Much is being made of the Oct. 13 public executions by Hamas of eight men whom they claimed were gang members, who had terrorized starving Gazans by looting food and imposing their rule by violence. Sheikh Husni al-Mughni, head of the Supreme Committee for Palestinian Tribal Affairs, defended the executions of men accused of collaborating with Israel and looting during the war, saying Gaza’s security forces imposed “field justice” on gangs that had terrorized civilians. In an interview with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hadath news channel, al-Mughni said the accused were long known to their communities and had ignored repeated warnings to surrender, adding that “when someone murders a ten-year-old child for a bag of flour, he deserves death and worse.”
In the days before Israel armed several gangs to contest Hamas, there were gangs that ran drugs and stole aid. Over the last year or two, Hamas executed several of them, and bad blood was created between the particular clans involved and Hamas. So, executing such thieves is not new. However, now that Israel has armed some gangs, it is quite possible Hamas is sending an extra message, beyond their normally brutal way of preventing food riots—both reasserting their primacy over the gangs and sticking it to Israel. But reports that they are just executing civilians because they are nasty are deliberately misleading.
The White House has sent out mixed messages on the narrative that Hamas is resorting to unprovoked violence. On Oct. 15, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Hamas “did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad … and killed a number of gang members.” He added that “that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you—that’s okay.”
Then on Oct. 16 he [posted on Truth Social](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115385030312911724 ): “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
