quarter of an hour, six of them recount how they carried out their murderous raids on the kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip on October 7.

Some seem cold, detached. Others insensitive and particularly talkative. Two of them appear to be in pain and grimacing, blood visible on their clothes. They all recount their “missions” more or less obediently: “We had to kill the men, capture the women and children,” says one terrorist. “Take control of a colony and settle there,” explains another. Before getting into the horror details.

After disclosing their identity and their targets, the Hamas members questioned simply confess to their crimes, without apparent guilt. “We killed civilians,” says one of them. In particular, he describes entering a house, stepping over a man dying in his blood and discovering another injured person, “in his underwear”. “I think it was a whole family,” he says. He then confirms having used civilians as “human shields” to protect himself from the arrival of the Israeli army.

Another explains having “fired two or three shots” at an unarmed civilian, who was “watering his plants”. “Then we opened fire on a neighboring house.” Yet another claims to have “shot an old woman by surprise” and to have “burned two houses”. In an independent video, a terrorist, his face blurred, gives a more precise idea of ​​the instructions: “The idea was to go from house to house, from room to room, throw grenades and kill everyone, including the women and children,” he says. “Hamas ordered us to crush or cut off heads, and cut off legs.”

Several testimonies are particularly shocking in their cynicism. One of the terrorists says he saw his accomplices “taking a selfie with a 15 or 16 year old girl, before taking her to Gaza”. He adds that he then threw “four grenades, only two of which exploded, inside a house”, killing at least one man. Another explains with detachment that he shot a dying victim and was reprimanded by his boss, who ordered him “not to waste his ammunition”. A third announces having smoked a shelter where a family and their dog had taken refuge, to get them out. Before shooting them all, including two teenagers aged 18 and 20.

One of the prisoners, who seems very comfortable and very demonstrative in his explanations, also mentions the “rewards” promised by the Hamas command. “They promised us an apartment and $10,000,” he says. “That’s how it works in the al-Qassam brigades,” the armed wing of Hamas, he adds. But at least two of them feel betrayed during the interrogation. “They fooled us, they deceived us,” deplores a terrorist, citing members of the political bureau of the terrorist group, Ismaïl Haniyeh and Khaled Mechaal.

“They are in Qatar and Turkey while their families are being bombed in Gaza,” he adds. One of his accomplices agrees: “The Hamas command has abandoned us here.” The terrorists, on the other hand, have no difficulty recognizing the similarity of their mode of action with that of the Islamic State. “Do you think your abuses resemble those of Daesh,” asks an Israeli interrogator. “Yes,” replies one of the prisoners without blinking. “There is no difference,” assures another.