Those who are shocked by the Palestinian death toll in Gaza might be interested in knowing that the figures being bandied about by Hamas and the Palestinian Red Crescent include dozens, possibly hundreds, of Fatah members who were murdered in cold blood by Hamas over the past three weeks.
Since the war began, Hamas has been rounding up Fatah members throughout the Gaza Strip. The ones who get off easy only get shot in the legs, have their eyes poked out, and/or have their hands smashed or cut off. Many others are simply murdered; sometimes in mass executions.
In this clip, Jamal Najar, a popular Palestinian singer in the West Bank, describes how some of his cousins in Gaza were murdered by Hamas over the last few days, including a father who was shot dead in front of his children, for the crime of having walked out of his house:
Hamas officials have been including these people, that they themselves wounded and killed, in the casualty figures that they distribute to the press -- based on the reasoning that these victims, too, were killed in the context of the Israeli offensive. It should be noted, however, that Hamas' policy of torturing and murdering Fatah members (and often members of their families as well) dates back to Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Hamas does not always try to hide these killings -- to the contrary, they sometimes film them, and proudly broadcast them on television with rousing musical accompaniment, as you can see in the video below from Hamas TV:
[Note: I chose a clip that contains no closeups or visible blood. Nonetheless, some may find it disturbing.]
