Hamas Using Hospitals as “Interrogation Centers,” Gazans Say

Plus, NYT reporter complains of “hollowness wrought by capitalism”; prayer powers Patriots football wins

A March 23, 2025, post on X from the Israel Defense Forces shows Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, which is reportedly being now used by Hamas as an interrogation center.

Hamas is using three hospitals in Gaza to interrogate political opponents, a new report says.

A senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, said that he’d “spent the past few weeks talking to humanitarians in Gaza, anti-Hamas activists, human rights organizers, feminists, widows, divorced women, desperate civilians, people in tents, civilians barely getting by, youngsters, and a diverse cross-section of Gaza’s professional class.”

“They have each referenced the use of Gaza’s hospitals by Hamas as interrogation centers, and how the terror group threatens its opponents with ‘rods in their legs’ if they dare open their mouths,” Alkhatib said. “They have described how Hamas has been breaking the legs of opponents, attacking tent occupants, kidnapping men, beating their mothers and sisters, and taking them to one of the three main hospitals: al-Shifa in Gaza City, Al Aqsa in Deir al-Balah, or Nasser in Khan Younis.”

Alkhatib, who made the comments in a recent post to X, said the silence from “international humanitarian or ‘human rights’ organizations…about the horrendous human rights atrocities being committed by Hamas against the Palestinian people of Gaza” shows that “many such organizations have become a joke.”

“The crimes being perpetrated against Palestinians are only relevant to these organizations when Israel is the culprit, and hardly ever if Hamas, the Islamist, fascist, terror organization, is involved,” he wrote.

Alkhatib’s Atlantic Council bio says he grew up in Gaza City and has lost 33 family members in Israeli airstrikes since October 7.

He makes a reasonable point. The New York Times had saturation-level front-page coverage of these hospitals when they were claiming to be suffering from Israel depriving them of supplies. In 2024, I wrote that the Times was functioning “as a kind of Gaza hospital trade association newsletter.” One article from a Gaza hospital credited reporting contributed by a total of ten Times journalists. Even the parody humor site the Babylon Bee grasped what was going on, with headlines such as “Hamas Says All The AK-47s Found In Gaza Hospital Were Strictly For Medicinal Use” and “Palestinian Authority Warns That Gaza Hospitals Running Dangerously Low On Ammunition.”

Now that Hamas is using the hospitals as interrogation sites or torture chambers, the New York Times, the U.N., the World Health Organization, the Harvard School of Public Health and its FXB Center, and the government-funded or Soros-funded “non-governmental” organizations appear to have lost interest. No Jews, no news.

Doctors from these hospitals were constant presences in U.S. and British university Zoom sessions and in major media accounts of the war between Israel and Hamas. They might be asked now what they think of Hamas using their hospitals as interrogation centers. If they deny it or decline to answer, maybe it is because they fear their own bones will be broken by the terrorists.

It’s something to keep in mind when reading any information that comes out of the parts of Gaza that are still Hamas controlled. Anyone speaking publicly risks having their legs broken—or worse—if they deliver anything other than the Hamas-approved message.

The report also underscores the tradeoffs involved with the “ceasefire” that has allowed Israel to obtain the return from Hamas of all of its live hostages and all but two of the slain hostages. Israel’s other stated war aims—disarming Hamas and dislodging it from control of Gaza—are yet to be fully achieved. Hamas appears to be using the pause in fighting, with its characteristic cruelty, to consolidate control in some areas of Gaza.

That could further contribute to making Hamas-controlled Gaza so miserable that any rational Gazan would want to leave. Brigadier General (Reserve) Amir Avivi, the founder and chairman of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum, said this morning that plans are advancing for “sorting between the population and the terrorists” so that unarmed Gazan civilians can move from the Hamas-controlled areas to temporary shelter in Israeli-controlled areas such as Rafah, near the Rafah crossing to Egypt, which will be reopened, “letting the Gazans to go out.”

That would allow Israel to eventually maneuver against the Hamas terrorists with fewer civilians in the way when the time comes to disarm and dislodge Hamas. “There will be a moment when we will have to decide, we are going in,” Avivi said.

NYT reporter complains of “hollowness wrought by capitalism”: A general assignment news reporter for the New York Times, Livia Albeck-Ripka, has an article in the arts section of Sunday’s print Times. It includes a description of a book as, “A perfect account of the hollowness wrought by capitalism and the algorithm.” It’d be one thing if this were coming from an opinion columnist or a critic, but it seems like a bit much for a news reporter of the New York Times to come out openly blaming “capitalism” for “hollowness.” Maybe the hollowness isn’t capitalism’s fault but secularism’s? There are plenty of Americans and others living non-hollow lives of purpose and meaning. Some of them are also capitalists and are prospering.

For an antidote to Albeck-Ripka, Maureen Dowd’s brother Kevin Dowd has a more reasonable take elsewhere in Sunday’s Times, in the opinion section real-estate typically devoted to Maureen Dowd: “Socialism has never worked anywhere in the world. Our country is built on capitalism, and that has served us well for almost 250 years.”

Prayer powers Patriots wins: My December 1 print New York Times carries a feature that ran online in the Times-owned Athletic on November 17 about a week in the life of Joshua Dobbs, the 30-year-old, $4 million-a-year backup quarterback of the New England Patriots football team.

On Wednesday, “Dobbs gets in at 6:45 a.m., has breakfast and takes part in a devotional the team organizes.”

On Friday, “Dobbs does his final weights workout of the week (this time, a total-body workout) at 6:30, then chapel an hour later, then a team meeting after that.”

The Patriots, at 10-2, are tied for the best record in the entire NFL. I wonder if they were praying this much in 2024 or 2023, two seasons they finished 4-13.

If you look carefully enough there are some scattered references to this elsewhere on the Internet. After the Patriots-Jets game on Thursday November 13, the players from both teams gathered on the field for prayer. After the November 9 Patriots-Buccaneers game, there was also a picture online of Bucs wide receiver Emeka Egbuka joining a group of Patriots gathered on the field for a postgame prayer.

The Patriots have had a series of team chaplains. The most recent publicly identified one seems to have departed in January 2025. Several of their star players have been outspoken about their faith.

Tight end Hunter Henry told the Sports Spectrum podcast in 2022: “I’m out there to glorify God…He gave me these abilities, and this is a way for me to go out there and worship Him. I always say I apply it to everything, but really on the football field, I’m out there playing for one reason, and that’s the Creator that gave me these abilities.” After a recent Patriots win he said, “God has extraordinarily blessed me — I couldn’t do it without Him.”

Running back TreVeyon Henderson told the Boston Globe recently: “I’m just someone who was saved by the grace of God, and I want to share that love with others.”

Starting quarterback Drake Maye’s Instagram bio reads, “Jesus✝️, Husband, Quarterback.”

Patriots rookie kicker Andy Borregales, who kicked 4 field goals against the Bengals in a November 23 victory, attributed it to “just letting God really just take control and just following his plan….just trusting the Lord...at the end of the day, I really do it … for the Lord and just trying to do my job and be a blessing.”

At least one widely followed X account claims, “A significant part of the culture change in New England this season has been Bible Study and prayers.”

The Patriots have a new coach as of January 2025 (the same date the previous chaplain departed), Mike Vrabel, who was described by the Catholic chaplain of his previous team, the Tennessee Titans, Father Ed Steiner, as “very Catholic.”

“He was never pushy about religion, but he felt like the players needed to have a religious home,” Father Steiner said. “Football is temporary, your faith is forever. He was a pretty good guide for the players in that way.”

The Kraft family that are the majority owners of the team understand the significance of faith—they are religious Jews, and they’re frequently inviting rabbis to join them for the game.

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