Captured terrorist reveals Hamas forces civilians to riot

BREAKING: Hamas terrorist who reached the border fence between Gaza and Israel caught on camera explaining how Hamas forces civilians to participate in violence against Israel #HamasLied pic.twitter.com/gYF954ufWc

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) May 16, 2018

The Israel Defense Forces released a video Wednesday of a Palestinian man, described as a Hamas terrorist, explaining how the terrorist organization that controls Gaza incites residents to engage in violent protest against Israel.

The video comes as members of the United Nations accuse Israel of not using restraint when the Jewish state's border with Gaza was breached Monday by rioters armed with guns and knives, incendiary kites, burning tires and other weapons. Hamas appealed to the world, claiming Israeli forces killed 62 Palestinians. But a Hamas senior official confessed in a television interview Wednesday that some 50 of the 62 people who died Monday and Tuesday were Hamas members.

The video of the captured terrorist, with an incendiary kite with swastikas drawn on it in the background, was shot Tuesday.

"Hamas is the one that sends us Facebook and text messages telling us to go and in the mosques they call and send fliers that tell us to go to the fence," the Hamas member said.

"They control the Gaza Strip, and everything that happens there goes through them."

He said Hamas "organizes these riots so that the people won't revolt."

"Hamas tell themselves, instead of having people revolt and turn against us, we'll send them to the fence and let them 'revolt' there freely," he said.

The man explained that when electricity is functioning in the Gaza Strip, Hamas dispatches messages telling citizens to go to the fence and riot, organizing transportation.

He said Hamas instructs women and children to move close to the border fence, assuring them that the Israel Defense Forces soldiers do not shoot women and children.

Hamas, he continued, has "established a committee that is responsible for the march, and for telling people to go."

However, he said, "people wear out and get fed up, and I am one of these people."

Earlier Wednesday, Hamas official Salah Bardawil said a TV interview, referring to the violence Monday and Tuesday, that in "the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas."

The Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, tweeted a video clip of the interview, accompanied by English captions.

"This proves what so many have tried to ignore: Hamas is behind these riots, and the branding of the riots as 'peaceful protests' could not be further from the truth," said IDF spokeman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, according to the Times of Israel.

Israeli officials have questioned the accuracy of the claim of the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry that 62 people were killed during the border clashes this week.

The Times of Israel noted that Hamas claimed an 8-month-old baby died after inhaling Israeli tear gas. But a Gazan doctor told the Associated Press the baby had a pre-existing medical condition and he did not believe her death was caused by tear gas.

The Palestinian Authority, nevertheless, has declared three days of mourning for what it describes as a "massacre" of its people by Israeli forces.

South Africa and Turkey recalled their ambassadors to Israel, and Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador to Ankara. Britain has called on the United Nations to investigate why "such a volume of live ammunition was used against what it described as unarmed protesters.

Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, said in a statement that the "policy of Israeli authorities to fire irrespective of whether there is an immediate threat to life on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza, caged in for a decade and under occupation for half a century, has resulted in a bloodbath anyone could have foreseen."

In an interview Monday with Al Jazeera, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said that when Palestinian leaders talk about "peaceful resistance" against Israel, "we are deceiving the public."

"This is a peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies, and enjoying tremendous popular support," he said.

He said the "peaceful resistance" of the rival Fatah movement, which governs Judea and Samaria, also know as the West Bank, "consists of rallies, demonstrations, protests, pleas, and requests, in order to improve the terms of the negotiations, or to enable talks with the Israeli enemy."

"This deception does not fool the Palestinian public," he said.

See the interview with Mahmoud Al-Zahhar:

Responsibility 'rests squarely with Hamas'

In a United Nations Security Council meeting Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley blocked a call for an international investigation into Israel's defense of its border.

In her remarks before the vote, Haley blamed Hamas for the deaths.

"Make no mistake, Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday," she said.

"I ask my colleagues here in the Security Council, who among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would," said Haley.

"No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has. In fact, the records of several countries here today suggest that they would be much less restrained."

Haley said those who suggest that the Gaza violence has anything to do with the location of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem "are sorely mistaken."

"Rather, the violence comes from those who reject the existence of the state of Israel in any location."

On Monday, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah declared "the responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas."

Prior to the border clash Monday on what the Palestinians call "Nakba Day," the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding 70 years ago, dozens of social media posts called for Palestinians to bring guns and knives to the protest, knock down the border fence, kidnap Israeli civilians and hand them over to Hamas.