Hamas has a penchant for putting its most elaborate hideouts for both weapons and terrorists underneath the hospitals of Gaza, where it has always assumed the medical personnel and patients would be the perfect human shields, preventing an attack by the IDF. What the terror group did not count on was the ferocity and relentlessness of Israel’s military response to the October 7 atrocity, its ability to strike deeply into, and then throughout, Gaza, and to persuade two-thirds of Gazans to move from northern to southern Gaza. The IDF also managed to persuade the medical personnel and patients in several hospitals to leave, so that those “human shields” would no longer be available. Just now the IDF, having persuaded everyone to leave the Rantisi Children’s Hospital, has now shown the world exactly how Hamas operates, as it hides both weapons — rifles, grenades, RPGs — and terrorists in basements and tunnels underneath so many Gazan hospitals. The IDF now believes many of the hostages had been kept at Rantisi. Once their captors realized that the IDF was close to entering the hospital, the hostages were taken away to another site, still unknown.
More on what was hidden by Hamas underneath the Rantisi Children’s Hospital can be found here: “IDF: Hamas command center found under Gaza children’s hospital; hostages were likely held there,” by Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel, November 13, 2023
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the Navy’s elite Shayetet 13 commando unit and the 401st Armored Brigade have raided Gaza City’s Rantisi Hospital, which treats children, and that Hamas operatives were holed up there. He says he has just returned from the hospital, having filmed there, and that the IDF has evidence indicating that hostages were held there.
“Underneath the hospital, in the basement, we found a Hamas command and control center, suicide-bomb vests, grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, explosive devices, RPGs, and other weapons, computers, money, etc,” Hagari says, in an English-language press conference.
“We also found signs that indicate that Hamas held hostages here,” he says, adding that “this is currently under our investigation,” but that the IDF has intelligence to verify it.
“Additionally, we found evidence that Hamas terrorists came back from the massacre [in southern Israel] on October 7 to this hospital, among others, after butchering Israelis in their homes,” he says.
“Hamas hides in hospitals. Today, we will expose this to the world,” he says.
Hagari says the IDF has been working to enable the safe evacuation of patients from Rantisi over the last week, as well as from other hospitals in northern Gaza….
In the basement of Rantisi, Hagari shows a Hamas armory with grenades, bombs and RPGs. He highlights the dangers to patients of explosives under hospitals….
Think of the indifference of Hamas to the wellbeing of Gazan children, by keeping such dangerous weapons and explosives right underneath the hospitals where they were being cared for.
Some of the terrorists took the hostages — how many were held at Rantisi is not known, or at least the IDF has not made that information public, to another site. The remaining terrorists at Rantisi managed to pose as medical personnel, escorting the patients who were evacuating the hospital.
He says other Gaza hospitals are also used by Hamas and other terrorists. “The world should know that,” he says. It’s a war crime, a crime against humanity and a crime against international law, Hagari says….
He says he took some foreign correspondents with him today, and that they came under fire as they were leaving.
Now those correspondents have been given “the ocular proof.” They have seen the vastness of the tunnels underground the Rantisi Hospital. They have seen the piles of weapons and explosives that could, if mishandled, have caused a conflagration in the hospital. They have seen the evidence that many of the hostages were held just underneath Rantisi Hospital. That hospital was being used as a weapons depot, a command center, a hideout for terrorists, the place that some Hamas murderers went right back to after their deeds on October 7. How much more evidence does the world need to recognize that Rantisi, and many other hospitals in Gaza — have been turned into formidable military outposts, and thus have become, under international law, legitimate targets for attack?
WPM says
Of coarse the left woke idiots in the Americas and western Europe will not believe their own eyes or ears about anything said bad about Hamas ,or Islam in general .Especially if the Israelis present it ,the Moslem are forever victims for self hating westerners ,because Moslems are not Christian ,or Jewish ,and are considered non-white by the idiotic woke left. Even though there are many truly white Moslems, Islam is not a race it is a violent cult that hates western tradition ,and civilization that is why the idiotic woke idiots are drawn to it. Most woksers would go to the head of the line to be jihad to death either by hanging ,beheading, or burn to death in a cage, take a flying lesson off a tall building maybe a combo of all methods .with alot of rape and torture thrown in for good measure .If Islam and sharia law became the law of the land the woke left useful idiot status would expire and they would be dealt with in nightmarish fashion .
Westman says
Well, today it was Jeffrey Sachs demonstrating his utter ignorance of Islam’s doctrines in discussion with Andrew Napolitano. Neither man can seem to believe that there are people willing to die just to exterminate Israel, strickly as a matter of religion. It was astonishing after Sachs’ clear analysis of the Russia-Ukraine War that he would look at the Israel-Hamas war, devoid of any reference to religion. That seems to be the problem – our Western non-religious athiests and wanderers do not understand that the Muslim religion is a motivator because THEY project their own, “don’t give a damn about religion”, attitude onto others.
I must anticipate that neither man can conceive of any religion having physical world conquest as a doctrine. Both believe, falsely, a 2-state solution will bring peace. If they really think it can work, then, OK, establish it, IF you can establish it, with an equal number of UN observers, in plain clothes, on each side. When the UN observers start dying in Israel, they can all learn the truth that Muslims will always persecute Jews and in particular attempt genocide on Israel.
I know it’s ignorance on their part yet it surely looks like stupidity.
FYI says
On a news report it showed a picture of babies and the news that the IDF had surrounded the Hospital What, are the IDF going to kill innocent babies some might thinK?
No:IDF are after the murderous cowards of Hamas who like to operate from such places making it difficult to get at them,especially when they are using CHILDREN as Hostages
If they were American children i imagine you would have to send in specially trained forces like the US Navy Seals.HAMAS don’t have any rules of engagement nor play fair.It’s the islamic way.