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Israeli Expert: Gazans Are Saying to Hamas, "Look What You've Done to Us"
(VOA News) Natasha Mozgovaya - Shlomi Eldar has been covering the Palestinians in Gaza for Israeli media since 1991 and has interviewed Hamas leaders. Yet since the Oct. 7 attack, he no longer sees them as a group that can be reasoned with. "I followed Hamas for over 30 years. I've never imagined to myself they become monsters," he said, adding that he never previously compared any of the group's behavior to the Nazis and the Holocaust. But Eldar said seeing images of burned bodies from the attacks was not something he could shake off. "Butchering, burning bodies, children, rapes, kidnappings. They kidnapped a baby, nine months old, to Gaza." Eldar said the attack cost Hamas a lot of support in Gaza. "People in Gaza know what Hamas brings them....They took them 20 or 25 years back - even more." "I heard voices in Gaza now, talking freely, [look] 'what you've made for us, what you've done to us,' they said." He thinks the exceptional cruelty of the Oct. 7 attack was made possible because of a combination of several factors - one of them is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza. "He is a cruel man. I've heard many, many stories. He was arrested in 1989 because he butchered Palestinians. He suspected they were collaborating with Israel, and he just tortured them and killed them." The second factor, Eldar said, is the education of children in Gaza toward violence. "The new generation, the young people - they were born, or they were children when Hamas took power in Gaza. They grew up with incitement all the time. And they've been taught that the Israelis are not human beings. When they invaded Israel, they didn't see the Israelis as human beings, just something that they can kill."