GAZAN PHOTOJOURNALIST: I Filmed Hostages Being Beaten on Oct. 7 and Hid the Footage to Protect Attackers

Motaz Azaiza, a popular Gazan photojournalist with a large online following, said in a podcast that he filmed hostages being beaten on Oct. 7 but never published the footage in order to protect the attackers, saying he didn’t want to be responsible for their elimination by the IDF.

In another staggering admission, he said that Hamas runs a WhatsApp group called SMART for Gazan journalists, controlling what gets published.

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“Every journalist in Gaza is in it,” Azaiza asserted. “Hamas media runs it. Its manager was the media director of the Rafah Crossing.”

“And by the way, some of them came and ate in my house during the war,” he added. “They fed me during the war. Then suddenly they’re abusing me.”

Azaiza, who fled to Qatar several months after the war began, was referring to the tactic he said Hamas used to intimidate journalists who criticized the terror group.

“Suddenly I found myself being attacked from all directions,” he recalled. “They take the details of a specific person, publish his phone number in the group, and instruct online activists to attack him, curse him, and make his life miserable. This is organized behavior, a real mob. When I uploaded a video in which a civilian could be heard cursing Hamas, I faced enormous backlash. Photographers in Gaza have become accustomed to lowering their cameras the moment someone says something bad about Hamas, because anyone who dares to show reality is persecuted relentlessly.”

Azaiza criticized Hamas, saying that while he supports armed resistance, the Oct. 7 attack did nothing for Gazans except cause tens of thousands of deaths, and that Hamas did nothing to protect their own people.

“I am not waiting two years to judge whether Hamas made mistakes,” he said. “I see the mistake in front of my eyes, when people are dying every day. Now they are talking about an agreement in which they will agree to lay down their weapons. You could have agreed to that already on October 11, 2023. Why was it so important that tens of thousands would be killed? On what table did you put the Palestinian issue? You brought us back to the Middle Ages. You caused women in Gaza to urinate into a plastic bucket. This does not bother you, but what bothers you is if someone suddenly criticizes you?”