The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.
Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.
. . .
Everyday Gazans were stuck — behind the wall of Israel’s crippling blockade and under the thumb and constant watch of a security force. That dilemma continues today, with the added threat of Israeli ground troops and airstrikes.
Hamas or not, Israel has gone too far.
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Fine fair whatever, it doesn’t need to be at the cost of tens of thousands of innocents. That’s literally the same logic Hitler used to go all super eugenics murder monster on the world population.
Lebensraum. Germans just needed a little living space, is all. So those vicious feral tribes in Eastern Europe had to go.
Hamas likely wouldn’t even exist right now if not for the failure of Israeli leadership. Specifically Netanyahu’s repeated moves to prop up Hamas in order to sabotage a two state solution. The issue of Hamas is almost entirely Israel’s own fault.
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People of Gaza elected Hamas
There hasn’t been an election in Gaza since 2006 and your purposely-obtuse ass knows it.
If Israel wasn’t committed to upholding an apartheid state, and now genocide, maybe groups like Hamas wouldn’t exist. Which again, is a group that Israel itself propped up and allowed to take power in Gaza.
Bro 90% (literally) of the Gazan population weren’t even alive during the last election. The didn’t vote for shit most of the population is like 23 or younger and have lived with Hamas bullying and Israeli super extra bullying for literally their entire life. Most haven’t even had a like full feast in their life ever and at the current pace likely won’t ever if they even survive.
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Nobody is in a warzone asking poll questions don’t be obtuse, Numbers from before Israel started intense genocidal actions are irrelevant dude.
Ed: also your source notes opinions but doesn’t provide their source for the numbers.
Ed fdd’s original mission statement.
“provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations”.
Unbiased indeed.
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If Austria required Slovak to register the birth of their children with them so they may later be eligible to vote, then you might be right.
people of Gaza elected Hamas
Gaza hasn’t had an election since 2006 and the average age of a Gaza resident is under 18.
Feel free to work out the math on that. But imagine if George Bush Jr was nominally still president while the US existed under Canadian military occupation for the last 18 years.
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Gotta wonder how many of those pollsters got cut down by Israeli sniper fire or obliterated by 2000 ton US-made bombs to go tent-to-tent and secure those those numbers.
Oh my god that’s awful.
Nearly as bad as an agency that does that to their own people and that of another nation.
Not seeing a lot of similar articles about Shin Bet though. Wonder why…
I feel like some internal US whataboutisms would actually be appropriate here.
Oh look, the NYT manufacturing consent for the military industrial complex. What a surprise.
yeah nobody remind em of the WMD fiasco
Two things can be true at once. Israel can be violating human rights with their war in Gaza, and Hamas can be an oppressive piece of shit.
This is a false equivalency. The NYT has historically been complicit in manufacturing consent for US foreign policy interests with coverage framing and agenda-setting. By choosing what stories to cover and how to cover them, they can promote certain perspectives while downplaying others. Another user in this thread already pointed out that the author of this article is a pro-Israel propagandist.
they can promote certain perspectives while downplaying others
Exactly, and they have the reach to be very effective at controlling the narrative.
“What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army,” Salem wrote today on Facebook and Twitter, in a thread that has been widely retweeted, 5000 times this morning.
The case stands in stark contrast to the three Jewish reporters, Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner, and David Brooks, who carried on writing about the issue for the New York Times even when their children were enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces.
The Israel lobby is massively invested in propaganda, like NGO monitor and the above linked “organization Honest Reporting, which exists to attack the Palestinian narrative in the west”. Not to mention ads on google, youtube, controlling the narrative on facebook, google again, twitter… the list goes on. And yeah, there’s app for that.
Paywall and the archive doesn’t work…
But it sounds like this was pretty tame compared to other countries.
Shit, Israel goes into Gaza and abducts people for torture and long imprisonment without charges based on social media and claimed statements to informants…
And this says Hamas followed people to see if they were having an affair?
And kept files on people? Some journalists?
Hasn’t Israel killed more journalists than even Russia the last couple years?
I don’t see what’s surprising or concerning here. And I don’t see where the article is getting their info either. Are they just repeating IDF propaganda again?
Nevermind, I googled it.
The author is from multiple propaganda outlets in Israel, and belongs to pro-Israel “think tank”…
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/adam-rasgon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Institute_for_Near_East_Policy
Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda … Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP’s ranks."[43]
Not only funded by AIPAC, but started be people with a bunch of AIPAC connections.
I’d be more surprised by a country that’s didn’t spy on it’s population.
And it’s not the first time NYT has run a direct propaganda piece. They have to do this once in a while for the Israeli government to reassert its hegemony over the narrative.
Yes, I know mediabiasfactcheck.com says NYT is excellent but that’s just a reflection on mediabiasfactcheck.com.
The archive link is good, but archive.is is having performance problems today.
The Israeli Shin Bet does pretty much the same domestic espionage and there’s rightwing patrols in ultra orthodox neighborhoods as well monitoring for illicit relationships etc.
Thanks for the research, the fediverse is so much better than reddit.
I wouldn’t say that.
Not only did Reddit have Poppingkream, but they could actually ban people and do something about vote manipulation.
There’s more than a few accounts on here that if you get into an argument with them, you’ll always see 3-5 down votes immediately, and they’ll get an equal amount of up votes as soon as they post.
Because on some apps it takes two clicks to sign into a new account, and some people care enough about votes to switch over and over again.
On Reddit they’d crack down on that. Eventually giving an IP ban.
Here trolls have a bunch of options for random instances to make a new account and go right back at it.
Lemmy has its own problems, even if they’re not the same as reddits.
The cool thing is that votes don’t mean anything in the comment section here.
The Palestinians will be better off with hamas gone thankfully. High price for voting in a terror group though.
A price paid mostly by those who didn’t even have a chance to vote.
Looks like there’s a multi-pronged attempt to shift the narrative to “see? Hamas is bad, so Israel is justified” today based on articles being posted.
People say the same thing literally any time there’s a negative story about Hamas. That isn’t how this story is framed. Israeli policy (blockade) and military are not portrayed as a relative good at all. It also speaks directly against a narrative by some Israelis that Palestinians bear collective responsibility for the actions of Hamas.
The idea that we must help Hamas cover up their crimes is a bad one, however well-intentioned. If they don’t want their crimes and misdeeds reported by the world, they should consider not committing any.
The position that this article somehow benefits Gaza is undermined by the fact that all the sources are from the IDF. There is little difference between this article and your local newspaper uncritically reprinting the police departments press releases.
Some people can’t think critically nor handle any nuance. It needs to be black and white for them, which is why they can’t fathom a world where people recognize that Hamas is trash without also thinking Israel is justified.
The irony being that their thought process is identical to the people who claim any criticism of Israel is anti semitism.
“Their unelected leadership was spying on Palestinians, hence we’re justified in mass murdering Palestinians to get them”
I mean, it’s the kind of excuse that worked for America’s invasion of Iraq to the point that even nowadays there are still plenty of useful idiots justifying the resulting estimated 1.4 million Iraqui dead with “Saddam was a murderous dictator” (and yet in all those years caused 1/100 of the deaths America did in far less time)
As long as people keep falling for any old bollocks then any old bollocks is exactly what they will be given
I mean they are an oppressive police state just like israel ofc they spy on their own residents and prolly share the info with IDF in case they wanna get rid of someone they don’t agree with or they’d be overthrown long ago if it wasn’t for their authoritarianism and the tacit support/indifference from the israeli forces .Not all the journalist and dissidents that are being targeted/killed are done solely by israeli intel they are being fed that info from various sources including hamas. It would be a shocker if they aren’t working together and sharing intel whenever it suits them to do so. Just like usa and their frenemies in Iraq or Afghanistan Ukraine or wherever they are operating. the western media will take this and turn it into a one sided hamas bad article without even mentioning israels complicit enabling policies.
Running a hamas hit piece during Israel’s genocide. You know it’s going to be legacy media.
Regardless of how bad Israel is, Hamas is trash. Are we just supposed to pretend or ignore this fact because we are disgusted by Israel?
Hamas is just Israel secret service in Palestine
It just doesn’t seem like the most relevant headline right now, “Hamas still also bad” is a bit water is wet.
The article talks about how a lot of what was going on was “largely unknown.” This is quite literally new information were hearing about in this piece.
Everyday we hear about the horrors Israel is inflicting on Palestine, that’s certainly a “water is wet” thing right now. I hope you don’t think they should stop reporting on this.
What are you talking about? The article includes new information that has been uncovered, it’s far from “Hamas is also still bad”. Do you think they shouldn’t report new information on Hamas?
“This just in: the run of the mill authoritarians on the ‘other’ side are bad” while a new bunch of Nazis are aiming at a new Holocaust of an entire population.
It all has the heavy stink of the pro-Holocaust propagandists desperatelly trying to distract public opinion with a bit of whataboutism.
Americans have to take a side and treat everything like sports, didn’t you know?
How do you know the poster is American?
Yeah no shit Hamas is an authoritarian corrupt movement. That still doesn’t justify the genocide on Palestinians and the apartheid, occupation and systematic rape, abuse, torture, and also the Israeli mass surveillance that is used to blackmail people or even track them down to murder them.
Yeah. There’s, sadly, room in the world for more than one murderous government. I also have no doubt that, if Hamas had the opportunity, they would kill all Israelis. But that is still no excuse for the ongoing slaughter the IDF is committing. An atrocity remains an atrocity.
Hamas wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds. Hamas is controlled opposition, directed by Israel, in Palestine to prevent a real opposition group wanting a two state solution from forming
If anything Hamas is the product of the systematic marginalization and humiliation of the Palestinians
If anything, it makes the current conflict even worse: Not only have gazans been forced to suffer from israeli occupation, they have also been systematically oppressed by Hamas and now they’re being slaughtered for their sake. I wouldn’t be surprised if this pushed more people towards Hamas or other terrorist organizations in the long run.
They’re being slaughtered because the goal of israel is to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expand the israeli Lebensraum.
Hamas is not the target, just the excuse.
Overt Israeli actions show how it genocides everyday Palestinians.
Open secret
We can talk all day about how bad Israel is, but these guys aren’t good guys either
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Literal terrorists? Gtfoh
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Jesus get lost kid
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😂😂
You’re just a stupid child, not even worth a counter argument. Go back to school little boy
Still no. Hamas lied about the numbers. Gona have to realize that at some point, hamas lies about everything.
This dipshit is probably an edgy teenager. Not even worth engaging with people like this
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No.
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There were some idiots like that, but anyone who wasn’t just being completely reactionary knew they were idiots.
The only good people in this are all the innocent, the problem is they are the ones doing the most dying on both sides
what did you expect from a group created and funded by israeli intelligence to dismantle peaceful pro peace palestinian leftist organizations?
I know they were funded in part by Israel to destroy Palestinian unity and give Israel an excuse to kill more Palestinians and take their land, but was Hamas really created by Israel?
Maybe Israel didn’t found Hamas as such but they certainly nurtured it like a baby bird.
This argument is made a lot in conspiracy circles and anti isreal communutues, however the argument comes from the fact that Isreal paused prior conflicts for humanitarian or political reasons instead of actually destroying them with superior force. The thing you want them to do now, go easy and end the conflict early is also what you’re complaining about them doing before.
Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, told the New York Times that an empowered Hamas helped Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, saying the division of the Palestinians helped him make the case that he had no partner for peace in the Palestinians, thus avoiding pressure for peace talks that could lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. (source)
Damn those anti-israeli national security advisors.
Did you read the article? Exactly as I said the argument that is that allowing aid info Palestine helped prop up hamas.
The same people that complain Isreal does not let aid in push this argument based on them letting too much aid in.
Why do you insist on conflating funding a terrorist organization with cash with providing humanitarian aid via food and medicine?
Because that’s what this argument is, they’re talking about UNRWA and similar groups that are officially separate from hamas but in practice are largely controlled by hamas.
Do you really not follow any of this? You have such strong opinions for someone that doesn’t seem to follow the big talking points at all. I get if you want to disagree but not knowing the arguments make you seem very uninformed.
they basically created it in the same way us created al qaeda
A legal fiction needed to function as a scapegoat for US trials in absentia?
Or are we talking about a tool of the East Asia Cold War, intended to operate as a front for paramilitary operations in the Russian and Chinese back country?
Has NYT only just figured out now that the nuance was never in Hamas being “the good guys” or not?
Hamas may be better than Israel right now in that they’re not actively pulling a genocide, but nobody apart from Hamas thinks Hamas are really the good guys in this - but Hamas being a horrid government doesn’t then somehow justify Israel’s genocide against the “Everyday Palestinians” Hamas are oppressing.
