Hamas wants Gaza civilians to die; their deaths will only make the IDF look bad.
By Hugh Fitzgerald, FrontPage Magazine
As is well known, Hamas embeds its fighters, its weapons, and its rocket launchers in civilian structures — apartment buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals. It uses the Gazans as human shields, hoping that their presence will discourage IDF attacks. And if civilians are killed, despite the IDF’s colossal efforts to minimize civilian casualties, then their deaths are useful to Hamas, part of the terror group’s propaganda war against the IDF, which stands accused of committing “genocide.”
After the murder of the six hostages, and the IDF’s return of their bodies to Israel, it was revealed that they had been kept in a tunnel, the opening to which was located in a children’s play area. More on this ghoulish discovery can be found here: “‘Hamas Hid Behind Civilians’: Entrance to Tunnel Where Murdered Hostages Found Was in Child’s Play Area, IDF Says,” by Jack Elbaum, Algemeiner, September 5, 2024:
The entrance to the tunnel in Gaza where six Israeli hostages were found murdered by Hamas terrorists this past weekend was in a children’s play area, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), underscoring Hamas’s extensive use of civilian infrastructure as protection for its military activity.
“Our troops found drawings, stuffed animals, and the tunnel entrance to where 6 Israeli hostages were held for over 300 days in a terrorist tunnel,” the IDF wrote on X/Twitter on Wednesday.
Video and pictures of the site showed paintings of Disney characters Mickey Mouse and Cinderella on the wall, with a large hole in the ground going down into a tunnel.
The IDF said it was a place where “a child should be safe, not used as human shields for Hamas.”
“Hamas hid behind their civilians in order to kill ours,” the IDF wrote….
Additionally, videos that Hamas has released of its combat often show its fighters in civilian clothing and even using humanitarian aid to prop up rockets.
Hamas fighters wear civilian clothes so that they can easily blend in and disappear among the civilian population whenever they believe that IDF troops are closing in.
Such practices are not a consequence of a lack of equipment but rather a matter of strategy. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that trying to maximize civilian casualties has been part of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s “brutal calculation” on how to win the war.
Sinwar spoke clearly about how he saw his strategy of putting civilians in danger for the cause of destroying Israel: “These are necessary sacrifices,” he said.
Sinwar doesn’t care if the IDF, in attempting to strike at Hamas operatives as they go in and out of the vast tunnel network the terror group has built under Gaza, ends up striking the civilian structures — mosques, schools, hospitals, and apartment houses — where the entries to those tunnels have been built. He wants civilians to die; their deaths will only make the IDF look bad. Think of the propaganda bonanza if that children’s play area had been hit by an IDF rocket meant for the tunnel entrance built within it. Why should Hamas care about the lives of those little children? “These are necessary sacrifices.”