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Hamas-Controlled Hospitals in Gaza Outed as ‘Human Shields’ Amid Israeli Ground Operations
Smoke rises as displaced Palestinians take shelter at Al Shifa hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City, Nov. 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Doaa Rouqa
The Hamas terrorist organization’s use of civilian hospitals as centers for storing military equipment and planning attacks has been revealed as a serious human rights violation as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) close in on Al Shifa, a major hospital in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has long said the hospital was home to the Palestinian terror group’s main base of operations, as well as cover for the coastal enclave’s complex tunnel system and a hideout for fuel, water, food, and other supplies that were being withheld from Gaza’s civilian population.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has denied this charge — an increasingly untenable position after this weekend, when Israel’s army took control of the areas immediately surrounding the hospital, holding territory just a block away. At the same time, gunfire emerged from the sprawling hospital complex — where battle has been ensuing — exposing it as a center for Hamas fighters.
The European Union on Sunday lambasted Hamas for using hospitals as “human shields,” calling for civilians to be allowed to leave the area of fighting.
“The EU condemns the use of hospitals and civilians as human shields by Hamas,” the EU said in a statement. “Civilians must be allowed to leave the combat zone. These hostilities are severely impacting hospitals and taking a horrific toll on civilians and medical staff.”
The statement went on to demand the immediate release of the roughly 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 massacre of southern Israeli communities. The hostages include children and elderly civilians.
Israel has presented an abundance of evidence in recent weeks detailing how Hamas has converted hospitals into operation centers and launchpads for missiles, while shielding the terror group behind the civilians using them.
Al Shifa is not the first hospital in Gaza to be the subject of controversy during the current war.
Last month, a misfired Palestinian rocket from Gaza caused a widely reported explosion near the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, according to intelligence from Israel and several Western governments. Experts agreed that Israel was not responsible, despite Hamas and several media outlets falsely blaming an Israeli air strike for causing the hospital blast.
It is expected that the IDF will take over Al Shifa in the coming days. The Israeli army has already helped to evacuate patients toward southern Gaza, including newborn infants. Much of the hospital staff has also evacuated south, with reports from Gaza saying that the hospital has lost all power and suspended operations after running out of fuel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel had offered fuel to Al Shifa, but that the terrorists had refused to receive it. Several press reports, citing Arab and Western officials, have corroborated Israeli claims that Hamas has been hoarding hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel for rockets and electricity used to power its network of underground tunnels as Gaza hospitals struggle to maintain power.
Meanwhile, Israel announced that 200 million NIS (about $52 million) would be directed to completing the fortification of hospitals around the country, where roughly half are now protected from rocket and missile fire.
Troy O. Fritzhand, who goes by Osher in Hebrew, is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering Israeli politics, culture, and technology. An immigrant from New York, Troy is an entrepreneur and Hebrew thinker who helps oversee the start-up ecosystem in Jerusalem with Made in JLM. You can learn more about him at troyfritzhand.com. He previously served as the Politics and Knesset reporter at The Jerusalem Post and has been published in Jewish News Syndicate (JNS).
The post Hamas-Controlled Hospitals in Gaza Outed as ‘Human Shields’ Amid Israeli Ground Operations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.