An extraordinary reversal of reality has occurred over the past five weeks. International shock over Hamas’s brutal murder of 1,400 innocent citizens and the kidnapping of 240 others has given way to outrage over Israel’s attempt to defend itself and to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
As Hamas defends itself against the far stronger Israeli Defense Forces, the terrorist group, with a big assist from the legacy media and even some world leaders, has managed to become the victims of its oppressor, the Jewish state. Quickly “forgetting” the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, the media is trumpeting the narrative that the IDF is indiscriminately shelling Gaza hospitals, schools, and mosques which they claim is a violation of the rules of war. As commentator Bill Maher put it recently, “When Hamas shoots rockets into Israel, it’s a war. When Israel fires back, it’s a war crime.”
But, just as bank robber Slick Willie Sutton famously said he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is,” Israel is targeting the Shifa Hospital because that’s where the terrorists are. And, as it turns out, reporters have known Hamas has used Shifa as a command center for decades.
In a July 2014 article about the Gaza War, the Washington Post reported that Shira Hospital “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Rather than appearing as the headline or even in the story’s lede, this stunning revelation came at the end of the eighth paragraph. Two weeks later, Tablet Magazine picked up on it and published an exposé on Hamas’s use of the bunkers under the hospital as a main command center and called it “one of the worst-kept secrets of the Gaza war.”
The Tablet article questioned why “the precise location of a large underground bunker equipped with sophisticated communications equipment and housing some part of the leadership of a major terrorist organization beneath a major hospital” did not “qualify as a world-class scoop—the kind that might merit a Pulitzer, or at least a Polk.” Answering their own question, they wrote, “In part, it’s because the location is so un-secret that Hamas regularly meets with reporters there.”
Moreover, Tablet cited a 2006 PBS documentary that showed “gunmen roam[ing] the halls of the hospital, intimidat[ing] the staff, and deny[ing] them access to protected locations within the building—where the camera crew was obviously prohibited from filming.”
Yet, despite the evidence that Hamas has operated out of Shira Hospital since at least 2006, as well as other hospitals, schools, and mosques, journalists covering the current Israeli-Hamas war seem to have developed collective amnesia.
The pro-Palestinian propaganda machine never stops and the Associated Press has taken the lead. Over the weekend, they interviewed Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia who claimed that the IDF was “shooting at anyone outside or inside the hospital.” He added, “There is no electricity. Medical devices stopped. Patients, especially those in intensive care, started to die.”
Last month, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed the Palestinian-born Queen Rania of Jordan. Throughout their discussion, the queen used all the right buzzwords: colonization, apartheid and genocide. Referring to a CNN article about “Israeli children found butchered in an Israeli kibbutz,” Queen Rania said, “[W]hen you read through the story, it’s not been independently verified.” Except that it has been verified. Amanpour failed to remind her it was all captured on video.
The queen noted, “This is the first time in modern history that there is such human suffering and the world is not even calling for a ceasefire. So the silence is deafening – and to many in our region, it makes the Western world complicit.”
“Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family, an entire family, at gunpoint, but it’s OK to shell them to death?” she added. “I mean, there is a glaring double standard here. It is just shocking to the Arab world.”
Needless to say, the far-Left Amanpour didn’t question the queen’s remarks. To her credit, she did ask why her husband, King Abdullah, refused to allow any refugees from Gaza into his country. Must have had something to do with that September 1970 dustup in the desert between Jordan, led by King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by chairman Yasser Arafat. The incident, better known as Black September, ended in the PLO’s expulsion from the country.
Civilian casualties? What country worth its salt wouldn’t retaliate after the mass murder and kidnapping of its citizens? Hamas’s decision to locate its military operations in (and beneath) hospitals, schools and mosques, its prevention of civilians from leaving the Gaza Strip and, according to new reports, the group’s alleged shooting of refugees (waving white clothes) as they tried to evacuate the war-torn city, demonstrate its utter disregard for the lives of the Palestinian people.
Palestinian sympathizers would like us to forget that Israelis withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and that Gazans elected Hamas the following year to govern the territory leaving a terrorist group that is committed to Israel’s destruction to run the show. And, since that time, Hamas has used billions in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians to establish their terror network inside Gaza as a launching pad to wipe Israel off the map.
But, in the end, it’s a propaganda war, and despite the reality on the ground, the Palestinian sympathizers appear to be winning. We must not let them.
A previous version of this article appeared in the Washington Examiner.
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