Over The Years, Hamas Terrorist Control Of The Al Shifa Hospital Was Known. Why Not Now? (Daled Amos)

These days the media is demanding irrefutable proof for something that used to be an open secret: Hamas terrorists have a headquarters and maintain control in the Al Shifa hospital. 

Proof?

Put aside the claims and various proofs that the IDF has produced since gaining control of the hospital in Gazal. Take a look instead at what the media and Gazan doctors have said for more than a decade.

A 2007 episode of PBS's Wide Angle provided a glimpse of how the Al Shifa Hospital was run in 2006:

In the summer of 2006, as internal battles fracture the Palestinian Territories, WIDE ANGLE provides a glimpse inside the conflict as it spirals out of control. Gaza E.R. follows doctors, nurses, and staff at Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, as they struggle in the face of turf wars between Hamas, rival faction Fatah, and powerful families with competing agendas. Our cameras reveal that gun-battles inside the hospital... [emphasis added]

This was before the bloody Hamas coup when the terrorist group ousted their Fatah rivals. Both terrorist groups were calling Al Shifa home.

Even Human Rights Watch took notice. On June 12, 2007, HRW reported that Hamas was taking advantage of the Al Shifa hospital:

Fatah and Hamas forces engaged in battles in and around two Gaza Strip hospitals on Monday. After Hamas fighters killed Fatah intelligence officer Yasir Bakar, Fatah gunmen began firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drawing Hamas fire from inside the building, killing one Hamas and one Fatah fighter. [emphasis added]

The June 30, 2007 issue of the British Medical Journal, corroborated the situation in an article quoting one of the doctors confirming that the hospital is infested with Hamas terrorists:

The medical staff are suffering from fear and terror, particularly of the Hamas fighters, who are in every corner of the hospital.

On December 29, 2008, The New York Times also reported that Hamas was in control of the hospital:

At Shifa Hospital on Monday, armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roved the halls. Asked their function, they said they were providing security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.

...Hajoj, like five others who were killed at the hospital in this way in the previous 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. [emphasis added]

The article recounts how the hospital was used as a stand-in for the central prison during Operation Cast Lead, though there was not much of a trial.

Hamas was all over. in control, and taking advantage of the protection that Al Shifa offered.

On January 13, 2009, PBS again reported about how Hamas had taken control of Al Shifa:

WIDE ANGLE reached a doctor in Gaza who believes Hamas officials are hiding either in the basement or in a separate underground area underneath the hospital and said that they moved there recently because other locations have been destroyed by Israel. The doctor, who asked not to be named, added that he believes Hamas is aware that they are putting civilians in harm’s way. [emphasis added]

Five years later, things had not changed, except that the Washington Post acknowledged that the hospital was being used as a headquarters. On July 15, 2014, William Booth reported about a brief cease-fire during Operation Defensive Edge:

At the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, crowds gathered to throw shoes and eggs at the Palestinian Authority’s health minister, who represents the crumbling “unity government” in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The minister was turned away before he reached the hospital, which has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices. [emphasis added]

The fact that a terrorist group was using Shifa Hospital as headquarters was not even considered a revelation. It was just business as usual. We know this because the fact that Hamas was using the hospital as a headquarters was mentioned in passing in the eighth paragraph of the article.

Nick Casey, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal noted that Hamas was using the hospital for its propaganda when he posted a picture on Twitter of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed inside the hospital. He later deleted the tweet.

 

Casey later tweeted:

Casey was later compelled to delete that tweet as well.

A day later, on July 22, the French-Palestinian journalist Radjaa Abou Dagga, a correspondent for “Ouest France” and a former contributor to “Libération”, recounted his being summoned to be interrogated by Hamas in the al Shifa hospital:

A few meters from the emergency room where the wounded from the bombings are constantly arriving, he is received in the outpatient department, “a small section of the hospital used as an administration” by a group of young fighters. “They were all well dressed, ” Radjaa is surprised. In civilian clothes, with a pistol under their shirt and some had walkie-talkies . He is ordered to empty his pockets, remove his shoes and his belt and then he is called to a hospital room “which served that day as a command office for three people”. [emphasis in the original]

Hamas disapproved of Dagga's work and wanted to know if he was in fact an Israeli journalist. He was lucky enough to be able to leave Gaza.

But at Dagga's request, this article was removed.

But Hamas found that the al Shifa hospital was useful for more than just interrogations. Here, a Finnish journalist reported about a rocket being fired from the back parking lot of the hospital.

On July 23, John Reed of The Financial Times tweeted:

From August 11, 2014, from the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw about the disappearance of Hamas uniforms once the fighting begins:

they go into hiding. Only at the Shifa Hospital, the big hospital in Gaza City, are a few sitting in uniform. There, they feel protected from the Israeli bombings. In addition, that is where they monitor the international press to prevent it from doing ‘wrong’ things.

Again, Hamas is using the hospital as a headquarters.

In May 2015, Amnesty International was catching on and published a report which referenced how Hamas used the hospital. The report, ‘Strangling Necks': Abductions, Torture, And Summary Killings Of Palestinians By Hamas Forces During The 2014 Gaza/Israel Conflict, made the extent of Hamas control clear:

Hamas forces used the abandoned areas of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, including the outpatients’ clinic area, to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical centre. [emphasis added]

An online summary of the report actually went into more detail:

As well as carrying out unlawful killings, others abducted by Hamas were subjected to torture, including severe beatings with truncheons, gun butts, hoses and wire or held in stress positions. Some were interrogated and tortured or otherwise ill-treated in a disused outpatient’s clinic within the grounds of Gaza City’s main al-Shifa hospital. At least three people arrested during the conflict accused of “collaboration” died in custody. [emphasis added]

Clearly, over the years the presence of Hamas in Al Shifa and their control over the hospital as they conducted their day-to-day business was known. It was noted by journalists, the media and even Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch admitted to how Hamas was exploiting the hospital.

But still, not everyone could admit the truth.

For an article in Forbes in 2014, Richard Behar asks an unnamed journalist what we now know is a straightforward question:  "Are Hamas leaders and fighters using it as a base for operations?"

The journalist responded:

It’s not the fighters who are there, and they’re not using the hospital to launch rockets from, they’re using it to see media. These are Hamas spokesmen [at the hospital], not leaders. This is also something that has not been understood fully. There are probably a couple of reasons [for holding press conferences there]. It’s a safe place. Israel doesn’t kill spokespeople. Also, it’s a good place to get journalists, as we’re passing through the hospital, since that’s where the bodies are coming in. It’s a place journalists have to go anyway.

Whether it is an issue of fear of Hamas or some ingrained bias, this inability to face the facts should not surprise us.

It is going on right now, too. 

Even though the proof of Hamas presence at and beneath Shifa is overwhelming. 

Maybe it was never about finding out the truth to begin with. 

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