Israeli army displays tunnel beneath Al Shifa it says served as Hamas hideout

goat@sh.itjust.works to World News@lemmy.world – 73 points –
Israeli army displays tunnel beneath Al Shifa it says served as Hamas hideout
reuters.com
44

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.

hiiii~ it's not actually a war-crime according to Article 19 of the Geneva Convention.

nawt defending iswael, just pointing out it's legally not a war-crime :(

Why do some anime nerds choose to be so insufferable

Yh I was hoping that meme accounts would be something we left behind on Reddit.

We brought over all the worst parts of the reddit community and very few of the best parts. Sometimes lemmy feels like a bad photocopy

based on the fact the account is fairly new and that ive seen them in other posts only posting pro Israel comments, I think this maybe a shill account

yush i am a shill posting on the most financially stable website, lemmy

The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.

Emphasis mine. Because was there a reasonable warning? "Take these intensive care patients through an active war zone, oh and btw you're surrounded" doesn't seem to apply

And...

The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants which have not yet been handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.

Which seems to be a all that was going on. The tunnels are everywhere, and do not constitute the hospital being used to commit acts harmful to the enemy.

I guess you may be trolling (Because I hope this is not just how you write) but this type of claim is common. Doesn't pass the sniff test and I am yet to see a convincing legal justification

It is a war crime.

"The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants which have not yet been handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy."

Thus far the only actual evidence is that there were tunnels below the hospital. Everyone already knew that. The entire place is a web of tunnels. No one was running anything but health care inside the hospital.

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.

The former Israeli PM admitted in an interview that Israel built the bunker underneath Al-Shifa hospital.

Yes, but was Hamas using it?

So far there's zero proof they did. Having to knock a building down to gain access to the entry point would heavily imply that it wasn't recently used and probably hasn't been done Israel walled it of with cement.

There's better evidence that smuggling tunnels that existed before Hamas was even a thing have been used offensively by both sides at one point or another though no credible evidence has surfaced of their use in this conflict.

Honestly it would be kind of dumb to use such shallow tunnels because Israel has flying gpr that can detect tunnels. It's why tunnels weren't super common fighting isil or al queda, it's a ton of time and energy when hiding in plain sight is cheaper less resource intensive and less obvious when your imports and exports are controlled externally by an adversarial nation.

https://www.wired.com/2007/11/watch-out-iran/

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.

12 more...

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."


The original article contains 572 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

i wonder why this reuters article is being downvoted

Me shooting up all 12 hostages to kill a bank robber: "Why are people mad at me? I killed the bad guy!"

so the bank robber was using human shields

So the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians including actual newborns are acceptable collateral to the IDF

Well, Khamas made them do that! So they bear no responsibility whatsoever. Duh.

Acceptable collateral to Hamas, who were using the hospital as a shield

When you start to justify your actions using a terrorist's opinions, perhaps you are the bad guy?

Have you ever considered that they don’t have to suffer the consequences of the terrorist actions.

Have you ever considered reading the comment you are replying to?

Do you think the IDF should be held to a higher standard than a bunch of religious zealots?

Because people are scrambling to find the new spot to shift the goalposts to.