Ala Mohammed Mushtaha lives in Gaza. Ala's father has been an Imam in Gaza, since before Hamas' takeover of that narrow strip of land. And because his father does not support Hamas, he has been forced to pay a heavy price.

On Saturday, December 30, our front door was busted down, and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza.

One dragged him by his head, and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

This horror, of course, was meted out because the Imam didn't toe the Hamas party line. The Hamas party line means allowing the terror group to store weapons in a mosque and to spread Hamas propaganda from the pulpit. It's hard, as an American, to imagine a supposed governing body behaving this way, but here we are.

For Hamas, being Muslim means supporting Hamas, and people who do not support Hamas aren’t Muslims. If you don’t abide by what Hamas tells you, you’ll lose your job or worse. To keep my father in line, ensuring that he would deliver only Hamas-approved Friday sermons and allow Hamas to use his mosque as a clandestine weapons depot, they arrested my brother and me at least ten times between 2016 and 2019. Sometimes they would speak politely, sometimes they would ask us to comply “for the sake of your sisters,” but always the threat of violence loomed in the background. And several times we were beaten and humiliated in front of our father. They beat him, too, once nearly blinding him.

What we have here is yet another damning testimony of the savagery of Hamas, not only towards Israel but also towards Muslims who live in Gaza.

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Mr. Mushtaha shared his story through The Center for Peace Communications, a U.S.-based non-profit that is working to foster peace in the Middle East and North Africa through education, advocacy, communication, counter-disinformation, and joint research — a laudable goal, and worth attempting — some people on the margins may be brought around to a more civilized way of thinking.

But education, advocacy, and so on won't end Hamas and their reign of terror over Gaza. International NGOs won't end Hamas. Good feelings, well-wishing, and outreach won't end Hamas. Hamas deals in force, as Mr. Mushtaha's testimony explains very vividly, and only force will put an end to Hamas. He concludes:

I don’t know where my father is. I don’t know if I will ever see him alive again. My hope in telling this story to the public, and putting my name to it, is to somehow offer my father a measure of protection. Hamas may wish to release him and show the world that they would never harm an admired mosque preacher. God alone knows the future, but what I know is that, under no circumstances, would my father want to become a propaganda tool.

We can hope for the senior Mushtaha's release, but Hamas hasn't been known to show much deference to anyone who opposes them, be they Jew, Christian, Muslim, or anything else — whether they be from Israel, Gaza, America, or anywhere else. Hamas will only be removed from Gaza the way Israel is currently going about doing so — by hunting them down and destroying them.

There will be no peace in Gaza until Hamas is, as they say, "no longer a factor."