RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to gay activist Judith Butler, Hamas is a progressive organization and anyone who points out that Israel doesn’t have the death penalty for gays is just “pinkwashing”. But Hamas is not actually all that progressive on gay rights as we see with the case of Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a Hamas commander who was tortured into confessing to being gay and then killed.

A Hamas commander who was executed in February was tortured and then killed after at least one terrorist under his command admitted to having sex with him.

Relatives and other sources say he was tortured extensively during that period, including beatings, whippings, being suspended by his hands from the ceiling for hours on end, sleep deprivation and more.

So bad were his conditions that family members protested outside the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in a rare show of dissent in authoritarian-ruled Gaza. Demonstrators were beaten by Hamas police and dispersed.

Here’s how Hamas progressively dealt with the whole gay thing.

In his next meeting with relatives, on March 1, Mr. Ishtiwi told his brother Hussam that he had been tortured since his fourth day in detention. Six weeks later, when his wives visited, they sneaked out a note, of which Human Rights Watch shared a photograph. “They nearly killed me,” it says. “I confessed to things I have never done in my life.”

By June 7, when Samia visited her brother at a Qassam base near Gaza City’s used car market, Mr. Ishtiwi “looked destroyed,” she recalled.

“I asked, ‘Why are you crying, brother?’ ” she said. “And he said, ‘I have been wronged, wronged.’ ”

Relatives said Mr. Ishtiwi had told them he had been suspended from a ceiling for hours on end, for days in a row. He was whipped, and guards blasted loud music into his cell, banishing sleep.

Samia said he had raised his trouser leg to show her that he had carved the word “zulum” into his skin with a nail, as a message in case he was killed.

More details reveal that…

A second note, apparently signed by one of the Qassam commanders responsible for Eshtewi’s interrogation, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, read: “Believe me, you will not say the truth until the cement reaches your mouth,” an allusion to a form of torture that includes threatening to bury the victim alive in a concrete grave.

Eshtewi’s family told Human Rights Watch that they suspected Eshtewi had died, perhaps from the hunger strike, and was shot afterward to make it look like an execution. They based that on observations that his body was very thin and that there were few traces of blood in or around the bullet wounds on his chest or on the shirt he was wearing.

Very progressive. Perhaps Judith Butler can explain how it’s progressive to torture a man to death over allegations that he’s gay. Forget pinkwashing. Judith Butler prefers Hamaswashing.