A Hamas officer picked up a tree branch and beat journalist Rawaa Abu Murshed, leaving wounds all over her body.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
A Hamas member was recently exposed for beating a female Palestinian reporter with a tree branch.
The assailant claimed the journalist, Rawaa Abu Murshed, was was an “apostate” because she was not wearing a hijab.
She encountered members of the terror group’s so-called police while covering a “protest” on the border with Israel. Two people witnessed Hamas’ beating of Abu Murshed. She filed a complaint with the authorities after the incident.
While Hamas tweeted Saturday that following an “investigation” it sent the offender to jail, the terror group’s spokesman Iyad Al-Bazam warned that “all journalists must follow the customary coordination procedures before entering the border areas, with their identification cards attached.”
The BBC reported that Abu Murshed posted a report of the incident on her Facebook page, describing how two Hamas men in military clothes stopped her and her colleagues and interrogated them under the pretext that they were in a security zone.
After trying to introduce herself, the conversation suddenly focused on “her external appearance” and her failure to “wear the hijab,” with Abu Murshed saying one of the Hamas men accused her of “apostasy.”
When she objected to the way the Hamas officer spoke to her, he picked up a tree branch and beat her, leaving wounds all over her body.
The story of the attack sparked controversy on social media, with some harsh comments about the reality of dealing with Hamas.
“As women, veiled or not, we have previously been subjected to such mistakes from the men of Hamas,” tweeted broadcaster Reem Kalani.
Whether or not Hamas actually punished the man who brutalized Abu Murshed remains unknown, as there is no free press or freedom of expression in Gaza, which the terror group rules with an iron fist.