The usual suspects are rebuking Israel for “attacks” on hospitals in Gaza. Yet they speak nary a word about a terrorist organization that purposely encourages civilian deaths to create a propaganda tool designed to advance its efforts to eradicate the Jewish state.
On Sunday, a handful of U.N agencies, along with the World Health Organization, demanded “urgent international action to end the ongoing attacks on hospitals in Gaza,” CNN reported. Yet these concerns are meaningless when they ignore that Hamas intentionally endangers hospital patients in Gaza by turning medical centers into de facto military installations.
In fact, U.S. intelligence information has confirmed this.
“Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday, CNN revealed.
A CNN team embedded with Israeli forces “was shown guns and explosives in one room located beneath Al-Rantisi children’s hospital on Monday, which IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari termed an ‘armory.’ ”
Hamas officials deny this, of course. But they have also claimed that the killers who invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and slaughtered scores of men, women and children were not intentionally targeting civilians, despite ample video evidence to the contrary. The world should have no patience for such prevarications.
In stark contrast, Israel has sought to minimize civilian deaths. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated the nation would allow humanitarian evacuations of hospitals, particularly babies and children. The New York Times reported this week that patients and staff at Gaza’s main children’s hospital fled this past weekend without consequence. Israel also offered fuel to Hamas for use in al-Shifa hospital, Reuters reported, but the terror group refused it.
“There’s no reason why we just can’t take the patients out of there,” Mr. Netanyahu said on CNN, “instead of letting Hamas use it as a command center for terrorism, for the rockets that they fire against Israel, for the terror tunnels that they use to kill Israeli civilians.”
And let’s not forget that while U.N. groups and the WHO lecture Israel on hospitals and civilian deaths, they remain oddly silent about Hamas kidnapping dozens of innocent Israelis as part of its terror campaign. This is not the act of an organization that respects international norms.
Israel will continue to take steps to avoid innocent deaths in Gaza. But Hamas’s despicable practice of embedding itself in the civilian population creates obvious and difficult challenges. Blame the leaders of the terrorist group for that.