When a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad exploded outside Gaza's Al-Ahli hospital, Hamas claimed within minutes that Israel had bombed the hospital and falsely asserted that hundreds of people had been killed there. The United Nations rushed to blame Israel, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres used his speech at the Belt and Road Summit in China to condemn Israel for the explosion.
-To
understand how the UN effectively runs the Hamas propaganda war, it is
important to know that the UN, through its agency for Palestinian refugees, the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is effectively embedded with
Hamas in the Gaza Strip...
-"The
UN has 13,000 employees in tiny Gaza. They know exactly what's going on... They
all knew Hamas' terror infrastructure was in the hospital compound, where
Israel wouldn't attack. They lied to the world for 16 years. To paint Israel as
evil." — Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, November 16, 2023.
-[T]he
UN has sustained an incessant campaign, especially on social media, that
accuses Israel of deliberately targeting schools, children, civilians,
hospitals and healthcare workers. While those are protected from attack during
war by international law, that protection does not apply to schools, hospitals
and other civilian sites that are used for military purposes.
-When
Israel carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in northern Gaza, which was
being used by Hamas terrorists, [UN Secretary-General António] Guterres
expressed that he was "horrified" with Israel's action, while
ignoring Hamas's war crimes. In practice, the UN and Hamas act as partners in
crime.
-Above
all, the UN's transparent complicity with Hamas should convince the US,
finally, that much of the UN is a destructive organization that prolongs wars,
and needs immediately to have its funding decimated, and be reduced in
importance to the corrupt relic that it is, deserving no place in this century.
Since
October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and massacred at least
1,200 and kidnapped another 240 Israelis and people of other nationalities, the
United Nations has been acting as the unofficial propaganda arm of the
Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist organization.
The
propaganda campaign's main aim – besides smearing Israel – appears to be to
build overwhelming international pressure on Israel to agree to an indefinite
ceasefire , which will give Hamas the needed time to regroup and replenish to
continue its terrorist activities and to avoid being eliminated by the Israeli
Defense Forces.
To
understand how the UN effectively runs the Hamas propaganda war, it is
important to know that the UN, through its agency for Palestinian refugees, the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is effectively embedded with
Hamas in the Gaza Strip: it can be difficult to make any meaningful distinction
between the two organizations. On October 7, in fact, as the Hamas massacre of
civilians in Israel unfolded, UNRWA employees in Gaza celebrated. UN Watch
wrote in a report last month:
..."As
soon as news of the horrific slaughter broke, which was livestreamed on social
media by some of the terrorists, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
staff immediately celebrated and justified it on Facebook... UNRWA has been a
breeding ground for Palestinian terrorists from its early days... The
perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes
were murdered... almost all were raised and educated in UNRWA schools...
Likewise, Mohamed Deif, the commander of Hamas's Al Qassem Brigades who
masterminded the October 7th massacre, was also educated in an UNRWA
school."
According
to Associated Press:
..."From
2014-2020, U.N. agencies spent nearly $4.5 billion in Gaza, including $600
million in 2020 alone. More than 80% of that funding is channeled through the
U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, who make up three-fourths of Gaza's
population. Some 280,000 children in Gaza attend schools run by UNRWA, which
also provides health services and food aid."
The UN,
through UNRWA in Gaza, likely knows everything that happens there, including
the terrorist infrastructure of the underground Hamas tunnels and their use of
hospitals and ambulances. Yet throughout this war, the UN has done nothing but
feign "horror and shock" at Israel's necessary measures against Hamas
terrorists embedded within civilian society in Gaza. As the executive director
of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, pointed out:
..."The
UN has 13,000 employees in tiny Gaza. They know exactly what's going on... They
all knew Hamas' terror infrastructure was in the hospital compound, where
Israel wouldn't attack. They lied to the world for 16 years. To paint Israel as
evil."
On
October 24, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stooped to a new low when
pushing a typical Hamas narrative of grievances. He said that the October 7
attacks "did not happen in a vacuum," thereby seemingly justifying
the terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, the UN has not bothered in the least to
address in concrete and horrifying detail what happened during the October 7
massacre – the mass rapes, the horrific torture, the ruthless murders and the
kidnappings.
This
silence on what happened on October 7 is, sadly, in keeping with the UN's
demonization of Israel around the clock. The UN invokes international
humanitarian law – which Hamas, not Israel, is breaking by building military
installations in protected civilian spaces (which, when used for military
purposes become unprotected) and using civilians as human shields. Meanwhile,
the UN never calls for Hamas to stop using its civilians as human shields to
protect its weapons and show dead babies to the television cameras – to imply
that their deaths were Israel's fault.
Why are
Gazan civilians not allowed to take shelter from aerial bombardments in Hamas's
300 km of underground tunnels? Why did the Israel Defense Forces have to
protect the Gazans fleeing south for their lives -- as Israel had cautioned
them to -- while Hamas tried at gunpoint to prevent them from leaving?
Everything
that the UN says and does regarding to Israel's military operations in Gaza
turns Hamas's war crimes on their head -- to try to blame them on Israel.
Meanwhile, the UN parrots as fact whatever outlandish claims Hamas produces,
including Gazan casualty numbers, which oddly never include any mention of
Hamas terrorists, but mostly women and children.
When
Hamas claimed on October 17 that Israel had bombed Gaza's Al-Ahli hospital,
falsely asserting that hundreds of people had been killed, the UN rushed to
blame Israel. Guterres used his speech at the Belt and Road Summit in China to
condemn Israel for the explosion outside the hospital and to call for an
immediate ceasefire, while Dennis Francis, president of the 78th session of the
UN General Assembly announced that he was "shocked and horrified."
On
October 18, Israel published evidence showing that the strike on the hospital
compound was a misfired rocket aimed at Israel and launched by Palestinian
Islamic Jihad. The UN said nothing. Instead, the UN has sustained an incessant
campaign, especially on social media, that accuses Israel of deliberately
targeting schools, children, civilians, hospitals and healthcare workers. While
those are protected from attack during war by international law, that
protection does not apply to schools, hospitals and other civilian sites that
are used for military purposes.
Hamas'
unlawful military use of hospitals, schools and other civilian sites was first
exposed years ago. Former US President Bill Clinton spoke about it in 2016.
"When Hamas chooses to rocket Israel, it insinuates itself into hospitals
and into schools," he said.
NATO
published a report in 2019, which bluntly stated:
---"Hamas,
an Islamist militant group and the de facto governing authority of the Gaza
Strip, has been using human shields in conflicts with Israel since 2007.
According to the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the war
crime of using human shields encompasses "utilizing the presence of a
civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas, or military
forces immune from military operations." Hamas has launched rockets,
positioned military-related infrastructure-hubs and routes, and engaged the
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) from, or in proximity to, residential and
commercial areas.
"The
strategic logic of human shields has two components. It is based on an
awareness of Israel's desire to minimise collateral damage, and of Western
public opinion's sensitivity towards civilian casualties. If the IDF uses
lethal force and causes an increase in civilian casualties, Hamas can utilise
that as a lawfare tool: it can accuse Israel of committing war crimes, which
could result in the imposition of a wide array of sanctions. Alternatively, if
the IDF limits its use of military force in Gaza to avoid collateral damage,
Hamas will be less susceptible to Israeli attacks, and thereby able to protect
its assets while continuing to fight."
When
Israel carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in northern Gaza, which was
being used by Hamas terrorists, Guterres expressed that he was
"horrified" with Israel's action, while ignoring Hamas's war crimes.
In practice, the UN and Hamas act as partners in crime.
A Hamas
terrorist who participated in the October 7 mass-murder of Israelis and was
captured, said during a recent interrogation intercepted by Israel:
..."Al-Qassam
[the Hamas military wing] has its own ambulances, some of which are located on
the military base. The appearance of the ambulances is similar to the civilian
ambulances so that they will not arouse suspicion or be bombed by Israel."
Another
captured Hamas terrorist said:
..."During
combat, the ambulances are used, among other things, to evacuate fighters,
commanders and operatives. They also transport food, cargo and weapons in them
because that is the safest way to transport them."
Yet
another captured terrorist said that ambulances were useful to transport
"important people" such as Hamas commanders because "the Jews
don't attack ambulances."
When
Israel published evidence of the Hamas military command center beneath Al-Shifa
Hospital in Gaza City, World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, who covered up the transmissibility of the COVID-19 pandemic for
China and is accused of trying to cover up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia,
immediately castigated Israel.
UN
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief
Coordinator Martin Griffiths, wrote:
..."I'm
appalled by reports of military raids in Al Shifa hospital in #Gaza. The
protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must override
all other concerns. Hospitals are not battlegrounds."
While
these high-ranking UN officials disingenuously feign ignorance and expect the
public to believe that they knew nothing about the Hamas base in Al-Shifa
Hospital, foreign doctors and journalists have apparently been aware of it for
years.
An
unnamed British doctor, who worked at Al-Shifa hospital three years ago,
recently said in a television interview:
..."The
main point was, when I was first asked to work there [at Al-Shifa], I was told
there was a part of the hospital I was not to go near, and if I did, I'd be in
danger of being shot... implicit was that it was being used for non-medical
purposes... I stayed away, but I saw a few dodgy looking non-medical characters
going in and out all the time. It was a ward leading to a basement."
A
journalist from Italy related that in 2009, upon arriving in Al-Shifa Hospital
to interview wounded members of Fatah, he came almost face to face with the
Hamas command and control center beneath the hospital:
..."Shifa
is a very large compound. I got lost inside it, and at some point I ended up on
an underground floor, and I found myself in front of two armed Hamas men in
military attire, who told me to get out. I got the impression they were
guarding a security door that gave access to their underground infrastructure.
Several Palestinian sources I spoke with later on confirmed that Hamas's
command and control center was located under Shifa Hospital and that [Hamas
leader] Ismail Haniyeh had been hiding there throughout the duration of
Operation Cast Lead."
It is
also likely that the UN, with its 13,000 employees in Gaza, knew, as did the
nurses and doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital, that Israeli hostages were being held
at Al-Shifa. Israel recently revealed that Hamas terrorists brought hostages
there in broad daylight on October 7, with healthcare staff even holding doors
open for the terrorists.
The UN's
pretend show of "shock and horror" that Israel is eliminating its
Hamas partner in Gaza is too transparent for anyone to take seriously, although
the international mainstream media certainly does, parroting whatever Hamas and
the UN allege as facts.
Above
all, the UN's transparent complicity with Hamas should convince the US,
finally, that much of the UN is a destructive organization that prolongs wars,
and needs immediately to have its funding decimated, and be reduced in
importance to the corrupt relic that it is, deserving no place in this century.
***Robert
Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20192/united-nations-hamas