the hamas way of death the hamas way of death following is a transcript of a recruitment and training videotape made last summer by the qassam battalions the military arm of hamas an islamic palestinian group hamas figures significantly in the middle east equation in december israel deported more than palestinians to lebanon in response to hamas s kidnapping and execution of an israeli soldier a longer version appears in the may issue of harper s magazine which obtained and translated the tape my name is yasir hammad al hassan ali i live in nuseirat a refugee camp in the gaza strip i was born in i finished high school then attended gaza polytechnic later i went to work for islamic university in gaza as a clerk i m married and i have two daughters the qassam battalions are the only group in palestine explicitly dedicated to jihad holy war our primary concern is palestinians who collaborate with the enemy many young men and women have fallen prey to the cunning traps laid by the israeli security services since our enemies are trying to obliterate our nation cooperation with them is clearly a terrible crime our most important objective must be to put an end to the plague of collaboration to do so we abduct collaborators intimidate and interrogate them in order to uncover other collaborators and expose the methods that the enemy uses to lure palestinians into collaboration in the first place in addition to that naturally we confront the problem of collaborators by executing them we don t execute every collaborator after all about percent of them are innocent victims tricked or black mailed into their misdeeds the decision whether to execute a collaborator is based on the seriousness of his crimes if like many collaborators he has been recruited as an agent of the israeli border guard then it is imperative that he be executed at once he s as dangerous as an israeli soldier so we treat him like an israeli soldier there s another group of collaborators who perform an even more loathsome role the ones who help the enemy trap young men and women in blackmail schemes that force them to become collaborators i regard the isqat the process by which a palestinians is blackmailed into collaboration of single person as greater crime than the killing of a demonstrator if someone is guilty of causing repeated cases of isqat than it is our religious duty to execute him a third group of collaborators is responsible for the distribution of narcotics they work on direct orders from the security services to distribute drugs as widely as possible their victims become addicted and soon find it unbearable to quit and impossible to afford more they collaborate in order to get the drugs they crave the dealers must also be executed in the battalions we have developed a very careful method of uncovering collaborators we can t afford to abduct an innocent person because once we seize a person his reputation is tarnished forever we will abduct and interrogate a collaborator only after evidence of his guilt has been established never before if after interrogation the collaborator is found guilty beyond any doubt then he is executed in many cases we don t have to make our evidence against collaborators public because everyone knows that they re guilty but when the public isn t aware that a certain individual is a collaborator and we accuse him people are bound to ask for evidence many people will proclaim his innocence so there must be irrefutable proof before he is executed this proof is usually obtained in the form of a confession at first every collaborator denies his crimes so we start off by showing the collaborator the testimony against him we tell him that he still has a chance to serve his people even in the last moment of his life by confessing and giving us the information we need we say that we know his repentance in sincere and that he has been a victim that kind of talk is convincing most of them confess after that others hold out in those cases we apply pressure both psychological and physical then the holdouts confess as well only one collaborator has ever been executed without an interrogation in that case the collaborator had been seen working for the border guard since before the intifada and he himself confessed his involvement to a friend who disclosed the information to us in addition three members of his network of collaborators told us that he had caused their isqat with this much evidence there was no need to interrogate him but we are very careful to avoid wrongful executions in every case our principal is the same the accused should be interrogated until he himself confesses his crimes a few weeks ago we sat down and complied a list of collaborators to decide whether there were any who could be executed without interrogation an although we had hundreds of names still because of our fear of god and of hell we could not mark any of these men except for the one i just mentioned for execution when we execute a collaborator in public we use a gun but after we abduct and interrogate a collaborator we can t shoot him to do so might give away our locations that s why collaborators are strangled sometimes we ask the collaborator what do you think how should we execute you one collaborator told us strangle me he hated the sight of blood naftaly stramer intergraph electronics internet nstramer dazixco ingr com lookout road suite a voice fax boulder co quality is everybody s job and it s everybody s job to watch all that they can
