The United Nations has issued a report so damning of Hamas that it can no longer be ignored: the terrorist organization ruling Gaza has beaten, maimed, and publicly executed its own civilian population, committing what the report explicitly calls war crimes.
The UN International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released its findings on June 9, documenting the systematic campaign of terror that Hamas has waged not only against Israel, but against the very people it claims to govern.
The commission identified 249 cases of executions and severe physical violence in 2024–2025, resulting in at least 108 deaths and 384 injured. Hamas-affiliated forces were involved in at least 60 of these incidents, including two public executions of 11 men. The report classifies these acts as war crimes of murder and torture, violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
The methods were medieval. Three Hamas-affiliated forces were found responsible: the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas), the Sahm Unit (a plain-clothed paramilitary force created in March 2024 by Gaza’s Ministry of the Interior), and the Rad’a Force (established in June 2025 as a paramilitary police force targeting alleged collaborators and rival factions). At least 45 cases were attributed to the Sahm Unit alone, resulting in approximately 14 executions and 101 injuries.
The executions were not carried out in secret. They were staged as public spectacles. On October 13, 2025, the Sahm Unit published video footage of the public summary execution of eight blindfolded and handcuffed men from the same family in Gaza City. A month earlier, three blindfolded men were shot by masked gunmen outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital before a crowd of onlookers. Both groups were accused of collaborating with Israel. No trial. No judge. No appeal.
A History Written in Blood
Hamas did not come to power through legitimacy. On June 15, 2007, Hamas seized control of Gaza in a dramatic and violent coup, expelling the forces of the rival Fatah party in brutal clashes that left 188 people dead and more than 650 wounded. The methods were those of a criminal syndicate, not a government. During the fighting, Hamas gunmen threw opponents off high-rise buildings, shot a Fatah militant 40 times outside his home, and killed a Hamas cleric in front of a mosque. President Mahmoud Abbas called it what it was: a coup.
Since seizing power, Hamas has ruled through fear. The wave of executions documented in the UN report is not a wartime aberration — it is the continuation of a pattern established the moment Hamas took Gaza by force.
Tunnels for Terrorists, Rubble for Civilians
While Gaza’s civilian population has endured years of bombardment, displacement, and deprivation above ground, Hamas’s leadership has lived in a network of underground fortresses built with resources that could have housed and protected the population.
Hamas built hundreds of kilometers of tunnels in the territory it has ruled since 2007 but has never built shelters for civilians to hide during bombings. The decision was not an oversight — it was doctrine. Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk stated in a televised interview that the tunnels were built to protect Hamas fighters from airstrikes, not civilians, adding that protecting Gaza’s civilians is the responsibility of the United Nations.
A New York Times investigation from June 2024 revealed widespread anger among ordinary Gazans at Hamas’s callous disregard for the population — specifically how Hamas leadership was protected in underground tunnels while civilians remained above ground with no protection. One Gazan interviewed said that Hamas “threw the people” into the conflict while sheltering its own commanders beneath their feet.
The tunnels’ electricity — for lighting, air circulation, and communications — was powered largely by solar panels siphoned off from nearby civilian buildings. Hamas did not merely deny civilians protection. It took from them what little power they had to build its own underground city.
Humanitarian Aid as a Weapon
The diversion and weaponization of humanitarian aid has been a defining feature of Hamas’s rule. Hamas actively worked to disrupt aid distribution efforts and prevent Gazan civilians from obtaining supplies. On June 11, 2025, Hamas hijacked a bus carrying American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation workers and murdered multiple employees. On July 5, 2025, they threw two grenades at the Rafah distribution center while Gaza’s civilians were present.
IDF-released intelligence documents showed Hamas operatives employed by UNRWA alongside documents detailing Hamas’s use of UNRWA facilities, with the same individuals appearing on both civilian and military ID lists. The world’s largest humanitarian agency operating in Gaza was, in significant measure, a Hamas employment program — paid for by international donors who believed they were feeding children.
The UN report itself noted that many of the extrajudicial punishments were “framed by the perpetrators as punishments for alleged collaboration with Israel, looting humanitarian aid, theft, drug-related offenses or affiliations with internal rivals.” The cruel irony is complete: Hamas stole humanitarian aid, then executed Gazans for stealing it.
What the UN Report Reveals — and Buries
The commission’s chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar, went to lengths to describe the abuses as occurring in an “environment engineered by Israel.” The report simultaneously documented 249 cases of Hamas war crimes and sought to attribute the context to Israel. The commission’s credibility on Israel has long been questioned — Israel has repeatedly accused the UN rights office of institutional bias — and the report’s framing does nothing to dispel that concern.
But the facts documented within it cannot be walked back. Hamas beat children accused of theft. Hamas broke bones with metal pipes and cement blocks. Hamas dragged men into public squares and shot them before crowds. Hamas murdered the workers trying to feed Gaza’s starving population.
The God of Israel commanded in the Torah: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Tzedek tzedek tirdof — Deuteronomy 16:20). What Hamas has built in Gaza is the precise opposite of justice — a system where the rulers are exempt from all law and the ruled are subject to summary death.
Gaza’s civilians did not choose this. They were conquered by it in 2007, conscripted as human shields for nearly two decades, denied shelter in the tunnels their own labor helped build, and shot in public squares when they were no longer useful. The UN report, whatever its political limitations, has put that record on paper.
