Hospital use reveals moral high ground in Israel-Hamas war
Anyone uncertain about who maintains the moral high ground in the Israel-Hamas war need only to look at the use of hospitals by both sides. Nothing better illustrates the humanity of Israel and the inhumanity of Hamas.
To state the obvious, hospitals should be places of care where human life is cherished and saved. Under Hamas, however, hospitals become military bases, weapons storage facilities, terror tunnel entries and exits, and prisons for innocent hostages, according to Israeli, U.S. and European officials.
“Hamas is unfortunately using civilian infrastructure and civilians as shields against the Israel Defense Forces,” Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins said in November. “So the situation [is] absolutely not black and white.”
This is a crucial part of Hamas’ strategy. It is a sickening, cynical ploy with a twisted logic: The more Palestinian civilians who die, the more the world pressures Israel to stop its campaign, giving Hamas the chance to survive and fight another day.
Hamas established a main command and control center under Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, keeping Israelis kidnapped on Oct. 7 in and underneath the hospital, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Israel originally captured Al Shifa Hospital in November of last year, but said its forces had to re-enter the complex in March to confront the terrorist army that had taken up residence there. Troops withdrew April 1.
As of this writing, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) say they have killed more than 12,000 terrorists and captured 4,600 in the six months of the war with Hamas, including high-ranking commanders of Hamas and Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad, such as Mahmoud Qawasmeh, who is alleged to have helped plan the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. The IDF says it discovered weapons caches and more than $3 million in cash on the site of the hospital.
Earlier in the war, Israeli forces said they uncovered terror tunnels under Rantisi Children’s Hospital, also in Gaza City.
And in February, Israeli special forces raided Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where they say they captured hundreds of Hamas members. Hamas fighters had operated from the hospital and held hostages there, according to the IDF.
Col. Moshe Tetro, who heads the unit responsible for the IDF’s humanitarian measures, told journalists that the raid was “inevitable since Hamas repeatedly and systematically uses hospitals for their terrorist activities.”
The contrast with Israeli hospitals could not be starker.
At Sheba Medical Center in Ramat
Gan, 20% of the patients at its children’s hospital are Palestinian children from the West Bank and Gaza, including half of the pediatric cardiology patients, according to Brian Abrahams, CEO of American Friends of Sheba Medical Center. With the winds of war raging, Sheba doctors recently saved a Palestinian toddler’s life, Abrahams said. Suffering from a fatal immune deficiency disease, the boy received a stem cell transplant from the umbilical cord of his newborn baby brother while his family was provided on-campus housing for months. The toddler is now expected to live a normal life.
The daughter of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was treated at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, according to the Jewish Chronicle.
“She is one of more than 1,000 patients from the Gaza Strip and Palestinian Authority territories, children and adults, whom we treat every year,” the hospital said in a statement to media. Haniyeh’s niece received a bone marrow transplant there. His mother-in-law and granddaughter have also been treated in Israeli hospitals.
One of Haniyeh’s nieces had a baby in February at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. The baby was born prematurely, and Soroka’s staff worked to save his life, according to Israeli media.
Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that launched the war with Hamas, is only alive today because Israeli surgeons removed a brain tumor while he was in prison years ago, Prison Commissioner Orit Adato told The Times of Israel.
Israeli doctors embody the Jewish ethical teaching that “whoever preserves one life, it is as if he has preserved an entire world.” It’s outrageous that more fury is directed at Israel for operating in and around hijacked hospitals than at Hamas’ abuse of medical facilities.
After Hamas claimed Israel had bombed Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Hospital and killed
500 people, the world rushed to condemn Israel. But it wasn’t true; the explosion was caused by misfired rockets launched by Palestinian terrorists operating near the hospital, according to Human Rights Watch and U.S. intelligence officials. After this fact became known, the news media suddenly lost interest.
It couldn’t be clearer: One side in this war respects the humanity of the other side and attempts to minimize civilian deaths, while the other celebrates the carnage.
Hopefully one day soon this war will end. Even before it does, Christian, Muslim and Jewish babies continue lying beside each other in the children’s nurseries of Israeli hospitals. As they grow, they will be educated to desire and pursue peaceful coexistence.
Meanwhile, Hamas teaches children to pursue martyrdom and the genocidal destruction of Jews in Israel.
The best hope for peace and a two-state solution will rely upon a radical cultural change taking place within Palestinian society. Otherwise, the conflict seems destined to doom the futures on both sides for generations to come.