Israeli army displays tunnel beneath Al Shifa it says served as Hamas hideout
The Israeli army showed a reinforced tunnel beside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, complete with a bathroom, kitchen and an air conditioned meeting room that it said had served as a command post for Hamas fighters.
I find it weird that people so vehemently deny that Hamas builds infrastructure near civilian sites. It’s well documented. Doesn’t excuse the thousands of civilians that Israel has killed in this horrible war, but that level of collateral damage is one of Hamas’ aims to shape public opinion. Israel is foolish for feeding into that, they’ve squandered international good will for a goal I don’t think is attainable.
No one denies it. What they deny is that the Hospital itself was a command center for hamas. It wasn't. It was a hospital. And Israel killed a bunch of innocent people to dig outside and find the tunnel. There is no excuse for slaughtering innocents. It is a war crime regardless of any justification.
It's been mind-boggling to see. I mean, "well documented" is kind of an understatement. And so is "near," actually. Hamas tries to literally merge their infrastructure with civilian infrastructure, making it impossible to differentiate between the two, with the express purpose of using civilians as human shields.
And yes, "foolish" is also an understatement. Israel's conservative-controlled government has responded exactly as Hamas wanted them to. It was a trap, an obvious one, and they fell right into it.
Hamas attacked, committed the most sickening acts (murdered and kidnapped baby's and women to rape) and took hostages back to gaza. Israel was never going to sit back quietly after that (or could anyone).
That was Hamas's plan though. Cause as much suffering as possible to their own people to generate propaganda against Israel and hopefully isolate them for later attacks.
The most sickening thing is the Hamas betrayal of their own people. To use them in this way is beyond barbaric.
Barak replied "It's already been known for many years that they have a bunker that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa," which was used as a "command post" for Hamas and as a "junction of several tunnels"
"I don't know to say to what extent it is a 'major.' It's probably not the only...command post. Several others are under hospitals or in other sensitive places."
...
Barak, who was Israel's prime minister from 1999 to 2001, responded, "decades ago, we were running the place, so we helped them." The Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.
"It was many decades ago...that we helped them build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of these compounds."
Looks to be outside the hospital to me. The entire place is covered in tunnels. Just an excuse to kill a bunch of brown people, nothing more.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Israel has long accused Hamas of using the Shifa hospital complex as a command and control center as part of a wider strategy that seeks to hide its forces among the civilian population.
Journalists were driven in Israeli military vehicles to the hospital complex in the northern Gaza Strip past a landscape of buildings destroyed or vacated during Israel's nearly seven-week-old invasion of the Palestinian enclave.
Army escorts used flashlights to illuminate the way in the dark and showed a small kitchen, a bathroom equipped with a toilet and sink behind a closed door, as well as a room large enough for meetings with two metal beds.
Outside on the ground, the army showed scores of guns, grenades and other explosives that military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said had been collected in recent days inside the hospital, a motor home and nearby cars.
In Washington, the White House has said its independent intelligence supported Israel's claim that Hamas was using Gaza's hospitals, including Shifa, to hide command posts.
Hamas responded at the time: "The White House and the Pentagon's adoption of the false (Israeli) narrative, claiming that the resistance is using Al Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation (Israel) to commit more massacres against civilians."
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