Hamas is guilty of genocide - against Palestinians

 Hamas is Perpetrating Genocide Against—Gazans

 There is no shortage of people claiming that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. That the allegation is not merely false but ludicrous has been established by, among others, military expert John Spencer, seven experts on genocide, and friend of the blog Andrew Pessin. An essential component of “genocide” is intent, and that, as Spencer puts it, “Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that's fought an urban war,” is simply indisputable. These measures include the massive aid Israel facilitates to Gaza, the building of field hospitals, the existence of military units to minimize civilian damage, and the millions of leaflets and phone calls warning civilians, not to mention all the explicit statements made by Israeli political and military leaders that their war is with Hamas—and that the war ends immediately when Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages.

 In fact, as Pessin has noted, the only genocidal party to the conflict is Hamas, against the Jews:

Hamas, the [direct] descendant of the same Muslim Brotherhood that contributed to the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews, the organization whose charter openly endorses the genocide of all Jews, who attempted an act of genocide on October 7, and who has openly and repeatedly declared its intentions to “repeat October 7” as many times as is necessary to remove the Jews. 

But what hasn’t been appreciated is that Hamas is also guilty of genocide—against Gazans. They are in fact engaging in the genocide of their own people.

One of the definitions of genocide under the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." And this is exactly what Hamas has been doing to the Gazan civilian population.

Hamas initiated the war with its barbaric massacre on October 7, a massive escalation that they knew would bring a similarly massive Israeli military response. They know that they are the target of Israeli airstrikes whenever hostilities break out. Yet for nearly two decades, they have not built a single bomb shelter for the people, even as they dug hundreds of miles of tunnels and bunkers for themselves. They knew that Israel would attempt to kill them and then deliberately created an infrastructure where the civilians of Gaza would literally be in the way. For two decades they had every opportunity to move their military facilities away from the people. But they didn't. As a matter of deliberate strategy.

In 2014, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, admitted that sometimes Hamas fired rockets from residential areas, although he claimed they were "mistakes." Yet the evidence that Hamas fires from houses, mosques, schools, and “safe” humanitarian areas, and does on a regular basis, and has done so for years, is overwhelming. Just this week they released a video of themselves, in civilian clothes, firing two rockets from inside a tent in a humanitarian area. They do this knowing Israel will quite legitimately strike back—which means they are calculating actions that will bring about the physical destruction of Gaza, its civilians, in whole or in part. 

They expect huge amounts of damage and death of civilians. They create the circumstances for it to happen. And they do so deliberately, in full knowledge of the consequences.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg. They don’t merely fire from civilian buildings that should be “protected” by international humanitarian law but have fully militarized them, using hospitals, houses, mosques, and schools as command centers, to house their servers and fighters, to store weapons, to hide hostages in, and so forth, thus converting them into legitimate military targets. They have built those hundreds of miles of military tunnels under literally every building, booby-trapping buildings, making nearly every building a legitimate military target. Those booby-traps, and the extensive use of IEDs, have caused the deaths of numerous IDF soldiers in recent months; but unreported is how many ordinary Gazans may have been killed by Hamas simply trying to enter their booby-trapped homes or on the way.

They have turned all of Gaza into a life-threatening, legitimate military target.

And yet there’s more.

Numerous reports confirm Hamas’s efforts to prevent civilians from moving out of harm’s way, by blocking or blowing up roads or again by shooting them. Numerous reports also confirm that Hamas regularly steals the humanitarian aid that Israel helps deliver, often shooting Gazans who try to access the aid (or otherwise resist their rule). They have repeatedly attacked the very crossings that deliver the aid, shutting them down for days until Israel takes it upon itself to repair them and resume deliveries. In just one incident in May, 2024, Hamas killed four IDF soldiers in an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing, shutting down one of the largest aid-crossing sites. Just reflect on the absurdity of this situation: Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, kill Israeli soldiers to stop the delivery of aid to Gazan civilians, while Israel sacrifices its soldiers to continue the delivery of aid, to Gazan civilians—and yet Israel is charged with “genocide”!

Not only do they deliberately use civilians as human shields across the entire Gaza Strip, in other words, they murder them to prevent them from escaping the danger and undertake extensive actions to deprive them of humanitarian aid—to starve them, in effect, while turning their abodes and places of refuge into legitimate military targets and thus sites to be destroyed.

All of the above occurs, undeniably, deliberately, with the intent essential for “genocide”: Hamas repeatedly undertakes actions that either directly cause, or whose clearly foreseeable consequences are, conditions bringing about the physical destruction, in part or in whole, of the Gazan civilian population. Murdering people attempting to get to safety, and starving them by stealing their aid, are as direct as can be, while initiating the war in the first place with that barbaric massacre, after having turned the entire Strip into a military site, is only slightly less so.

Penultimately, consider this: During the past ten months, when Hamas and the world have been decrying the destruction of Gaza and (falsely) alleging Israeli genocide, it has been within Hamas’s power to end it all instantly by surrendering and returning the hostages. As simple as that, they could stop the destruction, and have had the power to stop it every day for ten months—and chosen not to exercise it. This is a deliberate choice to sacrifice the blood and treasure of Gazans to pursue their nihilistic aims. 

And finally, their own statements prove that they want to see the deaths of their own people.

In just one of many similar statements by various Hamas leaders, late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in October, "I have said this before, and I say it time again: The blood of the women, children, and elderly…...We are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens within us resolve, so it awakens within us the spirit of challenge, and [pushes us] to move forward."

Hamas is perpetrating genocide—against its own people.

(Originally this was a different article, but Andrew Pessin had reworked an earlier version, and then there was an editing catastrophe, so this is a combination of mine and Andrew's writings.)

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The Rafah Refugees: Why Won’t Egypt Let Them in? (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Photos of Rafah refugees fleeing however they might—by car, on foot, by bundle-laden donkey-driven carts—were everywhere yesterday, the unseasonable rain adding a poignant touch of pathos to their plight. The parents looked grim for the photos, while the children seemed cheerful enough, with smiles on their faces. They were leaving Rafah. It was an adventure.

The much-anticipated IDF operation in Rafah had already begun if you count the evacuation of some 100,000 Rafah civilians to a new humanitarian zone created just for them. For the refugees, it would be no picnic, obviously, but there would be “field hospitals, tents, and increased provisions of food, water, medicine, and other supplies,” said the Jerusalem Post.

Some of the refugees attempted to cross into Egypt, to no avail. They were turned away by the Egyptian military, who had beefed up their presence and level of preparedness along the 12-kilometer border between Gaza and Egypt.

You read that right: Egypt shares a border with Gaza. If you look at a map, you will see it is true.

(Red line: border fence between Rafah and Israel. Brown line: border line between Rafah and Egypt.)

But Egypt will not provide a haven for the desperate-to-leave Gazan civilians. Not unless they pay a fee of anywhere from $5,000-$12,000 a head.

Most refugees don’t have that kind of money.

A touching Ynet piece, 'We hate Hamas like we hate Israel': the Palestinians who managed to flee Gaza, shares the stories of various Gazans forced to relocate—in some cases, more than once—as a result of the war Hamas started on October 7:

The procedure of leaving Gaza went on for days. In the first stage, Dr. Mukhaimer Abu Saada, who lived near the upscale Al Rimal neighborhood, was forced to move with his wife Rosanne and his children to Khan Younis where he found shelter at a relative’s apartment. Two weeks later, IDF forces told the area’s residents to move to Rafah where the man, who until recently was head of the department of political science at Al-Azhar University, huddled with his family in a tent in appalling conditions.

Only then did they receive word and the family reported at the border crossing. They waited in line. Someone had made sure to pay $8,000 per person. Only then were they granted a permit to cross into Egypt. “It was a nightmare,” he says in an interview from his new home in Cairo. “We didn’t know until the last minute whether we’d be able to get out of there.”

Despite the upheaval, Dr. Abu Saada is considered one of the lucky ones. Since the start of the war, very few Gazans have managed to leave the bombed and burning Strip. Some only passed via Egypt en route to Europe or Arab countries that had agreed to take them in. Others have settled in Egypt. The transition cost a great deal – amounts of money most Gazans could only dream of . . .

 . . . Since November, when the Rafah crossing opened for around-the-clock activity, 600 Palestinians holding dual nationality have managed to leave the Gaza Strip. Then came the privileged, like Abu Saada, whose people paid for their departure. At the moment, it’s the rich who can get out. At first, they paid $8,000 per person. The price then dropped to $,5000 and it’s now risen to $10,000 (children paying $2500). The permit arrives at night and is only stamped the following day. If you miss that window of opportunity, you have to start the process all over – with increments of thousands of dollars per person. Only a few dozen people have so far managed to get out in this way. . .

 . . . Like Abu Saada, M., along with five family members, managed to make it to Cairo. “We were lucky,” she says, “we only paid $5,000 per adult and $2,000 per child. The price is now twice that.” She doesn’t want to disclose her complete name, and definitely not to an Israeli newspaper. “Yes, I’m in Egypt in a safe place, but I have first- and second-degree relatives in Gaza and I need to think of them.”

The Rafah civilians should be safe in the humanitarian zone created for them by Israel—unless Hamas finds a way to use them as human shields. But the homes they left may very well be reduced to dust. Hamas is behind that—behind all of the death and destruction. The rapists have wormed their way through Gaza every which way: from belowground in tunnels, and from aboveground, too, embedding itself in apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals.

Hamas makes extensive use of human shields, putting civilians in harm's way to shield itself. It’s a very effective tactic from the terrorists’ perspective. Hamas hides behind the civilians, and the IDF holds its fire. In this cruel manner, civilians provide the perfect protection for Israel's real nemesis: the Hamas rapist cowards.

When, however, Gaza civilians do get caught in the crossfire and subsequently die, it's a win-win proposition for Hamas. There’s nothing quite like photos of dead Gazans to demonize Israel and further Hamas aims. The photos are framed in such a way as to take the onus off the true culprit, Hamas, for  the Gazan death and destruction, while shifting the blame onto Israel. 

The AP and Reuters, of course, just lap this stuff up. It’s what their audiences crave most: Israel as murderer without mercy, the Gazans as poor innocent lambs. That’s the media narrative and they're sticking to it. And it is this narrative that continues to empower and embolden Hamas, who holds not only Israelis hostage, but the people of Gaza, too.

One might have thought, if one were inclined to think, that among the 22 Arab nations, there’d be one or two that might take pity on the people of Gaza, and absorb and resettle at least some of them, and on their own dime. They share a common language along with the same culture and religion as the fleeing refugees. Yet, not one of these 22 Arab countries will let them in. That’s a lot of places that might extend a charitable hand to the Gaza refugees, but fail to do so.

Of course, one cold-hearted country stands out from among the rest in regard to its lack of concern over the plight of its Gazan brethren, and that country is Egypt. Egypt shares a border with Gaza. And all Egypt has to do is open its gates and heart to its Arab brothers and sisters—the ones who will die if it doesn’t.

But it won’t.

There are many reasons why Egypt won’t take in its kin—won’t take in its own. But we won’t go into that here. Instead we will talk about the shame of it. How shameful it is that Egypt won’t take in its own people.

Confronted with this truth, those plugging the anti-Israel narrative have a rote response at the ready, "What does Egypt have to do with any of this—this Hamas war with Israel?"

Actually, quite a lot. Beginning with the fact that many if not most Gazans are of Egyptian heritage.

"Masri” is slang for "Egyptian" and according to “Palestinian Tribes, Clans, and Notable Families,” a prominent surname in Gaza:

Notable Families

The third clan-like grouping in Palestine in the urban elite notable family, a social formation typical throughout the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the most well known and prominent Palestinian families come from this notabsle, or a’yan, social class: Husayni, Nashashibi, Dajani, Abd al-Hadi, Tuqan, Nabulsi, Khoury, Tamimi, Khatib, Ja’bari, Masri, Kan’an, Shaq’a, Barghouthi, Shawwa, Rayyes, and others. These are extended families that dominated Palestinian politics until the 1980s, and are still relatively prominent today.

The preponderance in Gaza of the surname “Masri” (also “al-Masri” and other variations), betrays the Egyptian origins of a large number of Gazans. They’re the same people of the same stock; they’re Egyptians. But Egypt shares more than blood ties with Gaza. Egypt shares a border with Gaza, something the stupid don’t know when they talk about Gaza being an “open-air prison”

There are TWO ways in and out of Gaza, two shared borders. One with Israel and one with, Egypt, from whence the people of Gaza come. The Egyptians are their family, their kin.

But kids these days. These ignorant protesting dummies on college campuses, so drunk with genocide cool aid, that they haven’t even looked at a map. How could we expect them to do a bit of digging, apply some critical thought to the idea that they're fighting for—to look at the clues contained in the surnames of the people they claim are subject to Israeli genocide? It's their own family who won’t let them in!

Smart people know better than these campus idiots because they bother to look at a map, and investigate the facts. They see how shameful this is, how Egypt, only steps away from Rafah, should be ashamed of itself. That’s what intelligent people know to think when they see photos in the media of the sad and grim refugees set to wandering yet again. 

It’s what we should all be thinking and asking out loud: Why won’t Egypt give refuge to its brethren? Why won’t it save its own people? Why has Egypt trapped the people of Gaza in an open-air prison even now, when it counts most, when the homes and lives of the Gazan people of Rafah, lie in the balance?

History will not be kind to Egypt for its despicable behavior toward the people of Rafah. All will be noted and recorded, a new black mark on the reputation of Egypt, the country that once oppressed the Jews and now oppresses its own.

It's a shameful thing, a shonda. 

For shame, Egypt. 

For shame.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Hamas proudly films its own war crimes of perfidy, knowing no one will say a negative word

Oxford's Dictionary of Law Enforcement says "Perfidious killing or wounding is a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court whereby the perpetrator kills or wounds the victim by taking advantage of the victim's belief that he is in a state of protection under international law....Guerrilla fighters dressed in civilian clothes would always be guilty of perfidious killing or wounding by pretending to have civilian status, but they are not guilty if they carry their weapons openly."

Throughout the war, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists have been wearing civilian clothing and almost never carry their weapons openly. Instead, they have pre-positioned weapons throughout the Gaza Strip in civilian areas and use these caches as necessary, and then pretending to be civilians after they put the weapons back away. 

Hamas videos consistently show that their members are exclusively wearing civilian clothing. 

Today, Hamas released a video of terrorists shooting mortars. They hide the mortars underground and bring them out when they want to fire them. 

Every single shooter is in civilian clothing.

Here's the full video.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad's videos of them shooting at Israeli tanks also invariably show their members wearing civilian clothes. When they are killed, "human rights" groups consider them civilians unless the weapons are right next to them. 

Another recent video shows additional crimes: the mortar is being shot from an urban area, and it had been hidden by a blanket so it wasn't carried there openly as per international law.

Now, try to find a single mention, let alone condemnation, of these war crimes by any NGO or mainstream media outlet.

Israeli actions are put under a microscope and things that are absolutely legal under international law are elevated to crimes against humanity, while recognized terrorist groups get a pass when the evidence is in their own videos.

All it would take would be a single report by Human Rights Watch or Amnesty to point these things out and Hamas would be shamed into changing its tactics. They know all of this. And they deliberately decide not to write about it. 

Because they are on Hamas' side.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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The @WashingtonPost's investigation about Shifa Hospital misses the real story

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an investigation  casting doubt on whether Shifa Hospital in Gaza was being used as a Hamas command center.

Its top major finding: "The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas."

The key to the story is the word "immediate:"

“The law is about what was in the mind of the attacker at the time the attacker planned and executed the mission with respect to both what they expected the collateral damage they expected to cause and the military advantage they anticipated gaining,” said Michael Schmitt, an emeritus professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

The IDF would not comment on the military advantage sought or achieved.

“What was the urgency? This is not yet being demonstrated,” said Yousuf Syed Khan, a senior lawyer with Global Rights Compliance, a law firm, who has drafted U.N. reports on siege warfare.

While the underground tunnel uncovered by Israeli forces after the raid does point to a possible militant presence underneath the hospital at some point, it does not prove that a command node was operating there during the war.

“We’re getting more of a granular, three-dimensional understanding of al-Shifa Hospital, the tunnels underneath it,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at Crisis Group.

“What we’re really lacking here is a confident understanding of the fourth dimension, which is time. When were various elements of the hospital being used in certain ways? When were the tunnels beneath the hospital complex being used in certain ways?”

The Washington Post has its doubts:

The bare, white-tiled rooms showed no immediate evidence of use — for command and control or otherwise. There are no signs of recent habitation, including litter, food containers, clothing or other personal items.  

Let's look at the context.

Hamas' use of the hospital for military purposes was well known as early as 2006. Even the Washington Post itself wrote in 2014 that it  “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” 

Israel had built bunkers under the hospital when Gaza was under Israeli control, but bunkers aren't tunnels. However, we know that there were tunnels under Gaza's Al Wehda Street that were bombed in the 2014 war, and that street leads directly to the hospital compound. Given that Hamas built hundreds of tunnel shafts underneath their offices and leaders' homes, it is apparent that there were connections between Hamas offices in the hospital basement and the tunnels under Al Wehda Street.

Israel might not have revealed the specific locations of each shaft, and that is hardly important considering that there is no doubt that these tunnels existed directly underneath a hospital.

Just as there is no doubt that the only purpose of these tunnels, underground rooms and bathrooms is military. They aren't hotels or summer camps.

The IDF first laid out a specific series of accusations about the Shifa Hospital on October 27, nearly three weeks before the raid, before the ground war even began. There were unofficial discussions of Shifa Hospital before that. It didn't show "urgency" - it showed unheard-of patience before moving in.

Hamas knew the IDF was coming for them. And they had weeks to clear out and clean up the evidence from the tunnels (even though they left behind plenty of weapons on the hospital grounds themselves, which were harder to clean up since there were so many people around.)

Here's the part that no one is talking about: The IDF knew quite well that they were giving Hamas a heads up that they were coming. They knew Hamas would not stay and it would hide evidence of explicit military use. So why give the warning at all? Why not surprise Hamas? What army tells the enemy where they will be going?

The warning was meant to force Hamas commanders to move to other areas. 

This achieves three military aims. Firstly, it  disrupts their operations temporarily. Secondly,  it allows the IDF to go there, gather evidence and valuable intelligence like footage from cameras, and destroy the military infrastructure beneath Shifa without a firefight and endangering patients and civilians taking shelter. And thirdly, Hamas leaders moving to other areas allows Israel to attack them without worrying about the complexity of protecting hospital patients during a battle.

Israel has now released evidence that Hamas brought hostages to Shifa. The tunnels had electricity and plumbing that were attached to Shifa's infrastructure. Weapons were found in the radiology ward and in a garage on Shifa's grounds. We know that employees and even directors at other hospitals were also Hamas terrorists. The Gaza health ministry is Hamas and it admits its officials have Hamas military rank. While there might not be direct evidence of Hamas using those tunnels underneath Shifa in mid-November as their main headquarters, no one can seriously doubt that Hamas used the hospital for military purposes and that the reason was to use the patients as human shields. 

Israel managed to clear Hamas out of the hospital it was using for military purposes with a minimum of fighting and a minimum of physical destruction. That is not violating international law - it is adhering to it in ways far beyond the limited imaginations of those whose entire worldview is poisoned by always assuming malevolence from Israel.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Gaza health ministry claims hospital director was tortured - but sort of admits he's right

The Hamas ministry of health released a statement this morning in response to the video of Kamal Adwan Hospital director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot admitting that Hamas militants control the hospital, uses their ambulances and offices for military activity.

They claim that Kahlot's statement was given after he was tortured, writing on Facebook: 

In the face of a new chapter of ongoing crimes targeting the health sector, the occupation forces destroyed large parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital and arrested the hospital director, intimidating and coercing him to give the story of the occupation under the force of beating and torture, we would like to clarify the following:

Their explanation pretty much admits a great deal that Kahlot said!

1. Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot works within the cadres of the Military Medical Services, which is an official body affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and within the approved components of the Palestinian National Authority.

 So the hospital is run by the Hamas military. 

2. The rank of brigadier general is a job rank in the medical services apparatus affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, and it is a known and applicable rank throughout the world.

They admit giving Al-Kahlot a military rank within Hamas.

3. The presence of official components and bodies inside the hospital, such as medical investigations and official agencies affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, came as a result of the destruction of the infrastructure of these agencies and the search for a place that provides the necessary work requirements, and they are approved agencies within the structure of the Ministry of Interior.

So the Hamas Ministry of Interior - which is responsible for police and other security services - really did have offices in the hospital. (They don't say what everyone knows: the Hamas police are also largely members of the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades.)

4. What was stated by Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot was under the force of oppression, torture and intimidation, and we call on all human rights institutions to denounce this criminal behavior practiced by the occupation against our people in general and against health work crews in particular to extract a story consistent with the occupation’s demand, and to extract this testimony under threat. Publishing it in audio and video is a war crime in itself.

There you have it. Using hospitals as military sites isn't the war crime  - posting video of the hospital director admitting it is the real war crime!

We call on human rights institutions to open an urgent investigation into the Kamal Adwan Hospital massacre, where children were besieged without water, without food, without electricity, and without water for extended days, which ended with the bombing of the hospital, the killing of two women and two children among the patients, and the injury of dozens. This was followed by storming the hospital and arresting dozens. Of the displaced, the sick, the health personnel, the brutal assault against them, the digging up of graves, the demolition of the hospital, the crushing of bodies under the tracks of tanks, and other horrific details.

Translation: We have to get the narrative back!

The problem is, they probably will. The media is always willing to give Hamas the benefit of the doubt while casting aspersions on everything the IDF says. Which is, really, a form of antisemitism, to say that Jews are suspected of lying with everything they say, even when compared to terrorists who celebrate murdering women and children.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Hospital head is a Hamas lieutenant colonel. His lies were widely quoted by the media for months.

Times of Israel reports:

The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabaliya has revealed in a Shin Bet interrogation that his northern Gaza hospital was turned into a military facility under Hamas’s control and that at one point, it had housed a kidnapped soldier.

In footage published on Tuesday by the Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces, hospital director Ahmed Kahlot could be seen telling an Israeli interrogator that Hamas had offices inside the hospital and used it as a base for operational activity.

According to Kahlot, who said he has been a lieutenant colonel in Hamas since 2010, some 16 members of the hospital’s staff — including doctors, nurses and paramedics — were Hamas operatives serving in the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the terror organization.

He added that several members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also employed in the hospital.

Here is his statement:

 Kahlout was widely quoted by the media for two months. Now that we know he is Hamas, we can assume that a large percentage of his statements that helped shape world opinion were propaganda.

So what has the media quoted a Hamas official as if he was a dedicated medical professional?

AP quoted him November 7 defending how casualty numbers from Hamas' health ministry are trustworthy.  

“Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent,” said Ahmed al-Kahlot, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. “More than anything, we are medical professionals.”

The Guardian, November 12:

 The head of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has run out of fuel.

“Ahmed al-Kahlout, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the facility’s main generator has run out of fuel, forcing the hospital to shut its operation,” the news organisation reports.

More than 5,000 people are sheltering at the hospital in addition to patients, al-Kahlout said.

The Guardian, November 22, quoted him again:

The hospital had received more than 60 bodies with over 200 injured since last night, he added. “The medical teams are very tired. We don’t have a single drop of fuel. We work in the dark using handheld searchlights,” he said

In another message distributed by the health ministry, Kahlout said the hospital was using cooking oil rather than diesel to run the hospital’s generators, and an ambulance targeting the wounded had been struck near the hospital grounds.

CNN, December 11, quoted him as saying that the maternity ward was hit by tank shelling, killing two women and leaving two more so badly wounded their legs required amputation.

Pravda, December 12:

"Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital. ...The IOF targeted the hospital's water system, and we had to rely on groundwater. No electricity, water, or food in the hospital. The IOF shelled the maternity ward. Three children in the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen. "

Every quote from every medical professional in Gaza since October 7 is as suspect as Al-Kahlout's. But there was no skepticism about his accusations - until now. 

Now that he is telling everyone that Hamas controls the hospitals and ambulances, the Times of London has lots of reservations about  his statements:

Israel has sought to justify arresting scores of medical staff in Gaza by posting a video that purports to show a hospital manager confessing to working for Hamas.

Ahmed Kahlot, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained last week along with 70 other medical staff.

The release of the video was condemned by pro-Palestinian groups, who said there was no justification for publishing interrogation evidence obtained under unclear conditions without the presence of a lawyer.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks earlier in the conflict working in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals, said the Israelis were taking these actions because their attempts to show al-Shifa had been used as a command centre had failed.

“The Israelis plan to have show trials to justify the attacks on hospitals, because the whole narrative on al-Shifa was so ludicrous,” he said.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Rape Fear and the Jewish Israeli Experience (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

When the war started, I phoned my neighbor to make sure she knew she was welcome to bring her family to our safe room, at any time of the day or night. We talked about logistics and how we were having a key made for them and how I didn’t at all mind a LOT of children in a small space because I’d had 12 of my own. The whole time, my neighbor, whom I’ll call “Terry” out of respect for her privacy, said, “Thank you, but so far we’ve been sitting in the stairwell, and that’s fine with us.”

I got the idea she didn’t think the missiles were all that big a deal, and so finally I confessed, “Yeah. To tell the truth, I don’t worry so much about the missiles either. It’s the other stuff I worry about.”

“Exactly. It’s the other stuff,” said Terry.

Neither of us had to elucidate the nature of that “other stuff,” and I won’t say it here, either. But the thing I think about when I think about that “other stuff," is rape.

I can’t swear that this is the thing that worries my neighbor most, when she thinks about the things she fears most. She didn’t say. But then again, she didn’t have to—fear of rape is not exclusive to this writer—it’s fairly universal among women and researchers have been studying the phenomenon for years.

Take, for example, this abstract from “Fear of Rape Among Urban Women,” a 1985 paper by the (in-)felicitously named Mark Warr, of Penn State University (emphasis added):

Sample survey data from Seattle are used to examine fear of rape among urban women. The magnitude and prevalence of such fear are striking, particularly among younger women, who fear rape more than any other crime. The high fear attached to rape stems from the fact that it is perceived to be both extremely serious and relatively likely; and from the fact that it is closely associated with other serious offenses such as homicide and robbery. Fear of rape also lies behind fear of other offenses among women in our sample, and is strongly associated with certain social or lifestyle precautions.

Some four paragraphs into the introduction to this paper, Warr says something that touches on the universal nature of fear of rape among women. More women, it seems, are scared of rape than are actually raped (emphasis added):

This paper is not about those who rape, nor is it about those who are direct victims of rape. Rather, the paper considers a much larger group: those who fear rape. One of the major developments in criminology during the past 20 years has been a general realization that the social consequences of crime are not limited to those who are directly victimized. That principle is particularly true when it comes to fear of victimization, because the number of fearful individuals greatly exceeds the number of actual victims during any given period.

Wikipedia has something on “Rape Fear” that speaks to cause: the socialization of women. Women have been raised to fear and protect themselves from rape (emphasis added):

Socialization of Women

The fear of rape, unlike other fears of specific crimes, is almost exclusive to women. Among women, it is also one of the strongest crime-related fears, and is the strongest crime-related fear for young women. Levels of fear of rape vary among women by age, race/ethnicity, residential area, and other factors, but are especially high for women who have been victims of rape in the past or know victims personally (the latter group may include a significant portion of women, with one study estimating that over half of women know rape victims). Women are socialized from a very young age that rape can happen anywhere, to anyone, at any time. They are taught that they should always be aware of the possibility of rape and protect themselves from it. Young women are taught strategies to keep themselves safe, and this idea is instilled in them at a young age. This teaching women about the possibility of rape at a young age may contribute to higher levels of fear of crime in women. Studies have shown that women that take more precautionary steps to avoid being raped have more fear of actually being raped, whereas women who work nights and are outside in the dark tend to have less fear of rape. This may be because women that are out in the dark alone are more familiar with the area, so they feel that there is less of a threat.

“What women know and men don’t: Women have an ever-present fear of being attacked,” a 2019 review of a PBS documentary, begins with a taste for the reader, of how fear of rape is experienced by women, and why (emphasis added):

Every day, women live with fear. It’s not paralyzing, but it’s omnipresent -- whether you’re walking out of work in the dark or asking a friend to watch your drink.

“Ask any woman you know. You always have a plan,” said Mary Dickson, who worked on a PBS documentary about women and fear in 1996. Nothing’s changed since then, she says.

The fear is low hum beneath the music of your regular life, implanted in your teenage years. You’re afraid a strange man will attack you.

So you don’t run at night.

You don’t park in a public garage.

You don’t enter an elevator already occupied by a single man.

You don’t leave a party without your friends.

Women are raised to fear and protect themselves from rape. But fear of rape exponentially increases when women read about or see images or footage of rape. Perhaps that is the reason I sensed that my neighbor Terry felt as I did, after photos emerged of a female hostage being led away to Gaza, her pants bloodied at the crotch. I am also fairly certain that like me, Terry finds it difficult to stop thinking about Shani Louk, whose story I can’t bring myself to relate here.

We, the women of Israel, know that Hamas, in addition to raping women—and it must be said, men—uses fear of rape as a form of psychological warfare, to inspire incapacitating fear in Israeli women and rage in their men. For this reason, Israeli experts have advised Israelis not to watch the footage, read the stories, see the photos, or listen to podcasts where the atrocities might be mentioned. These things spike fears; in the case of women, fear of rape.

Female Fear, a US Dept. of Justice resource, speaks of several types of media that can trigger rape fear in women, among them “frightening press accounts” (emphasis added):

In the United States, the Nation with the highest rape rate in the world, warnings, admonitions, and fear of rape are handed down from mother to daughter. Although rape happens to 1 female in 12, frightening press accounts, violent pornographic movies, cultural stereotypes of rapists and their victims, attacks on friends and acquaintances, and escalating statistics have contributed to women's fear of rape. In exploring the social and psychological specter of rape in women's lives, this study probes both the myths and realities of rape and society's response to it, including strategies women have developed to protect themselves. Fear of rape is reflected in the way women think, organize their lives, and relate to others. As the authors indicate, a reasonable amount of fear is useful in motivating women to take reasonable precautions. The book presents concrete ways both women and men can begin to alleviate the destructive effects of the fear of rape. These include educating the public, integrating women into their communities, promoting legal reform, and forcing accountability in media coverage.

Fear of rape explains the “Believe Women” campaign, which arose out of the #MeToo movement. Rape is one of women’s foremost fears and concerns. Why then, do women at the forefront of efforts to support women, make excuses for Hamas rapists when the victims are Jewish? 

The UN, however, bears special mention for its spectacular betrayal of Israeli women in the face of widespread rape by Hamas terrorists, still an ongoing situation for Israeli hostages of both sexes.   

An October 26 Jerusalem Post editorial speaks of that betrayal (emphasis added):

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s speech to a special Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas war on Tuesday began promisingly enough.

“Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring, and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets,” he said at the beginning of the speech.

Then Guterres’ moral compass went haywire, and he began to justify what he had just said was unjustifiable.

“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Why does Guterres justify violence against Israeli Jews, and fail to mention at all, the sexual violence and the rape and degradation of Israeli women? How does anything make rape an excusable offense? In the enlightened world, how can it be that the head of the UN uses his soapbox to blame the Jewish victims and tell lies about the Jewish State—and the Gazan people?

By November 30, however, Guterres had apparently changed his tune. It must have been getting more difficult to get away with the sort of outright Jew-hatred that makes allowances for rape when the victim is a Jew. Hence his post on X.

"There are numerous accounts of sexual violence during the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted.

"Gender-based violence must be condemned. Anytime. Anywhere."

There are numerous accounts of sexual violence during the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted.

Gender-based violence must be condemned. Anytime. Anywhere.

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) November 29, 2023

But why so vague? Where is the mention of rape? Where are the words “support Israel women” and “believe Israeli women” and what do we gleam from these omissions?

Here is my takeaway: with his fuzzy pronouncements of “investigating accounts” and “sexual violence” Guterres is telling the world that it’s okay to suspend belief in women when they are Jewish and Israeli; that it’s understandable that Hamas terrorists would rape Jewish women; and finally, that it’s fine and dandy to lie in public and make public proclamations about Jews occupying their own indigenous Jewish territory when everyone knows the bible is their deed.

My neighbor Terry is somewhat new to Israel. She and her family made Aliyah after there was a drive-by shooting not far from their home in the States. They took the shooting as a sign that it was time to leave the States and come to Israel. She hasn’t changed her mind. Why would she when the entire world repudiates her because she is a Jew, doesn’t care if she is raped because she is a Jew?

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A post shared by Inbar Cohen (@inbar_cohen95)

Rape fear is real for women everywhere, but fear of rape is compounded in a woman who is Jewish and Israeli, because she knows that the world sees her rape as legitimate resistance, and that the head of the UN himself, sees her genitals and body as free-for-the-taking, subhuman instruments for the release of pent-up Arab anger.

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