What reporters aren't telling you about Shifa Hospital: It is Hamas HQ

Cartoon by Peter Brookes, Times of London, 2014

There have been a number of stories about Gaza City's Shifa Hospital and how it is trying to cope with the number of injured 

But Shifa isn't only famous for being the biggest hospital in Gaza. 

It is known for being the headquarters of Hamas. And this has been well  known since at least 2009.

As Tablet wrote in 2014:

The idea that one of Hamas’ main command bunkers is located beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is one of the worst-kept secrets of the Gaza war. ...The location is so un-secret that Hamas regularly meets with reporters there. On July 15, for example, William Booth of the Washington Post wrote that the hospital “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Back in 2006, PBS even aired a documentary showing how gunmen roam the halls of the hospital, intimidate the staff, and deny them access to protected locations within the building—where the camera crew was obviously prohibited from filming. 

What Hamas wants is for reporters to use ... photos of Palestinians killed and wounded by Israelis, which make Palestinians look like innocent victims of wanton Israeli brutality.

To that end, the rules of reporting from Shifa Hospital are easy for any newbie reporter to understand: No pictures of members of Hamas with their weapons inside the hospital, and don’t go anywhere near the bunkers, or the operating rooms where members of Hamas are treated.

...What Hamas has done, therefore, is to turn Shifa Hospital into a Hollywood sound-stage filled with real, live war victims who are used to score propaganda points, while the terrorists inside the hospital itself are erased from photographs and news accounts through a combination of pressure and threats, in order to produce the stories that Hamas wants. 

Judging from the coverage in this round, the reporters are sticking to the Hamas playbook perfectly.

Hamas doesn't only hold meetings, treat its members separately, and use the hospital as a command and control center. It has also used it as a launching pad for rockets - something else reporters only rarely would mention out of fear. A Finnish reporter bravely said that she witnessed a rocket launch from there. in 2014: "At two o'clock in the morning from the parking lot located behind the hospital, a rocket was launched. This really happened right here, and the sound was very loud."

She's one of the few exceptions that prove the rule.

When Israel bombed the tunnels under Al Wehda street in 2021, reporters didn't mention that Shifa Hospital is right at the end of the street - meaning, it is a hub or terminal for Hamas' extensive tunnel system, and a bomb aimed at that tunnel could collapse the hospital over the heads of the patients. (Israel actually built the underground bunker at the hospital in 1983 to be a secure location for operating rooms.) 

A report by Amnesty International in 2015 said Hamas used a section of the hospital “to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical centre.”

Shifa Hospital is the paradigm of how Hamas uses human shields and how it endangers civilians. But because Hamas doesn't want reporters to mention that....they almost never do.

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