Gaza’s hospitals have emerged as a focal point in Israel’s war with Hamas, with each side citing how the other has pulled the facilities into the conflict as proof of the enemy’s disregard for the safety of civilians.
In four months of war, Israeli troops have entered several hospitals, including the Qatari Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Rantisi Specialized Hospital for Children, to search for weapons and fighters. But Al-Shifa Hospital has taken on particular significance because it is Gaza’s largest medical facility, and because of Israel’s high-profile claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control center beneath it. Hamas and the hospital’s staff, meanwhile, insisted it was only a medical center.
Regarding Al-Shifa hospital, there is video of Hamas taking some hostages inside, and widespread reporting of Hamas previously using part of the facility for interrogation/torture of civilians. That, in conjunction with the tunnel evidence, makes it a reasonable target for Israel to take control of (i.e. not a war crime). Personally I doubt the tunnel constitutes a command center. A method for discreetly bringing in captives makes more sense.
Are you referring to video from early in the war, where Hamas brought in two hostages who it turned out were wounded and Hamas was trying to get them treated? Because Israel was using that video as “proof” that Hamas was using that hospital as a “base”, which is just fucked up in so many ways.
A couple of points here.
Why?
And you’re taking Bibi’s word that the only people the IDF has killed are Hamas … even tho almost 50% of the pre-war Palestinian population was kids.
Where is the evidence?
And the IDF has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
I didn’t say anything about civilian death rates mate. Pretty weird to accuse me of something that I’ve never said and is on-its-face absurd.
Regarding point 1, Israel obviously has the right to try to recover its citizens, taken hostage by a foreign military force, wherever they have evidence of them being. A hostage site is clearly a valid military target under IHL.
No response to # 3 or 4?
edit to add … For # 1 you seem to be assuming that Drs would be aware somehow that Hamas had hostages, and that Drs somehow decided to contact the IDF to let them know … which is a ton of assumptions.
4 is covered under “shit I never said or contested”
For 3 you’re just going to have to accept that you can’t always personally view US intelligence information.
Not a hospital where there’s no harmful act being committed.
Earlier taken hostage or not, by no definition is transporting someone to a hospital to receive treatment a harmful act. People not desperately trying to justify war crimes would tend to consider it the exact OPPOSITE of a harmful act.
This is simply not true when IHL is looked at as a whole.
Hospitals do receive special protections. As a rule a hospital can never be attacked unless it becomes co-opted for military purposes or represents a legitimate military objective. At that point, the hospital must be notified prior to attack if doing so is at all reasonable. Further, all proportionality calculations must still be made regarding collateral damage.
The hospital became a legitimate target when Hamas militants, under military orders, brought in hostages.
Notifying the hospital was clearly unreasonable, as that would allow Hamas to remove the hostages, the recovery of which was the primary military objective.
Proportionality considerations dictated what was a reasonable attack. Israel didn’t bomb the building into dust - they staged a controlled siege (to prevent the hostages from being moved) followed by a methodical taking of the facility.
Nothing about this was unreasonable or illegal given the full context.
That’s the IDF excuse, not the actual law.
You mean the ones the IDF clearly never bother with? Just yesterday, they killed 95 people, most of them civilians, to free 2 hostages.
First of all, that’s flat out false. Second, it hasn’t even been proven that it was the case. All we have is the word of the notoriously deceptive IDF.
Wrong again, genocide denier.
Hostages who, if they were even there, were there for treatment?
If you still believe that one, I have a pristine palace in Gaza to sell you…
No. How many times are you going to be just confidently objectively wrong in one reply? Are you going for the record or something?
Did you get that bullshit verbatim from the IDF press release?
Literally everything about it was. You should be ashamed of yourself.