Why is it so difficult for media to report that Gazans have to lie to them to avoid being murdered by Hamas? ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, November 13, 2023

Why is it so difficult for media to report that Gazans have to lie to them to avoid being murdered by Hamas?

Israel says there are Hamas tunnels under Shifa, and Hamas denies it.

So both sides must be given equal weight, right?

The article isn't terrible once you read it to the end, past all the denials and stories of patient suffering. The evidence for Hamas terrorists at the hospital is overwhelming:

Israel has long maintained that Al Shifa is among the most egregious examples, and its military has pushed its claims hard since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. It has shown reporters what it says is a 3-D representation of the complex, released audio recordings that purport to show Hamas fighters discussing the tunnels under Al Shifa and released two videos of interrogations in which captured militants discuss the tunnels.

A former senior official at Shin Bet, Israeli’s internal security service, said both Hamas and Israeli intelligence referred to the network as “the Metro” and compared the compound under Al Shifa to a major station of the New York subway system.

The former Shin Bet official and two other Israeli officials said the compound included several floors with designated spaces for meetings, living quarters and storage facilities. It can hold at least several hundred people, they said.

Israeli military intelligence said in a statement provided to The New York Times that “there are several underground complexes used by the leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas to direct their activities.” The complex relies in part on electricity diverted from Al Shifa, the statement said, and there are multiple entrances to it in and around the hospital.

Senior Israeli intelligence officials allowed The Times to review photographs that purported to show secret entrances to the compound from inside the hospital. Signs identifying the location as Al Shifa were clearly visible in the photographs, though their authenticity could not be independently verified.

American officials, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose sensitive intelligence, said they are confident that Hamas has used tunnel networks under hospitals, in particular Al Shifa, for command and control areas as well as for weapons storage.

The practice by Hamas has been longstanding, they said, adding that the United States and Israel have independently developed intelligence about Hamas’ use of the tunnel network under Al Shifa Hospital.

There are other accounts of Hamas using Al Shifa, as well. In 2008, armed Hamas fighters in civilian clothing were seen roving the hospital during a three-week war between the militants and Israel, according to New York Times reporting in Gaza at the time. The militants claimed to be security guards, but were seen killing alleged Israeli collaborators.

Six years later, during the next round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the militants routinely held news conferences on the hospital grounds and used them as a safe meeting place for Hamas officials to speak with journalists, though these activities do not constitute military use.

After the war, Amnesty International said in a report that Hamas was using abandoned areas of Al Shifa, “including the outpatients’ clinic area, to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical center.”

The most famous tunnel in Gaza City is Al-Wahda Street, which Israel bombed in previous wars. You can clearly see the telltale sinkholes from the collapsed tunnels underneath:

Al-Wahda street goes straight to Shifa Hospital:

But the New York Times reports, "The hospital’s director, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, flatly described the Israeli allegations as 'untrue' in an interview on Friday."

Why would they, and so many other doctors, lie to the august newspaper?

In 2014, Radjaa Abu Dagga , a journalist for France's Libération,was interrogated at Shifa:

A few meters from the emergency room where the injured from bombings are constantly flowing, in the outpatient department, he was received in "a small section of the hospital used as administration" by a band of young fighters. They were all well dressed, which surprised Radjaa, "in civilian clothing with a gun under one's shirt and some had walkie-talkies " . He was ordered to empty his pockets, removing his shoes and his belt then was taken to a hospital room "which served that day as the command office of three people."

A man begins his interrogation: "Who are you? Who do you call? What are you doing?" "I was very surprised by the procedure," admits Radjaa, who showed him his press card in response. Questions came. They asked if he speaks Hebrew, he has relations with Ramallah. Young Hamas supporters insistently ask the question: "Are you a correspondent for Israel?" Radjaa repeated that only works for French media and a chain of Algerian radio.

It was then that the three men deliveed this message: "This is yours to choose. We are an executive administration. We will carry the message of Qassams. You have to stay at home and give us your papers. " Stunned to be covered by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, Radjaa tried to defend himself and especially to understand why such a decision was taken against him. In vain. "It is impossible to communicate with these people," laments the journalist.

Libération then removed the article at Abu Dagga's request, because he was worried for his parents who live in Gaza.

He is not the first nor last journalist threatened by Hamas for reporting something the terror group didn't like.

Now, if journalists are afraid to report the truth about Gaza, all the more so are those who have to work with Hamas day in and day out - like the doctors at Shifa - have to worry about their and their families' lives.

Reuters quotes another doctor:

“The tanks are in front of the hospital. We are under full blockade. It’s a totally civilian area. Only hospital facility, hospital patients, doctors and other civilians staying in the hospital. Someone should stop this," a surgeon at the hospital, Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati, said by telephone.

But Israel has said that the east side of the hospital is open for people to escape. The doctor is lying. He is forced to say what Hamas wants him to say.

Reuters doesn't bother reporting that.

The New York Times, and Reuters, and NBC News and everyone else knows this. But they still report "both sides" as if the denials of an organization that would murder their own people in a moment are equivalent to years of intelligence and direct evidence.

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