Palestinian Human Rights!

"The spies had their heads covered and were sitting by the wall outside the mosque."
"There were about 20 masked gunmen in the area. One of them said loudly that the death sentence is going to be carried out against seven collaborators."
"They did not mention their names. They shot them after that and then the militants left."
"People were shouting, 'God is great'."
Unnamed witness, Gaza City

Armed Palestinian masked men push back a crowd of worshippers outside a mosque in Gaza City after Friday prayers on August 22, 2014, before executing 18 men for allegedly collaborating with Israel. Six of them were grabbed from among hundreds of worshippers leaving the city's largest mosque, by men in the uniform of Hamas's military wing, witnesses told AFP. (Photo credit: AFP)

"I think this has provoked, and let's say triggered, this process."
"If you speak to any regular citizen in Gaza, nobody is looking with mercy on these people. Why? Because people are being bombarded. A lot of the blame for bombardment of specific places is being put on collaborators."
"In the middle of this onslaught on Gaza, we are in need to respect the rule of law and to respect human rights."
"More than any other time, it's a challenge for us."
Hamdi Shaqqura, deputy director, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Gaza

Now isn't that a colossal understatement? Human rights and compassion for other human beings is so alive and well in Gaza that the cheerful 'God is great'! cries rise in unison at the brutal death of other Gazans, people just like themselves, but people who have been accused by members of the terrorist group Hamas of being collaborators with the Zionist entity. If they say it, it must be true. And if it is true, then god is quite right in ordering their summary execution. The public blames collaborators, not their Hamas overlords for the bombs striking Gaza.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights which tracks and condemns such 'extrajudicial killings', so they say, is in the process, according to Mr. Shaqqura, of investigating reports that five other 'collaborators' were killed over two weeks earlier. The director of the Palestinian human rights group, Raji Sourani, had dispatched letters of urgency to Palestinian leaders "demanding that they immediately and decisively intervene to stop such extrajudicial executions."  That would mean Fatah requesting that Hamas cease and desist.

Militants on Friday prepared to execute Palestinians in Gaza City suspected of spying for Israel. Up to 22 were killed. Credit Reuters

Just incidentally, these summary executions are quite popular, carried out with regularity at any time, but accelerated in their urgency to persuade Palestinians in Gaza that any thoughts they may entertain of speaking to the enemy should be tamped firmly down in some dark deep place never to be retrieved on pain of execution. This is their version of a final solution.

In 2012 in the wake of Israel's last response to Hamas provocations, masked gunmen shot a handcuffed man, leaving his bloodied body in a public square with a poster around his neck accusing him of helping Israel kill 15 Palestinian leaders. Several days on, six additional suspected, only suspected mind, collaborators were killed in this casual vigilante manner.

A video became a must-see-to-be-believed on the Internet of the body of one unfortunate who was dragged through a Gaza City neighbourhood behind a motorcycle. One can only hope he was dead before being dragged along to be bashed horrendously as his body made repeated violent contact with the road.

During Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, a dozen Palestinians accused of collaboration who managed to escape from Hamas jails at the time were also executed in the street. Hamas has used the occasional public lynching of suspected -- suspected spies -- to ensure it has the full, unadulterated trust and loyalty of the population it occasionally uses as a shield against deadly Israeli Defence Forces' reprisal against Rocket assaults lobbed off from within civilian areas like schools, medical centres, hotels and apartment blocks.

Rights groups claim that their documentation proves that Hamas has reduced the number of suspected collaborators it murders without knowing whether their accusations have any merit in an environment where collaboration is considered a heinous crime leading to instant punishment. Between 1987 and 1994 an estimated thousand people had been executed, suspected of being collaborators. It is likely considered to be a useful method of population control, Palestinian-style.

Not to fret: Al Majd, a website operated by the Internal Security Service of the Hamas government has quoted an unidentified Hamas official stating: "The judiciary procedures and measures were completed against the accused."  Furthermore, "a revolutionary court" had been formed "in agreement with the war's circumstances." And how about the nifty black hooded-and-masked uniforms sported by Hamas and ISIS?

Whew! that's all right, then.