Hamas didn’t just fight Israel. They turned on their own. A damning United Nations report released Tuesday reveals that Hamas militants and police units systematically beat, maimed, and publicly executed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, committing acts that amount to war crimes.
It was a reign of terror. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented hundreds of extrajudicial punishments. These weren’t quiet affairs. They were public spectacles designed to keep the battered population paralyzed by fear.
The methods were medieval. Kneecapping. Breaking bones with metal pipes and concrete blocks. Public executions. The excuses? Alleged collaboration with Israel, stealing humanitarian aid, drug offenses, or simply belonging to the wrong political faction.
Numbers tell the story. Out of 249 documented cases of vigilante justice between August 2024 and January 2026, Hamas-linked forces were directly tied to nearly a quarter of them. That includes 108 deaths. Other armed factions handled the rest. Hamas, predictably, stayed silent when asked for comment.
They have run the strip for nearly two decades. After a ceasefire paused the two-year war with Israel, Hamas moved quickly to claw back its grip on the ruins. No judges. No courts. Just masked men with guns and iron bars acting as jury and executioner.
Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chairs the U.N. commission, pointed to the chaos. He noted these atrocities happened in an “environment engineered by Israel,” where Hamas exploited the power vacuum left by relentless bombardment. The war has claimed nearly 73,000 Palestinian lives, according to local health officials. In that meat grinder, survival became a brutal game.
The targets were diverse. Anti-Hamas activists. Members of clans backed by Israel. Petty thieves. Even children accused of selling black-market cigarettes.
The footage is stomach-churning. In September 2025, three blindfolded men were gunned down outside Shifa Hospital in front of a crowd. A month later, eight men were dragged into a Gaza City square and shot. Traitors, Hamas called them. The UN called it murder. Plain and simple.
Hospitals became torture chambers. Witnesses reported punishments inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. Still, the UN noted this doesn’t strip these hospitals of their protected status under international law, despite Israel’s constant claims that Hamas uses medical facilities as shields.
It is a messy, bloody ledger. The UN has previously accused Israel of genocide and starvation tactics—charges Israel rejects as biased. Meanwhile, the West Bank is boiling over too. The same report slammed Israeli settler violence, calling it a coordinated state policy to drive Palestinians off their land. Since the war began, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,098 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 240 children. Bedouin communities are being erased. Israel’s Foreign Ministry offered no comment.
In the end, the civilians catch it from both sides. Bombs from above, iron bars from their neighbors.
