IDF Closes Down Kamal Adwan Hospital Arrests 240 suspected Hamas jihadis who had been in the hospital. by Hugh Fitzgerald
https://www.frontpagemag.com/idf-closes-down-kamal-adwan-hospital/
The reports about the IDF’s operation to capture the several hundred Hamas combatants hiding out in Kamal Adwan Hospital — “the last hospital in northern Gaza,” is how it is now formulaically described — make the IDF out to be villainous, indifferent to the wellbeing of innocent patients and medical personnel. The truth is quite different.
The media will report this: “The IDF has attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last working hospital in northern Gaza. The patients and medical personnel have been forced to evacuate. The Israelis have set fire to the hospital. The IDF claims that Hamas fighters were inside the hospital, hiding both themselves and their weapons. Hamas flatly denies using the Kamal Adwan Hospital.” The real story can be found here: “IDF completes raid on north Gaza hospital, says some 240 terror suspects arrested,” by Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel, December 28, 2024:
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had completed an operation against Hamas at northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding area.
Some 240 suspected terror operatives were detained, including the medical center’s director and 15 terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023, onslaught on southern Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces, which last operated against Hamas at Kamal Adwan in October, said the operation was launched because the hospital had “once again become a key stronghold for terrorist organizations and continues to be used as a hideout for terrorist operatives.”
The army said the hospital was still used by Hamas “despite repeated calls to refrain from allowing [terror operatives] to exploit hospitals for military activities.”
The operation was led by the IDF’s 162nd Division. At the start of the raid, the IDF said troops of the 401st Armored Brigade surrounded the hospital, detained several terror operatives, and killed additional gunmen.
Members of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit then carried out “precise activities” inside the hospital, during which they located and captured weapons, including grenades, handguns, ammunition, and other military equipment, according to the IDF.
Over 240 members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others suspected of being members of terror groups were detained amid the operation, the military said.
The IDF said some of the terror operatives “tried to impersonate patients and medical staff, and some tried to escape in ambulances.”
Among those detained was the director of Kamal Adwan, Hussam Abu Safiya, who the IDF said is suspected of being a Hamas operative….
The IDF would not make such a serious charge about such a prominent Gazan figure as Abu Safiya, the director of a major hospital, without convincing evidence — including reports from Gazans who work for Israel and have been relied on to identify Hamas members and sympathizers, as well as the lists of Hamas members found in Gaza and seized by the IDF. Abu Safiya is no longer just “suspected” of being a Hamas member; he has now been formally charged by the IDF with being a member of the terror group.
Not only had the Kamal Adwan Hospital been harboring 240 Hamas members, but some of those Hamas members arrested at and around the hospital turned out to have taken part in the October 7 atrocities.
When Kamal Adwan Hospital, so recently replenished with supplies, was shut down, the IDF brought patients and medical personnel from the hospital to two other hospitals — Al-Shifa and the Indonesian Hospital, transferring to the Indonesian Hospital alone 5000 liters of fuel and two generators as well as medical supplies and equipment. The media have not mentioned this careful transfer of patients and medical personnel from Kamal Adwan to two other hospitals, making it seem that the IDF, in an act of supreme cruelty, had simply booted the patients out of Kamal Adwan and then left them to endure the cold, to deal as best they could with the freezing weather. Nor is there any mention in the media (outside of those in Israel) of the fuel, food, generators, medical equipment that the IDF has made sure to provide to the two hospitals now taking in the patients who were formerly in Kamal Adwan.
The 95 patients, caregivers, and medical personnel from Kamal Adwan were in addition to the 350 people — also patients, caregivers, and medical personnel — who had earlier streamed out of Kamal Adwan Hospital, having been warned by the IDF that an operation at the hospital would soon take place.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry had accused Israeli troops of setting fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the lab and surgery department, and said that 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital.
The IDF flatly denies that it had any connection to the single small fire — not a “series of fires” as Hamas would have the world believe — set in an abandoned building inside the hospital complex.
The [Hamas-run] ministry also said Israeli troops had entered the hospital, taken staff and patients outside and forced them to strip in winter weather….
If, indeed, any Gazans were “forced to strip,” they would not have been any of the legitimate “patients and staff,” but only those people who had hidden inside the hospital and who were believed to be terror operatives belonging to Hamas.
And how likely is it that such a story about Gazans being “forced to strip” by the IDF, and then to stand outside in winter weather, is true? For we have only Hamas’ word for it, and Hamas has a long record of telling lies.
At the time, the military released footage from the interrogation of a detained individual, who identified himself as a driver and paramedic for Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
He alleged in the footage that Hamas was using ambulances at the hospital to move operatives around.
This is a longstanding contention by the IDF, in explaining the reason for it sometimes targeting ambulances. It does so only when it has good reason to believe that both the drivers, and those inside the ambulances, are Hamas members being moved around, hoping that the IDF will refrain from attacking these “ambulances” that are being put to other uses. The IDF has become adept at monitoring, with drones, ambulances in Gaza, and even in filming those pretend “patients” as they vigorously jump into or out of the vehicles. Only when it has become convinced that those in the ambulances are clearly not patients does the IDF let loose with rifle fire and airstrikes.
At least 240 Hamas members who had been using Kamal Adwan Hospital as their hideout and base have now been captured by the IDF. So have vast quantities of weapons that had been hidden in the hospital by Hamas. Both the patients at Kamal Adwan, and those members of its staff who have been found not to be members of Hamas, have been moved from Kamal Adwan to Al-Shifa and the Indonesian Hospital. No patients or medical personnel were wounded or killed in the entire operation. This was one more IDF success in fighting the terror group Hamas that will be presented to the world by the hopelessly biased media as yet another example of a cruel assault by the IDF — this one on “the last major hospital still open in northern Gaza” — in order to make life still worse, we are encouraged to believe, for the inoffensive people of Gaza.
Comments are closed.
