Day: May 6, 2025

Leaving Hamas in power is “dangerous” for Israel and Gazans, said a young Palestinian from Gaza who narrowly escaped three days of torture in a “human slaughterhouse” at the hands of the terror group following his arrest on charges of spying for the Jewish state.

The 24-year-old from Gaza City told The Post he was left battered and bloodied following days of physical and psychological torture that included interrogators hanging him, flogging his entire body with iron ropes, beating his feet with hammers and using his own phone as a weapon against him.

“Because I didn’t confess to anything the way they wanted .. they smashed my phone over my head,” said the man, who was left with several fractured bones and asked that The Post not reveal his name for fear of retaliation against him and his family. “[They] accused me of inciting systematic campaigns against Hamas” in addition to receiving aid from Mossad and collaborating with Egypt, Jordan and the rival Palestinian Authority.

Last Monday, he was filming protests in Central Gaza exposing dissent against Hamas when four militants captured him. They forced him into a white Jeep and drove him to a grim prison compound.

While jailed, the dissenter thought he would be killed one way or another. 

“They were armed and they threatened me many times,” he recalled to The Post through a translator from the Center for Peace Communications.

He constantly feared being shot in the feet or legs, a common practice in Hamas’s torture playbook.

“This is what they do with those who oppose them — shoot them on feet and legs to paralyze them forever,” said the man, who was only released after militants failed to get a confession out of him. “I came out broken, hopeless, scared, and hungry. Even now, I still feel fear.”

This past Monday, Israel officials announced that unless Hamas releases the hostages, it will move forward with the next phase of war with military plans to expand its Gaza invasion to ensure the full eradication of Hamas and the return of the 59 remaining hostages. The Jewish state has called up 10,000 reservists in what is expected to be a months-long campaign. 

The dissenter agrees with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan.

“If Hamas returns to power, it will certainly launch another attack on Israel — a new October 7 — just as Netanyahu predicted,” he said. “Hamas survives on wars, and they cannot stop waging wars if Israel keeps them in Gaza.”

Though he had never previously actively protested, the activist said he’s always resisted attempts at recruitment by Hamas, especially in the past few years while studying law and sharia at Egypt’s Al-Azhar university.

He reminisces about the life he had before 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. His father, then a “wealthy merchant” with clothing manufacturing factories, regularly conducted business with Israel.

But two years after Israel’s complete withdrawal, instead of a flourishing independent Palestine, Hamas rose to power and created an oppressive state. His father was strangled financially as the regime “disturbed” his factories.

Just months before the attacks on October 7, his family was finally on the cusp of financial recovery thanks to the increased workflow between Israel and Gaza.

Now, the activist, who is single and lives at home with his parents, said he’s one “of many Gazans” who want to leave the de facto Palestinian state — and the threat of constant surveillance by Hamas.

He believes Trump’s relocation plan to have the roughly 1.8 million remaining Gazans rebuild elsewhere makes sense and says “everyone” is rooting for it.

“We want Israel to occupy Gaza … Let us not see Gaza forever,” he said. “It’s a basic human right that neighboring countries should open their borders during a war” like they did with the Syrians, he noted. 

He added that Hamas steals aid as leverage to recruit youngsters.  

“Aid is only for families who send their kids to be recruited by Hamas,” he said resignedly.

Despite his brutal capture and torture, he said he won’t be intimidated by Hamas.

“I’m not going to stop protesting — Hamas cannot oppress us anymore,” he said. “All I want is to escape the prison of Gaza and tell the world the truth about Hamas.”

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s state Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports at the collegiate and K-12 levels, although the Republican-penned bill is unlikely to get a vote in the state’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

The bill passed, 32-18, with five Democrats crossing party lines to join with all 27 Republicans in voting “yes.” The vote marked the second time the GOP-controlled Senate has passed it. An earlier attempt, in concert with a Republican-controlled House, met then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s veto pen in 2022.

This time, Senate Republicans are advancing the effort after President Donald Trump declared his intent to “keep men out of women’s sports.” and made it a major campaign issue in last year’s election, dividing Democrats on how to respond.

The bill applies to participation in girls’ and women’s sports that are sponsored by public schools, public universities and publicly chartered community colleges.

It also prohibits any sort of government agency or athletic association from investigating or punishing a school or higher education institution for maintaining separate sports teams for girls or women.

For well over an hour, Republicans and Democrats debated the bill, at times hotly. The sponsor, Sen. Judy Ward, a Republican from Blair, said the bill would “ensure all young women have a fair chance to compete in the sports they love.” Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, a Democrat from Allegheny, called the bill discriminatory against transgender people, as well as “unnecessary, unwarranted and unconstitutional in my mind.”

Democrats warned that the bill will go nowhere, and a spokesperson for House Democratic leaders accused Senate Republicans of being “more focused on divisive political theater and bullying kids for political points.” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office did not respond to an inquiry about the bill, although he has in the past expressed opposition to such bans.

Trump, as president, signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

Pennsylvania’s governing body for high school sports, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, then changed its policy in a move that some officials said was designed to follow Trump’s order, except that lawyers on both sides of the issue say the change in policy wording does nothing of the sort.

PIAA said it was aware of one transgender student participating in sports, but declined to say anything more about it, saying it is the subject of litigation.

In response to Trump’s order, the NCAA revised its transgender participation policy to limit women’s college sports to athletes assigned as female at birth. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, a governing body for smaller schools, effectively banned transgender athletes in 2023 from women’s sports.

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Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter.