By ziadi @Adobe Stock
Al Shifa, a Military Stronghold
Hamas terrorists can end the hospital crisis in Gaza whenever it wants, explains the WSJ. Instead of ending this collateral nightmare, however, Hamas is digging in, using the Al Shifa hospital for military purposes.
From U.S. Central Command statement 8 Dec. 2016:
The Islamic State “was using the hospital as a base of operations and command and control headquarters.” Accordingly, the U.S.-led coalition conducted precision strikes in support of Iraqi troops who fought for the hospital.
The story and the scandal are bigger than it seems, writes the WSJ.
It wasn’t that the U.S. struck the terrorists where they hid, but that terrorists had used the hospital for cover in the first place. “In Mosul Battle, ISIS Used Hospital Base” was the Human Rights Watch headline; it explained that “armed forces or groups should not occupy medical facilities, undermining their protected status.”
Which brings us to Gaza today:
Hamas terrorists use the same war-crime tactics. Only now observers rush to apologize for it.
From the front page of the Human Rights Watch website:
“Unlawful Israeli Hospital Strikes Worsen Health Crisis.” For 4,500 words, the group acts as Hamas’s defense attorney, contesting Israel’s claims and dismissing evidence.
Pick up any mainstream Western rag and you’d perhaps be forgiven for concluding that Israel has organized its counteroffensive to converge in a pincer on Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital for no reason other than that it houses sick patients.
Hamas terrorists use the same war-crime tactics, but with a big difference: Now observers rush to apologize for it.
From the front page of the Human Rights Watch website: “Unlawful Israeli Hospital Strikes Worsen Health Crisis.”
For 4,500 words, the group acts as Hamas’s defense attorney, contesting Israel’s claims and dismissing evidence.
The real story, as Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has documented, makes a great deal more sense. Hamas has used the hospital at least since 2006, when a PBS documentary showed terrorists roaming its halls and cordoning off wings. Even Human Rights Watch admitted in 2007 that Hamas had fired at Fatah, its Palestinian rival, from within the hospital.
Take the 2008-09 war, when Hamas leaders hid in a bunker under the hospital.
According to The New York Times
Hamas operated openly in the halls.
In the 2014 war, the Washington Post reported:
Shifa was a Hamas “de facto headquarters.”
Amnesty International found that Hamas tortured prisoners on hospital grounds.
Contrary to media claims of an Israeli “siege” of Al Shifa hospital, Israel days ago opened a humanitarian corridor from the east side of the hospital to get civilians out. Many have since fled, as Israel first warned them to do a month ago. Israel is in contact with the hospital and offered to evacuate patients for treatment elsewhere. Hamas has resisted a transfer—it prefers patients, including babies, to remain in the war zone.
Israel responded by working to transfer incubators and respirators to the hospital. On Sunday Israel risked troops’ lives to leave 300 liters of fuel outside the hospital entrance. The U.S. State Department confirms that Hamas had the hospital decline the fuel.
Israel has been working, reports the WSJ, to transfer incubators and respirators to the hospital.
On Sunday Israel risked troops’ lives to leave 300 liters of fuel outside the hospital entrance. The U.S. State Department confirms that Hamas had the hospital decline the fuel.
As law, this is groundless. As morality, it is backward.
As a strategy to win the war, it plays into Hamas’s hands.
