Israel Built The Hamas Command Centers Under Gazan Hospitals
A former Israeli Prime Minister stuns CNN’s Christiane Amanpour with the admission.
Israel Built The Hamas: In an interview with CNN veteran journalist Christiane Amanpour, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak let slip a blockbuster revelation, namely that the Hamas “command center” directly under Al Shifa hospital, was built years ago by the Israeli military. Amanpour was so taken aback that she said, “OK. Alright. Well, that’s sort of thrown me a little bit.”
Here was the exact exchange:
Amanpour: “What is your view of whether your government, your military has done a good enough job of proving their claim there was a major command centre and bunker underneath Al Shifa [Hospital]?
Ehud Barak: It’s already known for many years that they have the bunkers that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa, or were used as a command post of the Hamas, and a kind of juncture of several tunnels, part of the system.
[Right away, Barak seems here to realize he just revealed too much, and tries to back up]:
I don’t know to say to what extent it is a major, it is probably not the only kind of command post. Several others are under other hospitals or in other sensitive places [even worse]. But it’s for sure had been used by Hamas even during this conflict.
Amanpour: Well, when you said it was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak?
Barak: No. Some, you know, decades ago, we were running the place [Gaza]. So we held them. It was decades ago, probably five full decades ago, that we helped them to build these bunkers to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound.
Now he’s really winging it, claiming these rustic holes that the IDF ostentatiously showed to the press, were built to give more storage to the hospital! And that they built this vast tunnel system in coordination with the Palestinians, no less!
No, they were built as military facilities for the sole benefit of the Israeli forces, as this rare map, courtesy of the IDF themselves, shows in detail (scroll down the article). Here’s another article that mentions that the Al Shifa tunnel opens up at a kindergarten, probably an example of what Barak means by “other sensitive places.”
The former PM’s admission may have been deliberate, born of an attempt to embarrass the current government which, to his credit, he understands is way too out in right field. But nevertheless, it opens up a whole world of questions about why we’ve been so misled about this for so long. Among them are, if these tunnels were started by Israel and merely perhaps extended by Hamas, how did the latter get earth-removing machinery into the Strip past the tight Israeli military blockade? Were they all dug by hand and shovels, right in the midst of “the most surveilled place on earth?” Does this picture look like something Hamas could have built with nothing but primitive equipment?
And we’re just getting started.
Why The Genocide Charge
Israel Built The Hamas: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the start of the invasion.
You may have recalled the sensational news reports around Nov. 15 of how the IDF “discovered” this underground facility beneath the hospital. Much ado was made of displaying recovered weapons, “including automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets.”[i] The display was designed to justify the bombing of everything, including presumably hospitals, in order to “kill the terrorists.”
And not just the hospitals. As renown intellectual and Presbyterian minister Chris Hedges puts it in this chilling address about this most recent beat down, the worst yet:
“Nothing is off limits. Hospitals, ambulances, mosques, churches, homes, apartment blocks, refugee camps, schools, universities, media offices, sewer systems, telecommunications, infrastructure, water treatment plants, libraries, wheat mills, markets, entire neighborhoods. Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure, to make Gaza a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life.”
Indeed, this has been the long-term objective Israel has had, a land for Jews only, far from what Jesus the Messiah will rebuild when He comes back. According to Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, ca 2006, even before Hamas took over:
“Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist…Severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer, and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.”
The problem this “more-right-wing-than-ever” Israeli government has, is that now their own population thinks they’re not being severe enough on the Gazans! In truth, according to a recent poll, a full 60% of the Israeli Jewish population thinks the bombing/strangulation campaign has not been brutal enough! As of December 14 as I write, nearly 19,000 Gazans have been killed including nearly 8000 children, with another 7000 children facing death by starvation. All this apocalyptic-level brutality by Israel is in response to 1200 Israelis killed on October 7, about 30% of them military and police.
Questions, Questions
Israel Built The Hamas: Ehud Barak’s presumed slip up raises a number of questions. One of them is, Why in the world would the Israelis turn such a valuable military asset over to Palestinian control if the latter could use it against them at some point in the future? One possible answer is exactly what we see happening right now—an excuse for the wholesale destruction of Palestinian life to the point where the territory is uninhabitable.
Another of course is, Why build command center hubs underneath hospitals “and other sensitive places,” no less? Perhaps because if they can wear down the world into attacking hospitals, then as Hedges puts it, there’s nothing off limits. A lot of Israel’s strategy towards the world, just like their buddy Donald Trump, is to de-sensitize everyone to the ideals we once adhered to.
And yet another question: Were such sites chosen so they could accuse some future Gazan government of using their own people as “human shields,” despite the fact that Israel uses Palestinians, even children, in exactly the same way?
The Plot Thickens
Israel Built The Hamas: In my first comments about the Oct. 7 attack, I talked about why the world is getting increasingly more wary of falling for any Israeli narrative when a crisis breaks out, since subsequent details often paint a very different picture. Well, here they come.
-We saw that Egypt strenuously warned Israel about a huge, impending Hamas attack in the weeks leading up to it. In addition, even the US warned them, based on intelligence they had gotten from Israel itself!
-Since then, the New York Times has broken stories about how Israel knew about Hamas’ plans in detail, a year before, but considered them “incapable of pulling something that big off.” Or at least, that’s their excuse.
-Then the Times of Israel came out with a blockbuster: “Surveillance soldiers warned of Hamas activity on Gaza border for months before Oct. 7”:
“…according to the accounts of two surveillance soldiers stationed on a base in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the signs of what was to come on October 7 were never taken seriously… The Hamas terrorists would train at the border fence nonstop, Desiatnik told Kan. At first, it was once a week, then once a day, and then nearly constantly…
We sat on shifts and saw the convoy of vans. We saw the training, people shooting and rolling, practicing taking over a tank. The training went from once a week to twice a week, from every day to several times a day,” she told Channel 12.
“We saw patrols along the border, people with cameras and binoculars. It happened 300 meters from the fence. There were a lot of disturbances, people went down to the fence and detonated an outrageous amount of explosives, the amount of explosives was crazy.”[ii]
-Let’s add another log to this fire, a Dec. 10 New York Times article, “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas,” revealing that Israel has been bribing Hamas leaders for a long time:
“Allowing the payments — billions of dollars over roughly a decade — was a gamble by Mr. Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching point of the Oct. 7 attacks, and keep Hamas focused on governing, not fighting.”
By 2018, Israeli governments were delivering about $30 million cash in suitcases into Gaza via a Qatari diplomat, pursuing a policy of “containment, not confrontation.” A retired Israeli general puts it more bluntly however:
“One effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” he said in an interview. The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to disengage from peace talks, Mr. Brom said, adding that he can say, “I have no partner.”
The article goes on to say, “Mr. Netanyahu did not articulate this strategy publicly, but some on the Israeli political right had no such hesitation. Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament. “The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”
This need for an extremist foil to justify your own extremism has long been a part of Netanyahu’s playbook especially.
-Finally, how is it that Hamas’ top leaders are billionaires, each worth between 3 and 5 billion dollars, and all live in Qatar!? It’s all enough to make you wonder if Hamas is just Kabuki Theater, its leadership in a kind of unspoken mutual scam with Israel, and playing a bugi-man enemy that serves as a convenient excuse for Israel to attack the Gazan people whom Hamas leadership indeed use as pawns in a chess game.
In this way Hamas plays a similar role to ISIS which was created as a faux enemy that is actually an asset. Hamas however, is a real enemy, and the two use each other in a never-ending game of chess with both their populations out in front as the pawns.[iii] Israel’s long-term objective is to eradicate the Gazans as a people, and never having to deal with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in any kind of a good faith way.
A Whole Lot Of Man-Splainin’
Israel Built The Hamas: I mean, think of all the lame excuse-making whenever anyone ever voices any criticism of Israel’s policies or skepticism of their motives.
-“You can’t give any humanitarian relief to the [hapless] Gazan people, because Hamas will just take the food [fuel, water, whatever] and sell it or use it for their military activities.” And here yet Israel has been sending them billions over the years to have them “make quiet” so Israel can attend to the important work of undermining Iranian-Western relations[iv] and finding more ways to strangle the people of the West Bank. When they do it it’s OK. When the UN does it, it’s “liberal naivete,” and “supporting the terrorists.”
-They build tunnels under “sensitive locations” like hospitals, then give up Gaza to a civil war between Hamas and Fatah in 2005. You get the impression that conditioning the world to accept the wholesale bombing of civilians was at least a failsafe thought in the back of their minds at the time. Otherwise, why would they leave a future Gazan government such a strategic asset? Or why would they bother to build them in the first place?
-Or how about all the hysteria after Oct. 7 that at least the PA recognizes Israel’s “right to exist” (not that it buys them any better treatment), while Hamas wants to destroy Israel and “kill all the Jews”? Yet Israel has propped up these “vile anti-Semites” and their radical Islamist agenda almost from their beginning, because they saw them as a rival to Fatah and a way to divide and conquer.
Because this is the bottom line: all this endless double-talk out of the mouth of Netanyahu and his associates, all this manipulation and wizardry is designed to do one thing—play rope-a-dope with the world until the Palestinian people are either eradicated or driven to the ends of the earth, just like Israel was 2000 years ago. The holy land will be for Jews and Jews only, and it’s been their goal from the beginning.
Is there any honor to be found in all this? Enough honor to justifying rewarding such behavior with $3.8 billion a year in US funding and another $14 billon in supplementals, far and away the most generous foreign aid to any nation?
Israel Splains More
Israel Built The Hamas:
At any moment, without warning, at any time of the day or night [i.e., even during “peace time”], any apartment building in the densely populated Gaza Strip can be struck by an Israeli bomb or missile. Some of the stricken buildings simply collapse into layers of concrete pancakes, the dead and the living alike entombed in the shattered ruins. Often, rescuers shouting “hadan sami’ana?” (“can anyone hear us?”) hear calls for help from survivors deep in the rubble, but without heavy lifting equipment all they can do is helplessly scrabble at the concrete slabs with crowbars or their bare hands, hoping against hope to pry open gaps wide enough to get survivors or the injured out. Some buildings are struck with such heavy bombs that the ensuing fireballs shower body parts and sometimes whole charred bodies—usually, because of their small size, those of children—over surrounding neighborhoods.
-Saree Makdisi[v]
The Oslo two-state solution was never really wanted by Israel. Itzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995 for his efforts to pursue one, was undermined by the Israeli right, then led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Within eight months, Netanyahu ascended to the Prime Ministership and has dominated the office ever since. Leah Rabin, the former PM’s widow, blames Netanyahu’s non-cooperation with Shin Bet trying to tamp down on assassination talk at the time, for her husband’s death.
But Israel had a dilemma. Palestinian birth rates convinced them a one-state solution would put them out of control in a democracy, yet a Palestinian state would be too much a security risk.
This is how Hamas plays the role of such a convenient foil to Israel’s own extremism. While flogging Hamas’ claim of the land from the sea to the [Jordan] river, Israel pursues what they’ve been trying to hide since 1948 anyway, and that’s an even bigger all-Jewish state from the sea to the Euphrates.
But double-talking the world out of coming to this plain and obvious conclusion while pursuing de facto genocide of the Palestinians is becoming harder and harder for them to hide. Stirring up extremism on either side in this debate works to their favor. The more hotheads on university campuses scream for the killing of the Jews, desecration of Jewish symbols and the like, the more they can justify their own suppression of other “points of view” and imperial ambitions.
But this game is already falling apart. We know, because “we’ve read the back of the Book,” which depicts a huge showdown called the Battle of Armageddon taking place right in Israel’s backyard. It will be a slaughter of much of the world (Jer 25:29-33), and Israel will get their fair share (Zech 14:2).
The job of Christians is to warn Israel to not “go there.” From the beginning they’ve violated the terms of their agreement with the UN in 1948 and have never shown good faith. All the UN votes against them because of their violation of international law, not because everyone except Americans, are “anti-Semitic.” Certainly they will never get the favor of God with these kinds of tactics.
Nor are we Christians to “go there” ourselves, but to do all we can to avoid bringing the wrath of God down upon the world. But that’s where the emerging Whore of Babylon America riding Donald Trump seems hell-bent on going (Rev 17:3). It’s time to jump off.
Notes: Israel Built The Hamas
[i] Reuters, “Hamas command centre, weapons found at Gaza hospital, Israeli military says.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-raids-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-2023-11-15/
They include four about unmistakeable clues regarding the Antichrist—”The Little Horn With The Big Mouth,” “The Composite Beast Clue,” “Donald Trump’s War On Truth,” and “A King Of Fierce Countenance.”
[ii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveillance-soldiers-warned-of-hamas-activity-on-gaza-border-for-months-before-oct-7/
[iii] It may explain why Israel is trying so desperately lately to conflate Hamas and ISIS as the same thing. But Hamas is a local movement with no global ambitions, while ISIS pretends to be a “global caliphate” enterprise Israel uses to scare the world into compliance with their manipulations. https://donclasenseriousguy.com/israels-love-for-the-imposter/
[iv] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-recording-netanyahu-boasts-israel-convinced-trump-to-quit-iran-nuclear-deal/ The West’s logic in the Iranian deal was that it would bring Iran into the orbit of the “international community” while empowering moderates there in their battle with the Shiite Islamists. Trump at Netanyahu’s prodding, broke the deal, strengthening the hold of the Iranian Islamists because Bibi needed an extremist foil to keep up his insane “strategy of tension” to justify Israel’s own imperial ambitions. As professor James Petras once put it, Netanyahu is a bar room brawler who thinks he’s a statesman. Or as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said, “Israel is prepared to fight the Iranians to the last American.”
[v] https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/no-human-being-can-exist/
