Does hamas kill gay people

It’s so hard. Ishtiwi was 19 when he joined Qassam, following three of his five brothers into the force. Human Rights Watch investigated the death; the group and an international aid worker who closely followed the case have shared details. A senior Hamas official, however, confirmed some facts and the broad contours of the case on the condition that he not be identified, saying he did not want to be seen as meddling in an affair considered embarrassing for the Hamas movement and tragic for the family.

If Israeli intelligence officials knew Ishtiwi was gay, the officials surmised, perhaps he had given them information in exchange for keeping a secret that, if uncovered, would have made him an outcast in his society. There is a need, they say, to show that these people are not untouchable.

Ishtiwi nodded yes. One, Ahmad, was killed in an Israeli strike in He became a commander in Zeitoun, his own gritty neighborhood in Gaza City. Exclusive: Gay man who fled Gaza speaks about Hamas repression 'If you are gay, you should be hiding.

But no proof ever emerged that Ishtiwi had done so. It was five months after that deadly battle subsided, on January 21st,that Ishtiwi was summoned to an interrogation by Qassam military intelligence officials. Scared from everything you know?'.

Ishtiwi's mother even sent Deif, who has lost an eye and limbs but has survived repeated assassination attempts by Israel, a tearful video message in which she entreated him to release her son. Hamas, the Islamist organization that governs Gaza, enforces Sharia law, under which homosexuality is not merely illegal, but punishable by extreme measures — including torture and execution.

This Is How Hamas

Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a writer close to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, said the situation spotlighted shifts since Yehya Sinwar was elected in to represent Qassam in Hamas's political wing, a role akin to defence minister. His death has become the talk of the town in the conservative quarters of Gaza, the Palestinian coastal territory, endlessly discussed in living rooms, at checkpoints and in cabs.

Officers doing a kind of after-action investigation of the war suspected that he had diverted money allocated to his unit for weapons. The family was considered Hamas royalty for having sheltered leaders wanted by Israel, including Mohammed Deif, the Qassam commander-in-chief lionised by Palestinians.

Adding a layer of scandal to the story, he was accused of moral turpitude, by which Hamas meant homosexuality. Ishtiwi 34 was a commander from a storied family of Hamas loyalists who, during the war with Israel, was responsible for 1, fighters and a network of attack tunnels.

In the State of Palestine, there is no specific, stand-alone civil rights legislation that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination or harassment. During the war, Israeli bombs smashed his family's apartment building and his second wife's house. The death of Mahmoud Ishtiwi had all the trappings of a telenovela: sex, torture and embezzlement in Gaza's most venerated and secretive institution, the armed wing of Hamas.

But to astute Gaza observers, this was more substantive than a soap opera. The Israel-Hamas war has made political allies out of some unusual bedfellows. Qassam officials found a man who claimed he had had sex with Ishtiwi and provided dates and locations.

Last month, his former comrades executed him with three bullets to the chest. They concluded that the missing money had been used either to pay for sex or to keep the man quiet. Is it true? [citation needed] Additionally, there have been relatively few murders of LGBTQ (or allegedly LGBTQ) people in Palestine, and the victim's sexuality was the primary motive in a case in Aprilnoted below.

What was unprecedented was the way his relatives spoke out publicly about it. Yet the strangest pairing on display thus far is probably "Queers for Palestine," most notably because those. I was so scared. The Hamas militants also had same-sex relations with male Israeli victims of the October 7 attack, raping them in captivity.

Sinwar's actions, he said, showed that even senior figures were not sacrosanct.