The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

. . .

Everyday Gazans were stuck — behind the wall of Israel’s crippling blockade and under the thumb and constant watch of a security force. That dilemma continues today, with the added threat of Israeli ground troops and airstrikes.

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  • bartolomeo@suppo.fiEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    they can promote certain perspectives while downplaying others

    Exactly, and they have the reach to be very effective at controlling the narrative.

    https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/palestinian-photog-says-nyt-fired-him-for-expressing-support-for-resistance/

    “What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army,” Salem wrote today on Facebook and Twitter, in a thread that has been widely retweeted, 5000 times this morning.

    The case stands in stark contrast to the three Jewish reporters, Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner, and David Brooks, who carried on writing about the issue for the New York Times even when their children were enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces.

    The Israel lobby is massively invested in propaganda, like NGO monitor and the above linked “organization Honest Reporting, which exists to attack the Palestinian narrative in the west”. Not to mention ads on google, youtube, controlling the narrative on facebook, google again, twitter… the list goes on. And yeah, there’s app for that.