Hamas Terrorizes Gazans to Crush Planned Protests

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“Things are very difficult. Since the morning, they’ve been arresting people and kidnapping people from the streets. Things are very bad.”

By Debbie Weiss, The Algemeiner

Armed Hamas operatives arrested Gazans in the streets and rounded up others at hospitals on Friday as the Palestinian terrorist group moved to suppress planned protests calling for an end to its rule, a resident of central Gaza told The Algemeiner.

The demonstrations, billed on flyers as the “June 26 Peaceful Revolution,” were planned for dozens of locations across the Gaza Strip, including Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

One month ago, seeking to capitalize on the growing discontent, a Gazan dissident group issued a public call for an anti-Hamas “revolution of rage” to be held on June 26.

Although hesitant to mention Hamas by name, the organizers denounced “the arrogance” of “a government that has separated itself from its people, usurped their right to participate or even ask questions, and monopolizes all national decision-making.”

Organizers called for protests against Hamas rule and, according to flyers circulated ahead of the demonstrations, accused officials of exploiting Gaza’s medical evacuation system at hospitals by selling places on travel lists to people desperate to leave the enclave for treatment at a hefty premium, rather than granting exits based on medical need.

But by Friday, Hamas appeared to have largely succeeded in choking off the protests before they could gather momentum, according to a resident of the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City. Many of the planned protest sites were empty, he said, after a campaign of arrests, threats, and intimidation.

The man, who asked that his name be withheld for his safety, said people had been detained or rounded up at four hospitals in Gaza, including Al-Shifa Hospital, Nasser Hospital, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

“The situation in Gaza is very difficult. They are kidnapping people and threatening people. The level of terror is high,” he told The Algemeiner earlier on Friday.

“There are fatwas calling for killing and fatwas declaring people infidels in the mosques, and calls saying the protest movement has been postponed,” he said. “Things are very difficult. Since the morning, they’ve been arresting people and kidnapping people from the streets. Things are very bad.”

One of the warnings came from the Association of Palestinian Scholars, an influential Palestinian religious body, which described the protest campaign as “a criminal movement,” according to a report in the UK’s Telegraph news outlet.

The group accused those behind it of helping “the occupier,” meaning Israel, and of trying to achieve political goals Israel had failed to secure through military force. It also warned that anyone tied to the demonstrations could be accused of collaboration with Israel, an offense punishable by death under Hamas rule.

Hamas’s fear, according to activists cited in the report, was not only that the protests could spread, but also that rival armed groups could use them to expand their control in parts of Gaza, or that Israel could use the unrest to target Hamas operatives.

Protest organizers said they were trying to avoid precisely that scenario, arguing that any involvement by Israel or armed militias would give Hamas a pretext to crush the demonstrations.

By Friday afternoon, media outlets affiliated with Hamas were publishing footage of empty intersections where protests had been planned, declaring the “Failure of the June 26 Revolution.”

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a humanitarian activist originally from Gaza who now lives in the US, wrote on Thursday that Hamas had launched an “industrial-scale campaign of terror, intimidation, interrogation, and blackmail against thousands of Gazans” who had planned to join the protests.

His account echoed the testimony of the Rimal resident, who said hospitals had become a central point in the crackdown. Alkhatib wrote that hospitals across Gaza had been turned into “makeshift police stations, interrogation sites, and torture centers.”

“Families are being threatened, people placed under house arrest, and Hamas’s al-Qassam brigades (the same forces responsible for October 7) have been fully mobilized to reinforce police and intelligence units with explicit shoot-to-kill order,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Ahed al-Hendi, a senior fellow at the Center for Peace Communications, assessed that the June 26 organizers did not anticipate the ferocity of Hamas’s response.

“The fact that organizers announced the protest weeks in advance made it easier for Hamas to prepare, intimidate people, pressure families, and silence the movement before it reached the streets,” he said. “In Gaza, protest movements have often been more successful when they were organized quietly and appeared suddenly. This time, the early announcement gave Hamas the time and pretext to suppress it.”

Alkhatib accused international media outlets and pro-Palestinian activists of ignoring the crackdown because it could not be blamed on Israel.

He condemned the “mainstream media” for failing to report on the campaign, saying it was “apparently because Israel is not involved – so no Jews, no news.”

Alkhatib also said much of the Western pro-Palestinian movement had either ignored the protests or cast those taking part as collaborators undermining Hamas’s “resistance,” while the UN, NGOs, and major human rights groups had remained silent as Gazans risked their lives to oppose Hamas rule.

“This is what the abandonment of Palestinians in Gaza looks like. Shame on all who stay silent in the face of jihadi, ISIS-like violence against the very people they claim to champion.”

Alkhatib added that friends of his had been detained at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

Al-Ahli Arab Hospital became one of the most disputed flashpoints of the early war after Gaza officials claimed in October 2023 that an Israeli strike had hit the hospital and killed about 500 people, a claim that was quickly amplified by major international outlets, including The New York Times. Israel denied responsibility and said the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, an account later backed by US intelligence. The Times later acknowledged that its early coverage had relied too heavily on Hamas’s claims and left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known.

On Friday, Alkhatib said Hamas had also sent “fake journalists” to protest sites under the guise of covering the demonstrations but actually to identify and arrest anyone who showed up.

Gaza’s few independent journalists have been feeling the heat as well.

“For the past several days, our reporters and several of Gaza’s most prominent anti-Hamas activists have been subjected to an intense campaign of surveillance and intimidation by Hamas,” Hadeel Oueiss, editor-in-chief of Jusoor News, told The Algemeiner.

“And we’re hearing about many activists who have been effectively placed under house arrest by Hamas,” he added. “They’ve made it clear their number one goal is to prevent any anti-Hamas demonstrations from taking place in Gaza.”

The post Hamas Terrorizes Gazans to Crush Planned Protests appeared first on World Israel News.

IN the summer of 2019, I was seated in the wine cellar of a walled Medieval town high above the Dordogne Valley of France, not far from Sarlat-la-Canéda, making phone calls, writing reports. I have given this story in other places and it appears as though you’re about to hear it again. Rob Skiba is a name you that you might be familiar with. Though he had made a name for himself as a Nephilim researcher, more recently Rob had taken a dive into the deep end of the pool via flat earth research. The recorded interviews I conducted between he and Rick Hummer, a fellow flat earth investigator and close friend of his, was published while still occupying that very wine cellar. Read all about it. Chicago Is Not a Mirage.

Word quickly spread. Within a few short weeks, dozens of flat earth researchers began accepting my invite for a private interview, if not a series of interviews. From a 17th-century tower built by King Louis XIV, and with a stunning view of the Alps, I sat down with Robbie Davidson, founder of the Flat Earth International Conferences, conducting multiple sessions. While staying in Dumfries, Scotland, David Weiss agreed to take part in the interviews, as did Bob Knodel of Globebusters. There were others. But when I asked the interviewees to discuss the moments that shaped their lives, among the many PSYOPs, false flag attacks, and hoaxes that were discussed, only these men committed commentary to the false 9/11 narrative.

The resulting recordings ballooned into The Unexpected Cosmology, a book which became a website and was even intended as an anthology. And of course, the following discourse was originally a chapter. It was Walt Disney who stated, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” Those sentiments remain applicable here as well. American Sensationalism: The 9/11 Interviews was always intended to be expanded upon with the inclusion of new researchers. So I’m sorry to say the project became stagnant during the Covid-19 psychodrama. I took a break to tackle other projects. We lost Rob Skiba. Rob offered hours of private conversation regarding his life but we never got around to the big one. 9/11. It was in the cards. Sadly, Bob Knodel died soon afterwards. Voices are being squeezed from an entire generation. Gnosis passes with them.

In the aftermath, the FE community became fractured. People began going their separate ways. Robbie Davidson, among a noted few others who were interviewed for the project, got up and left the movement altogether. It is not my intent to erase his or the contributions of others if only brief. They came, they went, their testimonies remain.

The original vision may have hit roadblocks but it is not forgotten. I expanded this paper a few years later to include testimony from author Pauly Hart, a dear friend of mine. I had wanted to continue that trend every year thereafter but you know how it goes. For the 25th anniversary of the attack I have redirected my efforts to its first large scale expansion, including Andrew Hoy and Darrin Geisinger into the mix. Perhaps others will lend their experiences to the recorder in time.

The following is their report.

Read the 9/11 Interviews

Watch the Interviews