A Guardian blurb writer captions a piece by Ben White headlined The Palestinian torturers over at CiF as:
Human rights abuses by Palestinian security forces should be exposed, even if they provide Israel with a public relations coup
Does this answer a question any sensible person might ask? Was it ever in question that human rights abuses should be exposed, whoever the perpetrators are?
The background story is this, courtesy of China View (for no reason other than it was the first result that came up on Google).
GAZA, July 30 (Xinhua) — Hamas interior ministry said Wednesday that it arrested a number of suspects on last Friday’s beachside bombing which killed five Hamas members and a girl in Gaza.
The security services “interrogate a number of suspects who revealed important information about the incident and we still impose more security measures on the ground to chase the criminals,” said Ihab al-Ghussein, spokesman for the ministry.
In the coming few days, deposed interior minister Said Siam will hold a press conference to reveal the results of the investigation which Hamas security services opened into the mysterious explosion, according to al-Ghussein.
“There are important information and confessions which will be showed during the conference,” he said.
Following the blast, Hamas accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement of being implicated and launched a crackdown on the movement, arresting hundreds of its supporters and shutting down dozens of civil organizations which Hamas said linked with Fatah.
Abbas security forces in return arrested over 150 Palestinians affiliated with Hamas movement in refreshed crackdowns since Friday in the West Bank.
International and local human rights groups said the latest exchange of arrests were arbitrary and politically motivated.
Of course it is an issue. Some would actually argue that human rights abuses by Hamas ought to be hidden, hushed up or, if they’re exposed, dismissed with convoluted equivocation and apologies. This is precisely what happeneda few years ago when Peter Tatchell and OutRage! activists (of which I was one) protested against the treatment of gay and lesbian Palestinians.
