The IDF has just uncovered a massive Hamas data center, located directly underneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters. This news comes soon after the revelation that at least 12 UNRWA staff members took part in the Hamas atrocities on October 7, that 3,000 UNRWA teachers sharing a Telegram channel exulted in the October 7 attack, and 12,000 members of UNRWA were found to have links to terrorist groups. UNRWA has decided to use the Lie Direct, denying any knowledge of that vast Hamas data center underneath UNRWA’s headquarters. More on this latest blow to UNRWA’s reputation can be found here: “Directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, IDF uncovers top secret Hamas data center,” by Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel, February 10, 2024:
Beneath the Gaza Strip headquarters of the controversial United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known commonly as UNRWA, the Hamas terror group hid one of its most significant assets, the Israeli military has revealed.
The subterranean data center — complete with an electrical room, industrial battery power banks and living quarters for Hamas terrorists operating the computer servers — was built precisely under the location where Israel would not consider looking initially, let alone target in an airstrike.
The Israelis knew before October 7 that Hamas had built tunnels under Gaza, but had no idea of their enormous size, depth, and extent. The IDF has now discovered that there are between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels under Gaza, a far more extensive network than had previously been believed. The Israelis have also located at least 5,700 separate shafts leading to Hamas’s underground network, with more being unearthed by the IDF every day. The tunnels are far bigger than what Israel had believed: the IDF has been posting pictures of these mammoth tunnels, many of which are sufficiently wide to accommodate small trucks. And the tunnels are built much deeper than the Israelis had assumed, to an average depth of 50 meters. At that depth they can withstand airstrikes, and have to be destroyed from within, which requires the IDF soldiers to go into the tunnels, filled with boobytraps and explosives left by Hamas, and sometimes with Hamas operatives lying in wait for them — a hellish undertaking, but not an impossible one. The IDF now estimates it has destroyed, or rendered inactive, between 20 and 40 percent of all the Hamas tunnels, mostly in the northern Gaza Strip.
The revelation of the server farm comes amid other accusations of UNRWA collusion with the Gaza-ruling terror group and the entanglement of the UN body that provides welfare and humanitarian services for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants.
Israel last month accused 12 staff with the UN Palestinian refugee agency of taking part in the October 7 massacre by Hamas-led terrorists, who killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in the murderous rampage.
Since the allegations became public late last month, UNRWA has seen many of its top donor countries announce funding freezes, leading to concerns that the agency could stop operating in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East within weeks.
Israel’s first revelations about the 12 UNRWA staff members who took part in the atrocities were enough for sixteen countries to suspend their aid to UNRWA, which will not be renewed until UNRWA completes an investigation of itself, to determine how many of its staff are implicated in terrorism, whether by taking part in terror attacks, or praising and encouraging them, or knowingly allowing Hamas to use UNRWA schools, hospitals, and other facilities to hide weapons and combatants. If the investigation by UNRWA turns out to be insufficient, or even a whitewash, those countries will not resume that aid that UNRWA insists is “critical” for the people of Gaza.
But the IDF’s recent discovery of the Hamas data center while UNRWA is under increased scrutiny appears to be merely a coincidence….
UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters is located in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood, an area that the IDF had previously operated in, dismantling the local Hamas battalion, and from which it had withdrawn its troops.
Acting on ISA intelligence, the forces discovered a tunnel shaft near an UNRWA school, leading to an underground terrorist tunnel beneath UNRWA’s main headquarters. The forces found electrical infrastructure inside the tunnel connected to UNRWA’s main HQ, suggesting it was supplying the tunnel with electricity—generated by the fuel provided through humanitarian aid….
UNRWA says it had “no idea” that a huge Hamas data center was located right underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza. How likely is that? Didn’t anyone from UNRWA notice the unusually large amount of electricity that was supposedly being used by its headquarters, but which was also being used to fuel operations at the gigantic data center underneath? Surely this would have put UNRWA on notice that there was something going on below its Gaza City headquarters.
And what about the amount of water that Hamas’ data center used — water that came from the same pipes that supplied UNRWA’s headquarters? Either the electricity, or the water usage, or both, would have alerted UNRWA that there was a Hamas center underneath. Besides, UNRWA knew for years about the vast network Hamas’ tunnels. It knew about the nearly 6,000 entrances to those tunnels. It must have seen the heavy machinery being used to build those tunnels, the massive bulldozers, the trucks bearing away the mountains of earth that were being excavated. There was no way that Hamas could have hidden its gigantic Big Dig, carried out over many years, and in every part of the Strip, from UNRWA. And surely the very best place for Hamas to place its data center, so critical to its war effort, would be directly underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza, always full of civilians whose presence would, Hamas assumed, have prevented Israeli airstrikes.
This vast area was not only the data center for Hamas, but also contained a treasure of information about the tunnel network, including their exact location, size, depth, and the placement of possible boobytraps and explosives. The IDF has been analyzing all this information, which should help it to uncover still more tunnels and entrances to them (5,700 of these have already been found by the IDF). Furthermore, it was also used as a weapons storehouse; with weapons hidden in the data center’s offices, all of which have now been removed by the IDF. Should we also ask UNRWA how it was that is headquarters staff never noticed anyone entering or exiting the entrances to the underground data center? Or did those staff members notice, but had been instructed never to discuss what they saw?
This discovery by the IDF of the Hamas data server facility directly underneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters is conclusive evidence that UNRWA was knowingly helping Hamas to hide its men, weapons, command centers and data services. It will be fascinating to see how UNRWA attempts to convince its ever more doubtful donors that it simply had no idea that Hamas had these tunnels underground,, and was shocked — shocked! — as much as anyone to discover that Hamas had built such a facility right under the innocent, unsuspecting noses of UNRWA’s staff.
dumbledoresarmy says
“This vast area was not only the data center for Hamas, but also contained a treasure of information about the tunnel network, including their exact location, size, depth, and the placement of possible boobytraps and explosives. The IDF has been analyzing all this information..”.
One wonders what other types of information might also be in there…
Hamas apparently used low-tech – e.g. handwritten messages on paper – to avoid electronic surveillance; but it seems they still relied on high-tech data storage.
Fun fact: a significant number of IDF reservists work in the IT field in their civilian lives. Such people will be bringing their expertise to bear on this data pile; even if stuff is coded/ passworded or if fleeing operatives hit the ‘delete’ button before they fled or attempted to physically destroy the machines, sufficiently skilled persons should be able to get at at least some of the information.
Further thought: just what OTHER types of highly-embarrassing information – embarrassing not only for UNRWA but for all kinds of other persons, entities and states around the world – may be lurking in that Hamas data pile???
Way back in the late 1970s and early 1980s Israel was engaged in dislodging the PLO from Beirut, in which they had embedded themselves (complete with wholesale use of human shields) in a style very similar to the way in which Hamas has embedded themselves in Gaza.
Jacques Ellul in his brilliant book “Un Chretien Pour Israel” provides a long discussion of that campaign.
He noticed, particularly, that in the process of their campaign against the PLO in Beirut the IDF captured a great deal of information bearing upon the PLO’s sponsors and international activities. I quote (my translation; I apologise for any infelicities of phrasing):
“And then, we must not neglect the archives: they [the PLO] did not have time to destroy all the political and military records, or the dossiers concerning terrorists from all over the world.
“In particular it seems that the Israeli army was able to get hold of important documents regarding PLO relations with the USSR and East Germany, [and] likewise a list of hundreds of European and American industrialists and financiers who were sending funds to the PLO.
“These archives/ records appear so important that such a useful booty has not yet been taken.”
Post scriptum: it is downright eerie to read Ellul’s discussion and clinical analysis of anti-Israel propaganda as it was conducted during the Lebanon war. Because most of it could be quoted, word for word, to describe the same propaganda as it came into play twenty years later during July and August 2006 as Israel attempted to deal with the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah organization that had entrenched itself within Lebanon just as the PLO had done during the 1970s and 1980s.
And it could be also quoted, unaltered, to describe the way – 40 years on – in which the actions of Israel vis a vis the terrorist gang bosses of Jihad Fortress Gaza have been routinely represented in all the world’s media, right up to the present moment.
I do not know why – seemingly alone among Ellul’s extensive oeuvre – “Un Chretien Pour Israel” has not yet been translated into English. Because it needs to be; desperately needs to be. Or just the sections dealing with propaganda, and with the PLO Charter.
In the meantime: if you can read French… track down a copy of Jacques Ellul, ‘Un Chretien Pour Israel’, and read it. (Even if your french is the ‘schoolgirl’ variety… just dig out a grammar and a good French-English dictionary and persevere at it; it’s important, it’s well worth the effort). There is a theological chapter: you don’t have to read that: right now, the chapter that matters above all is the chapter on propaganda… the enormous campaign of anti-Israel propaganda which has produced exactly the result that Ellul predicted in the 1980s.. an explosion of Jew-hatred worldwide. A
Transmaster says
Looking up Un Chretien Pour Israel’, By Jacques Ellul (1912 to 1994) it has not been translated into English nor is their a PDF copy that you can do a computer translation of
dumbledoresarmy says
Re Jacques Ellul, “Un Chretien Pour Israel” (1983). Yes, as I said, it has not been published in English translation and is difficult to find even in the French original. I came across a copy years ago, per miraculum; and later got my husband to scan/ photograph it, just in case some malevolent person caused it to ‘disappear’ from the library in which I found it. I then transcribed the scan; and THEN I did my own – very rough! – translation/ ‘crib’. I wonder whether it can be found in any French libraries; and I would love to know whether it can be found in any Israeli public library (it ought to be, as there are a good many Francophone Israelis).
I just wish it were possible for Spencer’s friend Hugh Fitzgerald to create an official translation of this particular book; with his knowledge of French and his elegant and erudite English he could do justice to Ellul’s writing, and would know how to render subtleties of nuance and idiom much better than a rank amateur such as myself.
Transmaster says
They found military ordinance in offices in UNRWA in the HQ building.
Joe says
A couple of years ago, we found that the AP was in the same building as terrorists. Now the UN is partners with terrorists. In the USA, left-wing politicians let terrorists do whatever they want. In other words, they are teammates of the terrorists. The terrorists seem to have wide support across the entire base of the left. It seems that terrorism is more of a political ideology than a mental illness.
Mike says
How will they investigate themselves??! It’s like asking the Ku Klux Klan to investigate itself!
James Lincoln says
Joe says,
“It seems that terrorism is more of a political ideology than a mental illness.”
Spot-on, Joe.
Rick Olsha says
What else do you expect ?
AMISRAEL CHAI !!!!!!