‘You were wrong not to kill me’: Gazan activist slams Hamas for attack on him
‘You are partners of the occupation in killing us,’ Amin Abed says of terror group, in videos recorded from hospital bed; admits thinking of leaving Strip for fear of being killed

Gaza-based activist Amin Abed has continued criticizing Hamas from his hospital bed, said to be in northern Gaza, where he is recuperating from a Monday attack by some 20 masked men who were said to have identified themselves as members of the terror group’s internal security forces.
Hamas, whose once-ubiquitous police presence has all but vanished throughout the Gaza war, has not commented on the incident.
In a video published Tuesday by the Saudi state-owned Al-Arabiya news channel, Abed, 35, addressed Hamas directly, saying he had expected the terror group to kill him, “but you were wrong not to kill me.”
“You are partners of the occupation in killing us,” he accused Hamas, referring to Israel.
“[Yitzhak] Rabin and [Yitzhak] Shamir used the policy of bone-breaking against the Palestinian people,” claimed Abed, referring to the Israeli prime ministers whose terms coincided with the first Palestinian Intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “You have used the policy of breaking teeth and bones against me three times.”
“As long as this weak heart beats and this tongue speaks, you won’t enjoy your abduction of Gaza’s poor residents, whom you have been kidnapping and torturing for 17 years,” Abed said, referring to Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
“As long as this tongue speaks and this heart beats with love for Palestine and its people, I will continue to speak out,” he concluded.
Hamas militants brutally kidnapped Palestinian political activist Amin Abed, viciously assaulting him with batons and striking him on the head with sharp tools. He is now in critical condition in the hospital, fighting for his life.
Our hearts go out to Amin as he battles to… pic.twitter.com/m2c9BuXzrs
— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) July 8, 2024
In a separate, slightly longer video posted to social media on Wednesday by Emirati news agency Al-Mashhad, Abed went into further detail about the assault itself. In the video, Abed corroborates the previously reported account of his friend and colleague Amer Balousha, who said the attackers claimed to be from Hamas’s internal security apparatus.
“Five armed people from Hamas’s internal security service wielded hammers and began striking me in the street,” said Abed. “They hit my head and broke my fingers.”
“They said they were internal security people and that they hit cooperators and spies,” Abed continued. “They laid me on my back and broke my teeth with a rock. A while later some people saw me, gathered around me and took me to the hospital.”
The activist said he was seriously considering leaving Gaza.
“After what happened, I know they might kill me here,” he said. “I want to stay alive and continue protecting my people.”
“What happened to me was a terrorist act, a crime. It prevents me from protecting my people,” Abed continued. “I won’t hesitate for a moment to protect my people no matter the price.”
In a shocking photo, political activist Amin Abed is shown with fractures in his hands and feet, wounds across various parts of his body, and a skull fracture, following a brutal assault by Hamas militias. pic.twitter.com/0UApWCnFZn
— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) July 8, 2024
“We’ve known the price from the moment we began opposing the Hamas movement politically and ideologically,” he added.
Abed has long been a thorn in Hamas’s side. In 2019, he helped organize protests over the harsh economic conditions under the terror group’s rule.
More recently, he has criticized Hamas’s October 7 attack, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, and sparking the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.
Abed penned a Facebook post against Hamas on Monday morning, which some on social media connected to the assault on him later that day.
The Washington-based news outlet Al-Monitor reported on Tuesday that Palestinians were outraged by the attack on Abed. The Arabic hashtag “we are all Amin Abed” was said to go viral, as did a video of the activist’s father Salah walking through ruins in Gaza and railing through a megaphone against the “traitors” behind the assault on his son.
"أيها العملاء الجبناء كفى".. والد الناشط أمين عابد يصرخ ضد قادة #حماس وسط الدمار في شمال #غزة بعد اختطاف نجله وتكسير أطرافه الأربعة لكتابته منشورات على فيسبوك#العربية pic.twitter.com/qm36jsBydD
— العربية (@AlArabiya) July 8, 2024
The elder Abed had detailed the assault in a Facebook post, but did not say who was responsible.
Fatah, Hamas’s rival which dominates the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the “barbaric” attack on Abed.
The secularist faction, which Hamas violently banished from the Gaza Strip a year after winning the 2006 PA legislative election, said it “holds the de facto authority in the Gaza Strip fully responsible” for the attack. Fatah also accused Hamas of “practicing a policy of widespread repression and tyranny” against the people of Gaza amid the war there.