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 400 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 1964. 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 70
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.
