U.N. accused of downplaying Hamas terrorists' use of Gaza hospitals as new report ignores important details

"During the Israel Defense Forces’ military offensive in northern Gaza to strike at ‘the heart of Hamas,’ starkly different narratives between the IDF and the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health have led to variable reporting on the conflict at large. Particularly divisive are recent reports on Hamas’ use of hospitals.

On Nov. 3, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees the humanitarian-civil effort in Gaza, reported that during its attempts to evacuate patients and staff from Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda hospitals in northern Gaza, terrorists ‘detonated an explosive device only a few hundred meters away from the [Kamal Adwan] hospital.’ While the convoy was spared injuries, COGAT reported that six children in the hospital were injured.

Hamas' Gaza Ministry of Health failed to mention the explosive device. An IDF spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the COGAT Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), with heads of the World Health Organization, discovered that the device had been ‘planted by the terrorist organizations in Gaza.’...

The use of Kamal Adwan Hospital by Hamas has been previously confirmed, including by Ahmad Kahlot, a high-ranking Hamas member and former director of the hospital. In December 2023, Kahlot admitted that Kamal Adwan Hospital was used ‘to hide high-ranking military activists,’ who know they ‘won’t be targeted when they are in the hospital.’ The hospital, he said, contained housing for the terrorists as well as ‘areas for interrogations, internal and special security.’...

A September 2024 report from the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory purports to detail Israel’s treatment of Gazan medical facilities and staff. It does not mention Hamas’ presence in Kamal Adwan Hospital.

This omission from commission chair Navi Pillay is the tip of a larger iceberg for Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of the Touro University Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Bayefsky told Fox News Digital that Pillay’s commission ‘is a professional hit job, having nothing to do with facts or law.’ She added that Pillay’s latest report ‘traffics in blood libels.’

The Commission states that it ‘interviewed senior medical personnel at hospitals and they denied that there was any military activity, emphasizing that the hospitals’ only role was to treat patients.’ In the instance of the tunnel and command center below Al-Shifa hospital, the commission ‘confirmed the presence of a tunnel and shaft’ but could ‘not verify that they were used for military purposes.’

Bayefsky noted that Israel has ‘publicly exposed, with photographic and video evidence, the use of hospitals by Hamas for military purposes,’ including underground tunnels ‘that utilized the power sources and served as command centers and weapons depots; weapons and equipment on hospital floors alongside patient wards; weapons hidden in incubators; and the use of hospitals as operational facilities to direct military activity.’

In its report, the commission also described how ‘two [Israeli] hostages had been held in [Gazan] hospitals and received medical treatment for their wounds.’ What the commission failed to mention, according to Bayefsky, is that the hostages’ ‘treatment’ involved ‘doctors pouring chlorine and vinegar onto hostage Maya Regev's dangling foot in order to cause pain,’ or cutting ‘into her without pain relievers.’ They also fail to address how ‘Gazan doctors pulled a bullet from hostage Itay Regev's leg without using anesthesia while Hamas members spat on him, slapped him and threatened to kill him if he screamed.’..."