Israel: hospital complicity
By Richard North - November 17, 2023
As we left it, while we explored Braverman’s response to her sacking, the Israelis had just announced they were mounting a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital based, they said, on intelligence information and an operational necessity.
Results were not immediately forthcoming which gave me space to deal with the Supreme Court fallout. Although Braveman has added further observations on the issues emerging, I think we can afford to let this controversy stew for a little, while we look at what has been happening at Shifa Hospital.
When the legacy media caught up with events, the pickings were relatively thin, leaving the likes of the Telegraph to record that troops had gone in and taken control of parts of the hospital. Five Hamas terrorists had been killed in an exchange of fire outside the hospital, but no fighting was reported inside the buildings.
The assault teams – described for some reason as “commandos” – were accompanied by “medical teams and Arabic speakers” which a diligent BBC newsreader duly reported as the IDF “targeting medical teams as well as Arab speakers”, misquoting from a Reuters report.
This elicited a protest from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which noted that such incidents made “a mockery of the BBC’s oft-stated dedication to professionalism and impartiality”.
An apology was duly forthcoming, the newscaster claiming that the error “fell below our usual editorial standards”, although some might think that the original report more than adequately represented the Corporation’s usual editorial standards.
As to the operation, a security official explained to the Times of Israel that they were “starting small, and the operation will expand as necessary”, noting that the entry of troops into the hospital was “more of a challenge for media [optics] than operations”.
Although the official told journalists that: “The decision was that we enter Al-Shifa only if we know exactly what is there and where it is, as we did at Rantisi Hospital, which was only [raided] when we knew exactly what was in its basement”, results were slow coming in, and still are.
This is unsurprising given the size of the complex, and the ever-present danger of ambushes and booby-traps, but an immediate find was a cache of arms, explosives, along with discarded clothing which indicated that Hamas fighters were seeking to melt into the background unnoticed.
As the situation stabilised in the immediate search area, the IDF allowed access to media camera crews including – perhaps unwisely – a BBC team led by Lucy Williamson who delivered a sneery report referring to “three small stashes of Kalashnikovs, ammunition and bullet-proof vests”.
The IDF guide, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, showed the intrepid reporter – benefiting from the close protection of IDF troops – “some military booklets and pamphlets, and a map that he says is marked with potential entry and exit routes from the hospital”.
These, Conricus was allowed to say, tells us that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes. He also told Williamson, “We uncovered a lot of computers and other equipment which could really shed light on the current situation, hopefully regarding hostages as well”.
The laptops, he said, contain photos and videos of hostages, taken after their kidnap to Gaza. There was also recently released footage, shared by Israeli police, of their interrogations of Hamas fighters arrested after the October attacks. In the pompous style of reporting that we get from the Corporation, we were told that: “The BBC was not shown what was on the laptops”.
Conricus thought the material was “just the tip of the iceberg”, saying that: “Hamas aren’t here because they saw we were coming. This is probably what they were forced to leave behind. Our assessment is that there’s much more”.
The response from Williamson was to conclude her piece to camera with a long sneer, telling us that, “in the brutal information war that tails this conflict, this is Israel’s moment of truth”.
“After almost 24 hours securing and searching the hospital”, she said, Israel says it has found weapons and other equipment that could help provide information on both Hamas fighters and the hostages. But it has its hands on neither”.
As the IDF search progressed, further finds were announced. Under a building bulldozed in the compound, the entrance to an operational tunnel was exposed.
In the external area of the complex, troops found a hidden booby-trapped vehicle containing a large number of weapons, including what they called AK-47s (but are probably Chinese knock-offs), RPGs, sniper rifles, grenades and other explosives. The body of Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old mother of five, taken hostage on 7 October, was also found in a building near the hospital.
This had the Guardian grudgingly reporting the findings as claims by the Israelis, punctiliously declaring that “no independent verification was possible”. This, incidentally, is the newspaper which, without a blush records the numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza, from the “health ministry”, as gospel, rarely telling readers that the source of the data is Hamas.
Yet, when the IDF claims that Hamas has placed command centres under and around al-Shifa and other facilities, the paper is quick to tell us that “Hamas and the hospital staff deny this”, adding that “using human shields is forbidden under international law” – as if this somehow strengthened the denials.
According to the IDF, the Shifa is the fourth Gaza hospital to yield evidence of terrorist activity. Two others were Rantisi and Al-Quds, where a large amount of weaponry and ammunition has been found. The fourth was Sheikh Hamad Hospital which was used as a Hamas launching pad for firing rockets at Israel, launched from a tunnel embedded within the hospital.
We get no equivocation, therefore, from Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and CEO of the International Legal Forum, writing in the Telegraph to declare: “Hamas are cruelly turning hospitals into targets”, stating that the international community should direct its outrage at the terrorists systematically using civilians as human shields.
Ostrovsky rehearses the international law applicable to hospitals in times of war, and observes that that Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organisation, operates without any regard to the norms of international law or value of human life, and that it has a longstanding practice of systematically using hospitals and civilians as human shields.
In calling for the international community to direct its outrage at Hamas, though, he is not alone. The Israelis themselves, weary of the cant from international agencies, are starting to complain about their complicity.
“For too long international agencies and officials have been tacitly complicit with Hamas’s long-standing abuse of hospitals as human shields”, prime minister’s office spokesman, Eylon Levy, says.
The PMO spokesman highlighted the statements of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, and UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths. The two had criticised the IDF for entering Shifa hospital, with Ghebreyesus tweeting that “the reports of military incursion into Al Shifa hospital are deeply concerning”, and Griffiths posting that he was “appalled by reports of military raids in Al Shifa hospital”.
Levy remarks that “what is disturbing is Hamas putting its headquarters in the basement and the fact that you are covering for it”, describing it as “appalling” that Hamas had “hijacked protected institutions and UN agencies did nothing”.
“To the alphabet soup of international agencies complicit with Hamas war crimes”, he added, “we say: ‘Your negligence has put lives at risk and has cost innocent lives. Now that we have caught you in the act, can you please find the strength to condemn Hamas?’”.
Warming to his theme, Levy told them: “You have failed the Palestinian people. You have failed the world. You have all failed at your jobs”.
Over the next few days or so, we can expect more to emerge. Progress in this dangerous and sensitive environment is bound to be slow, and Hamas have had plenty of time to hide the evidence, cementing over tunnel entrances and laying tiles to conceal them. But, as the evidence builds, there are going to be serious questions asked as to who knew what, and why they didn’t reveal what they knew.
