Video and photos of large numbers of Palestinian men in Gaza — stripped to their underwear, blindfolded, and handcuffed — went viral Thursday, with critics of Israel claiming there had been mass arrests, and pro-Israel bloggers claiming they were terrorists who gave themselves up.
Breitbart News will not publish these images due to the customary practice of not depicting prisoners of war. However, they are easy to find on Twitter / X, Instagram, Telegram, and various other social media platforms.
These images, along with a few others, are bouncing around the Arab and Muslim world at a speed I have not seen in recent years.
It doesn’t matter what the situation is, the images of Palestinian men with most of their clothes stripped, and lined up in a row sitting on the… https://t.co/AGouhvUV6V
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) December 7, 2023
Asked about the photos and videos during a press conference, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said (via Jewish Breaking News on Telegram):
Jabaliya and Shejaiya are ‘centers of gravity’… for terrorists, and we are fighting them. They are hiding underground and come out and we fight them. Whoever is left in those areas, they come out from tunnel shafts, and some from buildings, and we investigate who is linked to Hamas, and who isn’t. We arrest them all and interrogate them.
Terror detainees are often stripped, or are asked to remove their clothing, because of the danger that they may be wearing explosive vests or belts, or carrying other weapons.
A video circulating on social media also showed detainees allegedly being taken in trucks by Israeli soldiers for questioning.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
