How many people do you know who could break a living man’s legs with a hoe, not with a single blow and then fleeing the scene, but with countless strikes, one after another? In the videos emerging from Gaza, the man being beaten cries and begs for mercy, yet his attacker keeps swinging until both legs are beyond repair. No doctor or prosthetic in the world will ever make him walk again. This is Gazan culture. This is the human fabric; these are the values.
It’s unclear why anyone should be surprised. On October 7, they committed far worse atrocities against us — cheering as they shot a teenage girl, letting her bleed to death before her parents and siblings, and broadcasting the scene live on Facebook to their jubilant brothers in Gaza. They carried out horrific sexual assaults on young women, then murdered them in cold blood.
The latest gruesome clips coming out of the Strip, thankfully, involve no Israelis. Still, they are not worth watching. Alongside the systematic limb-breaking, there’s now the execution genre. Even before a single shot is fired, it’s clear that most of Benjamin Netanyahu’s conditions for ending the war have not been met. In the very first frame, armed Hamas militants are seen dragging a group of condemned men — proof that Hamas still rules Gaza by the gun.
Where were these victims tried and sentenced? Most likely between the ears of a few young Gazans who decided on the spot that it was enough. That’s the value of a human life in Gaza.
Palestinians cheer after Hamas executions
The heart of the footage is even more chilling: dozens, maybe hundreds of people form a circle around the square. They’re not security personnel — they’re civilians. The same “noncombatants” we so often speak of, who in truth are very likely the combatants of tomorrow. At least half the crowd consists of children and teenagers. They cheer as the gunmen force the victims to their knees, and when each is executed with a bullet to the back of the head, the excitement erupts into ecstasy.
So to those who are shocked, the problem lies with you. Gaza is Hamas, and Hamas is Gaza. Hundreds of thousands celebrated live as their sons and brothers massacred Israelis in the south on October 7. They rejoiced at the sight of slaughtered children. Even those Gazans who do not belong to Hamas, in disproportionate numbers, revel in violence — especially against Jews, but also against their own.
Gazans do not fear blood or death. They are unafraid to kill and unafraid to die. Not even the horrors of October 7, or everything that has followed, have driven this reality home to many Israelis.
Amihai AttaliWhile every rational person among us raises children slowly and carefully, shielding them from the evil in the world, Gazans bring their children to the town square to watch, to smell, and to hear death — to enjoy the sight of a bullet fired into another person’s skull, often someone from a rival clan.
We and they are two civilizations that will never meet. Oil and water — or rather, electricity and water, whose meeting always sparks an explosion. And it’s not because of us, not because of any lack of goodwill or desire for calm or compromise. It’s because the other side lives by a completely different code — of good and evil, of life and death, of right and wrong, of how to raise their children.
Even if they ever change, it will take generations — and a tremendous effort from their side. So far, there is no sign of it on the horizon. And that’s something we must understand.