Factchecked, again: ‘Israel’ lied, Al-Shifa Hospital is not Hamas HQ

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: The New York Times
18 Nov 2023 10:28
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Israeli claims on al-Shifa Hospital are further debunked, as three NYT journalists were escorted by IOF, on Thursday night, through "only a portion of the sprawling Al-Shifa complex."

Palestinian mother and her children wounded in Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are brought to a hospital in northern Gaza (AP)

Several days passed since invading Israeli forces stormed Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, bombing, killing, terrorizing, and reducing departmental wards to rubble. They were actively searching for "evidence" that the hospital was a significant command center for the Hamas.

Later on, Israeli occupation forces converted Al-Shifa Hospital into a military barracks, handcuffing a large number of its attending doctors and indiscriminately opening fire throughout the health facility as they stormed patient wards without constraints.

Prior to the Israeli raid on Al-Shifa, the World Health Organization had declared the hospital non-functional. Officials detailed dire conditions, including a shortage of food, medicine, and anesthetics, leading to the shutdown of generators and lifesaving equipment due to a lack of fuel.

Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila disclosed on Friday that as many as 40 Palestinian patients, including three premature babies, have died in Al-Shifa Hospital Complex in the Gaza Strip. The deaths were attributed to the power cut-off from fuel depletion, resulting from the Israeli invading forces' siege on the Complex and constant targeting of the hospital.

False claim: There is "a Hamas military facility under al-Shifa Hospital."

Factchecked: The Israeli claim is false as has been reported by several media outlets, including The Washington Post, and human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch.

In the most recent intake on the matter, three journalists from the New York Times who were escorted by the Israeli invading forces, on Thursday night, through "only a portion of the sprawling Al-Shifa complex," debunked the Israeli claim of a Hamas military facility under the hospital.

The journalists reported that the visit did not conclusively confirm the presence of such a facility.

Here's what happened: Almost 48 hours after raiding Gaza’s largest medical complex, the Israeli invading forces escorted journalists from The New York Times through a landscape of wartime destruction Thursday night to a stone-and-concrete shaft on its grounds with a staircase descending into the earth — evidence, it claimed, of a Hamas military facility under the hospital.

But, an Israeli commander of "the Seventh Brigade" told the journalists that Israeli forces, under the pretext of fearing "booby traps", had not ventured down the shaft at the hospital. He claimed it had been discovered earlier in the day under a pile of sand on the northern perimeter of the complex.

In the darkness, it was unclear where the shaft led to or how deep it went, although the military claimed it had sent a drone down at least several meters, the journalists reported. Electrical wiring was visible inside, along with a metal staircase, as per the journalists.

The controlled visit will not settle the question of whether the armed Palestinian group has been using Al-Shifa Hospital to hide weapons and command centers, as "Israel" has claimed, the journalists asserted.

In further detail, the military declined to allow journalists to explore the hospital, visit patients, or interview medical staff, claiming that the facility had not been fully secured.

False claim: The Israeli military said that Hamas used a vast network of tunnels underneath the hospital as a secret base.

Factchecked: The Israeli claim is false. The journalists reported that the Israeli military has not presented public documentation of such an extensive network, acknowledging that "Israel" is facing increasing international pressure to demonstrate that the hospital and the alleged tunnel network were significant military targets "justifying the human cost." As if, genocide can be in any way justified.

The journalists acknowledged that the Israeli claim has been crucial to "Israel's" justification of the horrific death toll resulting from its aggression on Gaza, where over 12,000 people, including at least 5,000 children, have been killed as per Gazan health officials.

Israeli authorities claim that the significant loss of life is, in part, due to Hamas' choice of concealing military fortifications and command centers within civilian infrastructure such as Al-Shifa. This claim has been repeatedly denied by the Palestinian Resistance. In short, the evidence presented by "Israel" regarding the hospital setup at Al-Shifa does not appear definitive, especially in light of the Israeli rhetoric claiming it was a "central nerve" center for Hamas operations.

BREAKING🚨: The "tunnel" the IDF dug up has now been proven to be a water reservoir! This is why the IDF didn't film 'inside' the tunnel. pic.twitter.com/wHFFha9Gkd
— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾🎗 (@Partisangirl) November 17, 2023

Funny.. tunnels under Al Shifa hospital the israelis claim to have found are identical to the old Swedish radio transmitter bunkers #debunkers pic.twitter.com/ww62S1UjHb
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) November 15, 2023

🚨🇮🇱 BBC proves that ISRAEL is staging weapons caches in civilian buildings!

They also stated ISRAEL has not yet produced evidence that Al Shifa was a “Hamas HQ.”
pic.twitter.com/8C4O7IL8MU
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) November 17, 2023

Gaza sees massive destruction

The visit provided NYT journalists with a chance to observe the gruesome conditions of the Israeli brutal war on Gaza. The full extent of the damage to the hospital was not entirely clear during The Times' visit. However, the main emergency building appeared to be intact with electricity, despite a dayslong siege resulting in increasingly dire conditions, according to health officials. Nearby gunfire suggested ongoing confrontations in nearby streets, as per the journalist.

Head of the orthopedic department at Al Shifa Hospital Dr Faisal Siham painfully describes the israeli siege on the medical complex @QudsNen pic.twitter.com/2r6w15AmGF
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) November 17, 2023

To access the hospital grounds, Israeli officers escorted journalists through a bombed-out building on the outskirts of the site, claiming that the main gate was too dangerous. The destruction in various parts of Gaza, including the seafront promenade, apartment blocks, and the main coastal road, had rendered sections of the city unrecognizable, the journalists reported.

It's important to note that there is a lack of independent scrutiny within the hospital. Journalists face restrictions in freely entering Gaza, and those reporting from the site are operating under the oversight of the Israeli military. While Al-Shifa was getting invaded, the occupation also cut off all communications from the hospital.

This morning, Al Mayadeen's correspondent in Gaza quoted the head of the surgery department at Al-Shifa Hospital as saying that the Israeli invading forces ordered them to evacuate the hospital of medical staff and all patients, including the ICU unit and thousands of displaced families, in an hour. This raises fear of "Israel's" intention to bomb the hospital after failing to provide any definitive evidence for its claims.

All of this is substantial under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit military operations against hospitals unless “they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy." This exclusion, detailed in Article 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, explicitly states: “… the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants and not yet handed to the proper service shall not be considered to act harmful to the enemy."