Israel at War—Saving a Hospital

The propaganda media, palestinian activists, and their supporters on the Left are all apoplectic because Israel is trying to ... save sick and injured patients from a psychotic and murderous terror group that has embedded itself inside and under Al Shifa hospital in Gaza and has forced those same hospital patients and their doctors to remain inside as prisoners.

Wait ... what?!

That's the right way, actually the only honest way, to look at Israel's battle plan in Gaza City, but of course, the propaganda media (along with the rest of the pro-Hamas crowd) wants the story spun in an entirely different, albeit fundamentally dishonest, manner.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are not part of the propaganda media. They write:

On Dec. 8, 2016, U.S. Central Command released a statement: “Coalition Strikes Mosul Hospital.” The Islamic State, it explained, “was using the hospital as a base of operations and command and control headquarters.” Accordingly, the U.S.-led coalition conducted precision strikes in support of Iraqi troops who fought for the hospital.

The story, and the scandal, wasn’t that the U.S. struck the terrorists where they hid, but that terrorists had used the hospital for cover in the first place. “In Mosul Battle, ISIS Used Hospital Base” was the Human Rights Watch headline; it explained that “armed forces or groups should not occupy medical facilities, undermining their protected status.”

Today in Gaza, Hamas terrorists use the same war-crime tactics. Only now observers rush to apologize for it. See the front page of the Human Rights Watch website: “Unlawful Israeli Hospital Strikes Worsen Health Crisis.” For 4,500 words, the group acts as Hamas’s defense attorney, contesting Israel’s claims and dismissing evidence.

Much of the Western press would also have readers conclude that Israel has organized its counteroffensive to converge in a pincer on Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital for no reason other than that it houses sick patients.

Over the past two decades, NGOs like Human Rights Watch and most of its sister organizations  have been completely co-opted by the Left. Therefore, their assessment of Israel's attempt to save the hospital (that's exactly the right way to put it) must conform to the leftist narrative that demonizes the saviors and sanctifies a band of psychotic killers. No real surprise when you understand that the Left's moral compass is irreparably broken.

So ... NYT, WaPo, LAT, PBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, along with leftist NGOs like HRW, Doctors without Borders, and many others traffic in lies. They tell us that the hospital in "under seige," that Israeli "war crimes" are being committed, that patients have been endangered not by Hamas building a command and control center under the hospital (an actual war crime) but by Israel's attempt to save the patents and doctors inside the hospital and at the same time, eradicate Hamas.

The WSJ editors continue:

On Tuesday the White House confirmed what Israel has long alleged. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby cited U.S. intelligence that “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad members operate a command and control node from Al Shifa in Gaza City.”

Hamas is certainly fighting like that’s the case. At first it massed civilians around the premises and tried to prevent them from evacuating. For days, even as it has lost control of its government district, Hamas has fought outside the Shifa hospital.

This isn’t because it cares for Gazan patients. Israel released a video of a terrorist shooting an RPG from outside a different hospital, Al Quds, and then darting inside for cover. Israel also took journalists to Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, in whose basement they found a Hamas armory, plus a tunnel shaft nearby.

The law of war in this case is clear: Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Hamas’s use of Al Shifa for military purposes vitiates the protected status granted to hospitals. Israel is still required to give warning and use means proportionate to the anticipated military advantage, and it has.

Contrary to media claims of an Israeli “siege” of Al Shifa hospital, Israel days ago opened a humanitarian corridor from the east side of the hospital to get civilians out. Many have since fled, as Israel first warned them to do a month ago. Israel is in contact with the hospital and offered to evacuate patients for treatment elsewhere. Hamas has resisted a transfer—it prefers patients, including babies, to remain in the war zone.

For fantasy thinkers on the left, exemplified by the useful idiots protesting in big cities and college campuses, Hamas propaganda and lies are "their truth." Their deranged support for Hamas along with their demonization of Israel and Jews in general is as predictable as it is disgusting. 

As Hamas comes closer and closer to extermination, the lies will grow in number and in magnitude. After all, the only weapon the palestinians have is a collection of lies that could cause the West to force israel, yet again, to stop before it finishes Hamas for good.

UPDATE:

Moral equivalence? Nope, moral incompatibility.