Has Hamas’s exploitation of sacred spaces changed world opinion? - analysis

The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry responded to Tuesday’s daring Shin Bet raid on the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin and the killing of three terrorists allegedly planning an October 7-style attack by calling on the UN General Assembly and global NGOs to protect medical treatment centers.

“This crime comes after dozens of crimes committed by the occupation forces against treatment centers and crews. International law provides general and special protection for civilian sites, including hospitals,” the ministry said in a statement.

The hand-wringing by the usual band of Israel bashers about how the Jewish state violates even the sacred space of hospitals to gun down Palestinians did not take long to follow.

It is doubtful, however, that these claims will get the same reception around the world that they would have received before Hamas’ savage massacre on Simchat Torah. Check that: those convinced already that Israel is the embodiment of evil will only have their predetermined opinions reinforced.

But how about everyone else? How about fair-minded, reasonable people around the globe? Will they take Palestinian claims at face value that hospitals in Jenin, Khan Yunis, and Gaza City are hospitals in the mold of Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, institutions dedicated to curing disease and healing the sick?

Or have they come to realize – especially following what was unveiled at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City – that these medical treatment centers often serve a dual purpose, and that in addition to housing doctors and serving patients, when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are involved they also serve as headquarters for terrorists, hiding places for gunmen, storage places for arms, and covers for entrances to terrorist tunnels built – obviously with the hospital’s knowledge – under their floors?

Sacred spaces are no place for terrorists

Hospitals should be sacred spaces, inviolate. So should mosques, nursery schools, and universities. For that matter, members of the press should be just that – members of the media – not drone operators for terrorist groups moonlighting as video reporters. In addition, ambulances should have one role: ferrying the ill to hospitals, not moving terrorists from one place to another.

The West rightly believes hospitals, universities, mosques, and ambulances should be protected spaces. It believes medical workers and journalists should be protected in wartime.

Part of the West also gullibly seems to believe that terrorist organizations play by the same rules. This part of the world also likes to think that terrorists would not want to endanger genuine reporters by dressing up as journalists in a vest that reads “press,” that they would not want to imperil the sick by using hospitals as hideouts or areas from which to launch rocket attacks; that they would not want to jeopardize humanitarian aid by using aid workers to help carry out terrorist crimes.

Yet that is precisely what terrorists do.

Israelis have realized this for years. The rest of the world is beginning to realize it as well, evidenced by this week’s outrage in the West and the temporary halt in funding by more than a dozen countries of UNRWA because of reports some of its workers participated in the October 7 atrocities, and that one of every 10 of UNRWA’s 13,000 workers is affiliated with a terrorist organization.

Hamas abuses and misuses institutions that it knows the West holds dear – hospitals, universities, mosques, and aid agencies – knowing that if Israel acts against them, it is Israel that will face international opprobrium.

And, often, that is precisely what happens. Here’s just one example, from the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to housing Balakrishnan Rajagopal, taking Israel to task on X recently for blowing up university buildings in Gaza: “In Gaza, a new international crime – educaricide or the killing of learning – needs to be added to the list of crimes under international law when schools and universities are systematically destroyed, resulting in generational damage to societies.”

Hamas banks on people like Rajagopal. In Rajagopal’s telling, since universities in the West are esteemed and hallowed institutions of higher education and the pursuit of knowledge, that, too, must be the same in Gaza.

So if Israel blows up university buildings, it is not because those buildings or campuses were being used to train Hamas operatives or develop and produce weapons, which the IDF explains, but rather part of a nefarious Israeli plan to commit “educaricide.” That’s right, genocide is no longer enough of an epithet to hurl at Israel, now new atrocities are being invented to pin on the Jewish state.

Those Palestinian propagandists circulating the video of the undercover Israeli security personnel disguised as doctors, patients, and even women carrying a baby in the Ibn Sina Hospital are expecting people watching that video to be aghast and ask how dare Israel violate a hospital in such a manner.And, of course, there will be myriads – those whose minds are already poisoned against Israel – who will do just that.

But others will look at that CCTV footage and ask: Why is a hospital shielding and hiding terrorists? Why is a hospital acting as a safe refuge for terrorists? Those are the same people who are increasingly asking why a UN aid organization funded by taxpayers around the world employs terrorists.

October 7 revealed to the world what Israel has known all along: that Hamas is a bloodthirsty, savage organization that relishes in murder. Slowly, part of the world is also coming to recognize something else that Israelis have known for some time: that this organization will use all that is holy to carry out its atrocities.