How NGO's Help Keep Gaza in Captivity

Every institution in Gaza is Perverted to Serve Terror

The clocks have changed and Shabbat comes early now in Ottawa. But I’ve got a few things to say before packing up. I think this piece addresses a critical issue that hasn’t received much coverage. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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If you are following the war news from Gaza, I hope you are watching the reports about how the tunnel system is woven into every corner of the territory Israel has liberated so far. Here is a report from Britain’s Talk TV.

In a tour of Beit Hanoun we see evidence of bomb manufacturing facilities in a home next to children’s bedrooms. In a tour with embedded reporters from I24 we see how tunnel entrances are found in every third or fourth house. Under these houses are military facilities, weapons caches, and hidden rocket launching platforms. Everyone living in this town must be aware of the extensive military infrastructure built beneath their feet.

Image: Graphic of Hamas Tunnels from a report in the New York Times

The tour goes on showing how military facilities are positioned under schools, kindergartens and hospitals.

In order to get at these military facilities, Israel had no choice but to ask the civilian population to leave. That’s what Israel has done. It’s taken a month, but we are now hearing that the great majority of Gazans who live in the north have evacuated. But tens of thousands remain and those people remain in harms way.

Here is an interview with Mark Regev, describing how Hamas has resisted efforts to get civilians to safety. He notes that nobody in Gaza says anything to criticize Hamas because they are afraid of retribution. He makes the point that in pursuing its own objectives to remove Hamas for the sake of protecting its own people, they are also freeing the people of Gaza from the oppressive Hamas regime. He points out that in the news coming out of Gaza, we never see any pictures of dead Hamas fighters. We only see pictures of dead civilians. That’s because Hamas is in complete control of the message coming out of the territory they control.

We know that some of the people in Gaza are being hurt and killed every day, caught in the cross fire between the Israelis who are slowly destroying the vast infrastructure that the terrorists have built under the town, and the Hamas fighters who emerge from beneath the city to attack the Israelis.

If you watch the Canadian and American news, to say nothing of the BBC or Al Jazeera, the biggest story, day after day is the civilian casualties. The truth is that we have no idea how many civilians have died. Some outlets repeat the official Hamas count of the dead, which is now over 10,000 and treat it as a fact. Others, more carefully qualify it by saying that the number is reported by the Gaza Health Ministry which is controlled by Hamas. Some even add the (to me necessary) qualification that there is no way to verify these numbers.

But, for virtually all news outlets this is the story. Gazan civilians are dying. To the steady drumbeat of news about terrorized Gazans we hear the rising anger around the world and the demands from demonstrators and the employees of NGOs and from an increasing number of elected politicians for an immediate ceasefire.

The leaders of the western democracies are so far resisting the demand for a ceasefire. They understand that for Israel to cease fire now would leave Hamas in power and lay the groundwork for their preparation for the next round of atrocities against Israel.

Everyone is Missing the Real Story Here

I’d like to consider a question that is not even being discussed in the news media. As far as I know, nobody has asked any of the NGOs in Gaza to explain how Hamas was able to build this military infrastructure without a word of protest from any of them.

The people of Gaza survive thanks largely to the benevolence of the outside world. A large fraction of the people have the status of Palestinian Refugees. Their health, education and social welfare is taken care of by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). There are hundreds of other NGOs operating in Gaza providing help of one kind or another to the people there. Furthermore, the major news agencies of the world have offices in Gaza and employ large numbers of journalists.

So to all of these people who channel vast amounts of money into Gaza year after year, who have been operating there under the Hamas regime for the past 16 years I have to ask, “How could the military infrastructure, under the schools, under the hospitals, under every residence have been built without your knowledge?” And if the people working for the NGOs knew, why hasn’t this been the subject of frequent protest by the NGOs, and of exposes by every journalist working in Gaza?

Surely, the people working for the NGOs who knew of this work, which turned every civilian in Gaza into a human shield, would have understood that what Hamas was doing was contrary to international law? Surely they understood that when Hamas went to war, the civilians of Gaza, who they were dedicated to helping, would become victims, caught in the cross fire between Israeli forces and the Hamas forces dug in underneath them?

Human Rights Watch (HRW) scrutinizes Gaza closely. Here is a report on how restrictions on freedom of movement impact the people of Gaza. HRW has published numerous reports on violations of human rights in Gaza and the other territories controlled by Israel. They exhibit a keen interest in how the lives of people in Gaza are affected by Israeli policies.

Since the beginning of the war, HRW published this report, which claims that both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes in the present conflict. This latest report refers to Hamas crimes against Israelis, such as attacking civilians and taking hostages, as well as indiscriminate rocket fire. The crimes committed by Israel are not spelled out, but the report alludes to the fact that it is a crime to “spread terror among the population”, by asking them to move.

A search on the HRW web site for the term “human shields Gaza” yielded the report above, but nothing about the terrorist infrastructure that is woven into every corner of the urban environment captured so far by Israel.

So Human Rights Watch which closely scrutinizes human rights in Gaza and suggested that Israel telling Palestinians to move away from the site of the impending hostilities might have been a crime, seems to have nothing to say about the the way Palestinian civilians are used as human shields.

How can this be? Can we imagine that HRW was unaware of the Hamas terror infrastructure? If so, they are not very good at what they do. If they do know about the infrastructure, then shouldn’t they have reported on it, as a violation of the laws of war and a huge threat to the wellbeing of the people of Gaza? In the HRW report linked above, on restrictions on freedom of movement, they make a point of showing how the career prospects of Palestinians were impacted by Israel’s policies. Isn’t it a much more grave harm to locate a weapons manufacturing facility in a private residence? Isn’t it a clear and present danger to locate military infrastructure under a hospital?

It makes sense that Hamas would want the world to concern itself with evils of displacing civilians when those civilians are needed to protect them from Israeli bombs. But why would a human rights organizations promote that narrative rather than calling for the urgent evacuation of the population, which they surely know must be in grave danger after what Hamas did on October 7?

When a reporter interviewed an aid worker who works with children last week on the BBC, the whole interview focused on the harm being caused to children by Israeli bombing and supply shortages, and the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire. The interviewer did not ask and the aid worker did not volunteer the information that children were in danger because they were living in rooms next to bomb factories or living on top of ammunition dumps. It makes sense that Hamas would want people to talk about the need for a ceasefire, but why would an aid worker who works with children not talk about the high risk to children caused by their proximity to military infrastructure?

As Mark Regev stated in the interview linked above, not one report from Gaza during this war shows any Hamas fighters. But there are an endless number of reports of dead and injured civilians. It would make sense for Hamas to want the message reported out of Gaza to be entirely about harm to civilians. But why would reporters leave out information about the proximity of Gaza civilians to Hamas military infrastructure? Why wouldn’t they report on the urgent need to get civilians away from the location of Israeli attacks? As I wrote above, “Why hasn’t there been a constant flow of reports over the past 16 years about the ramifications of positioning all significant Hamas military infrastructure so that it is protected by civilians?

Everything Happening in Gaza is Perverted to Serve Hamas

The answer seems evident to me. None of what happens in Gaza is beyond the pervasive influence of Hamas. There is no freedom of assembly, speech, or the press.

Human rights groups cannot protect the Gaza population from Hamas, even thought Hamas has the greatest influence on their lives. They are allowed to operate there only if they call attention to bad behaviour by Israel, which serves Hamas’ interests. Even where great harm is done by Hamas, the human rights organizations dare not say so. Instead they try to find a way to blame Israel for harm that is mostly caused by Hamas. That is the devil’s bargain under which they are allowed to operate.

The same goes for journalists. It has emerged that several free lance contributors to the international wire services were present to film the atrocities committed by Hamas when they invaded Israel on October 7. These “journalists” who provided images used by the international press are likely complicit in crimes against humanity and war crimes. But this shouldn’t surprise us, just as we are not surprised that reporting from Gaza only shows harm to innocent civilians.

The corruption and complicity of the UN Relief and Works Agency has been documented many times. Rockets are stored in schools. Teachers promote antisemitism and genocide against Israelis. We are used to this.

But I think we should hold Human Rights Organizations, UN agencies and journalists to higher ethical standards. When the conditions under which they work make it impossible to do their work impartially they should be warning us that this is so. Because they don’t do this, they become complicit in the grotesque dystopia which Hamas has built in Gaza.

I think it is important that we begin to hold these institutions accountable for their ethical failures. Human rights groups that ignore violations of human rights by one party are worse than useless. They become accessories to the very human rights violations they claim to oppose.

UN Agencies that fail to uphold the principals of the UN charter are worse than useless. They become tools to white wash war crimes.

Journalists who fail to uphold the necessity to report stories in a way that is not misleading are worse than useless. They become agents for the spread of lies instead of the reporting of the truth.

The systemic failure of the institutions we rely on goes beyond Gaza, but Gaza is a particularly stark case. It’s a good example of, “What starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews.” There is an urgent need for a restoration of ethical standards in journalism, a return to fairness in human rights organizations and a root and branch reform of the UN.

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Wishing everyone a good weekend and a peaceful Shabbat. May the soldiers of the IDF win a swift victory. May both Israel and the people of Gaza soon be free of the barbarous, totalitarian, genocidal Hamas regime and may peace be restored in the land of Israel.