City. They appeared wearing masks, their identities concealed to guard their families from societal castigation. And then they were lined up against a wall and shot to death by members of the Qassam Brigades.

Photos of the execution were promptly disseminated to the media, presumably in hopes that the images would quell the anger overflowing across Gaza, and also as a warning to the collaborators who remained on the loose. Netanyahu’s office seized on the execution scenes to portray Hamas as a gang of medieval fanatics no less barbaric than ISIS. By extension, he cast himself as the leader of the Westernized outpost on the front line against what he later described as “a world-wide network of militant Islamists” that “all share this fanatic ideology; they all have notconsensus in Gaza supported the death sentences. If I heard any dissenting opinions around Gaza, they were from those who believed the collaborators should not only have been executed, but brutalized as well.

Once again, Palestinians were pitted against one another through the machinations of their occupier. Palestinians killed Palestinians who had gotten Palestinians killed while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas undercut the negotiating position of Hamas. Back in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu heaped praise on Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen for orchestrating the assassinations, while Amos Harel, military correspondent for the zealously anti-Netanyahu newspaper, Haaretz, proclaimed: “Assassinations of Hamas commanders could make Netanyahu the hero.”

But Israel was hardly finished. As the war entered its denouement in the final week of August, the military readied a series of dramatic strikes