Video Of The Week - Hamas' Use of Human Shields - https://tinyurl.com/2xn2f4tk
For the full article from: Fox News: By Ruth Marks Eglash go to - https://tinyurl.com/mr3zhrta
Violent crackdowns, arbitrary arrests, trumped-up police charges, imprisonments, and even live ammunition to deter innocent women, children and people with disabilities from demanding basic rights such as electricity are just a few of the heartbreaking testimonies from the Gaza Strip captured in a series of video clips published recently by the U.S.-based Center for Peace Communications.
The series, "Whispered In Gaza," which uses animation and voice-altering technology to protect the identity of the speakers, offers a rare and unfiltered glimpse into life in the poverty-stricken, embattled Palestinian enclave. But the anger and fears expressed by those who bravely share their stories are not directed toward their neighbor, Israel. Rather, their criticisms and despair are aimed: Hamas.
"Your own thoughts are taken away from you when you walk down the street, the walls are covered in pictures, slogans and stories of the Hamas leadership and you feel like you’re in a war zone. Is this a city or a military barracks?" asks one man, who the video calls "Iyad." "Gaza is a city. Yet they’ve penetrated it down to the walls, the billboards, even the odor," he continues. "The city has taken on a vibe of backwardness, inhumanity, militarism."
"When unpleasant videos come out, like the one of hundreds of Gazans celebrating the carnage in Jerusalem last week, they form the impression that Gazans are squarely behind Hamas and that’s exactly what Hamas wants," Joseph Braude, founder and president of the Center for Peace Communications, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
"Hamas claims that the people are wrapped around the resistance, that is their claim to legitimacy, but the reality is that the hundreds who turn out for such events are not a cross-section of the millions who stay home," he said.
Braude noted, however, that recent polls show a diversity of views among Gazans, with the majority saying they are unhappy with the launch of rockets from their territory and blaming Hamas for initiating the wars with Israel.
There is also deep resentment at Hamas’ leaders for leaving the Strip or hiding out in bunkers, while civilians suffer the casualties from these on-going flare-ups. "The people in Gaza don’t trust them [Hamas] but they’re repressed," Braude said, adding that many even refer to Hamas, not Israel, as the occupying force in Gaza.
Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Dayan Center in Tel Aviv University, Israel, told Fox News Digital that the videos were an accurate reflection of attitudes in the Gaza Strip and that in his estimation only around 25% of the population – mostly Hamas members and their families – supported the Hamas government. "I talk a lot with people in Gaza and it is quite clear that the majority of the public there is suffering and strongly opposes the Hamas administration," he said.
Since its launch two weeks ago, the Whispers In Gaza series, which was featured by an array of independent media outlets and is available in six languages – Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Persian – has garnered some three million views, with the largest audiences being in the Arab world and North America.
In Gaza, Hamas reportedly reacted angrily to the videos sending bot armies to bring down the organization’s distribution platforms and doctoring some of the clips with their own voiceovers. In one of the altered versions, Braude said, the testimony of a Palestinian mother describing anxiety over sending her children to a Hamas-run school was changed to the voice of a mother expressing pride at her child joining the resistance.
In perhaps the most powerful of the 25 testimonies, a woman called only "Zainab," tells viewers:. "A faction is fighting in the name of the Palestinian people but not all Palestinians agree with it. My struggle is to communicate with Palestinians and Israelis and make them understand that I am a human being here in Gaza, not a beast or a terrorist, or a lover of weapons because in the end, weapons won’t get us anywhere."
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