By Jerome M. Marcus
While the United Nations dithered with a cease-fire resolution that everyone knew Hamas would never obey, a battle between Hamas and the IDF raged inside Gaza’s Shifa Hospital. A key element of Hamas’ arsenal is the hospital itself. It is filled with patients, in the midst of whom Hamas was fighting. It did so because its terrorists and their commanders know that the IDF will operate in a completely different way when noncombatants are involved. And in Shifa Hospital, they are everywhere.
Hundreds of Hamas terrorists were holed up inside the facility with extensive stores of weapons. Hamas acknowledges that many of its senior commanders were operating or hiding there as well. A Hamas representative told Lebanon’s Al-Akbar newspaper that no one should “underestimate the importance of the figures who were arrested or executed.”
IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari reported: “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are barricading themselves inside the Shifa Hospital wards. Hamas is destroying the Shifa Hospital. Hamas is firing from inside the Shifa emergency room and maternity ward and throwing explosives from the Shifa burn ward. Terrorists hiding around the hospital fired mortars at our forces, causing extensive damage to hospital buildings.”
To emphasize: Hamas was firing mortars at the hospital.
Hagari noted that the IDF, by contrast, has “brought dozens of medical devices, over ten thousand units of medication, hundreds of medical supplies, as well as food, water and other equipment into the Shifa Hospital. When Hamas’ attacks resulted in the failure of the hospital’s generator, [IDF] troops helped restore the electricity to the hospital.”
Why is Hamas, a group ostensibly fighting for the Palestinians shooting at a Palestinian hospital filled with Palestinian patients? Because Hamas is, in fact, at war with the Palestinians. It is not interested in Palestinian welfare or Palestinian nationhood. Hamas is interested in Islam.
Their Islam has a simple goal. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” says the 1988 Hamas charter. Why? “Because Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
“It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem,” says the charter. “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It or any part of it should not be squandered: It or any part of it should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgement Day.”
And by the way, the charter makes clear: “The same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force because during the times of [Islamic] conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgement.” In other words, the likes of Spain are next on the list.
If Palestinian lives must be sacrificed so Islam can triumph over the Jews, that’s a price Hamas is entirely willing to pay. And it is paying it, right now. More accurately, it is forcing the noncombatant citizens of Gaza to pay it.
This complete indifference to the welfare of Gazans explains everything about the current war. It explains why billions and billions of dollars given to Gaza in international aid were stolen to build tunnels. It explains why the tunnels are used only for Hamas and not to provide shelter. It explains why Gazans are hungry now even though the amount of food entering Gaza is greater than it was before the war began.
It explains where the food that enters Gaza goes: into the hands of Hamas. It is used either to feed its terrorists or as currency for the elevation of Hamas’ profile among Gazans.
It also explains why a U.N. Security Council resolution that “demands” both a cease-fire and the release of hostages should not be obeyed unilaterally by Israel because we all know that it will not be obeyed at all by Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization. It violates international law as a matter of official policy.
That’s what taking hostages — which is completely illegal under international law — is all about. Hamas will not release a single hostage because the U.N. calls for such a release. Hamas wants time to rebuild so it can do exactly what it has said, over and over again, it intends to do: Commit more Oct. 7’s until Israel is destroyed and all of the land held by Israel is Islamic territory.
That is all that Hamas cares about. Hamas doesn’t care how many Arabs have to die in this holy war. If Palestinian deaths help Hamas rearm, then Hamas will joyfully cause Palestinian deaths, believing it is performing a religious duty. Nothing the U.N., the Pope, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping or any other earthly force says or does will change that.
One thing will change it. It is the same thing that transformed Japan from an emperor-worshipping tyranny intent on world domination into a peaceful ally of Western civilization. That thing is called “defeat.”
Jerome M. Marcus is a lawyer in Philadelphia.
