Jennifer Rubin
For weeks, many mainstream media outlets and Israel’s harshest critics around the world have condemned Israel for fighting in and around the al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Doctors there denied there were terrorists present. They denied it was a legitimate military target. No hostages there, we were told. Now we know those assertions were flat wrong.
News of an agreement for the imminent release of dozens of hostages, a five-day pause in fighting and a surge of humanitarian aid should not obscure the controversy surrounding the hospital.
The Israel Defense Forces, as news outlets reported last week, found “automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets” as well as “an operational command centre and technological assets belonging to Hamas, indicating that the terrorist organization uses the hospital for terrorist purposes.” Moreover, the IDF revealed evidence of a tunnel:
In addition, Israeli forces found a Hamas truck loaded with weapons:
And, tragically, the IDF found in the immediate area the bodies of two hostages taken on Oct. 7. (Later on Sunday, the IDF revealed more extensive footage of the tunnel and video of two hostages entering the hospital.)
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has been forthcoming about its own independent evidence of terrorist activity in and around the hospital, as the Wall Street Journal reported: “The signals intelligence, which was picked up in recent weeks, was among several pieces of U.S.-gathered information, the people said.” It was among the information that led the White House and Pentagon to announce Tuesday for the first time that the United States believed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, known as PIJ, were using al-Shifa Hospital ‘as a way to conceal and support their military operations and hold hostages.’” U.S. intelligence, the report said, “was based on multiple streams of data and was collected independently of Israel.”
Media reports generically have conceded that a “hospital or medical facility can lose its special legal status if it is used for a military purpose that is ‘harmful to the enemy,’ rather than just for medical care.” However, they have yet to make clear that Israel correctly characterized al-Shifa.
After the evidence was presented, did the media go back to the sources that misled them about terrorist activity? I have yet to see that. Cable and network news shows that featured critics claiming this was purely a hospital have not invited those guests back to explain their misstatements. The news organizations have not leveled with audiences that they were manipulated.
The New York Times, invited to tour the hospital with IDF, declared, “The controlled visit will not settle the question of whether Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that rules Gaza, has been using Al-Shifa Hospital to hide weapons and command centers, as Israel has said.” Really? I suppose if you believe all this evidence was cleverly manufactured it doesn’t “settle” the matter. Otherwise, it demolishes claims that this was purely a civilian facility.
Critics demand that Israel now show it was a “command center,” a generic term without definition and without legal significance. It was used as a military facility. Period. For some, no evidence will ever be enough to undermine the credibility of sources whose false claims about the hospital have too often been accepted at face value.
There are legitimate questions as to whether civilians got sufficient warnings and were given adequate time to leave. Israel’s individual operations should be scrutinized to determine how much warning was given, whether the military objective was sufficient to justify civilian losses and whether civilians were protected to the greatest extent possible. And Israel should be forthcoming in providing evidence of its efforts to protect patients and doctors. That is how the laws of war operate, with specificity and attention to the intent of the parties. However, efforts to characterize the hospital siege in and of itself as proof of Israeli “war crimes” were inaccurate; media accounts should reflect that and underscore the falsity of information they were given.
Pro-Hamas apologists and other anti-Zionists desperately have tried to turn Israel — the victim of horrific war crimes, including badly underreported crimes of sexual violence — into the perpetrator of war crimes, or worse, a practitioner of genocide. However, facts are stubborn things. Facts refute this crass effort to “flip the narrative.”
Let’s be clear: Hamas openly commits to the destruction of Israel and the eradication of Jews. That is the very definition of genocide. Israel is not at war with the Palestinian people. It is at war with Hamas, which viciously attacked innocents. If there were any doubt about the former, remember that Israel has issued numerous warnings to Palestinian civilians, agreed to daily humanitarian pauses, opened civilian corridors to allow travel from north to south, provided entry into Gaza for trucks with humanitarian aid and even fuel (even though Hamas previously stole fuel for military purposes). A possible longer pause in fighting and the massive influx of aid belie the accusation that Israel is indifferent to the plight of Gaza civilians.
And, as the Times of Israel reported, “Patients, staff and displaced people on Saturday left Shifa Hospital … leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces in control of the facility.” The IDF denied it ordered the evacuation, saying it had “been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.” (The IDF also said it gave the hospital more than 1,600 gallons of water and 5,000 pounds of food.)
We will have no shortage of investigations and debate about Israel’s targeting and efforts to protect civilians. Meanwhile, the media should learn from this episode. It must be far less credulous in accepting accusations from Israel’s foes, especially entities Hamas might control or influence. And it must be candid about the extent to which Israel has warned civilians and provided aid.
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