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The argument over the Israeli accusation that Hamas used Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital as a shield for its military effort against the Israel Defense Forces has continued, even as the headlines have shifted to the Israel-Hamas prisoner swap. 

On Nov. 23, well-known author and online journalist Fred Kaplan weighed in forcefully in favor of the Israeli charge.

In a post on “X,” Kaplan, who writes a weekly column on defense and foreign affairs for Slatemagazine, posted a comment supporting the conclusion of an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz unequivocally supporting the IDF’s position.  

Kaplan’s post declared, “Clear evidence in Ha’aretz (which is often critical of Israel govt), that Hamas used tunnels under Al-Shifa hospital as a command center.”   

Clear evidence, in Ha’aretz (which is often critical of Israel govt), that Hamas used tunnels under Al-Shifa hospital as a command center. https://t.co/TYneI0JLXy

— Fred Kaplan (@fmkaplan) November 24, 2023

With that, Kaplan defended the IDF’s justification for closing down Gaza’s largest hospital while carrying out a war designed to destroy vast areas of the world’s most densely populated urban enclave. That hard-line view does not stand up to closer scrutiny.  

The Haaretz article in question fails to provide a convincing case for the Israeli government’s claim that Hamas was using the tunnel under al-Shifa Hospital as command center, and therefore that the hospital was being used as a ‘human shield.” Instead it merely shows that the article’s author, Janiv Kubovich, military correspondent for Haaretz, reflects the IDF view of the conflict on the Haaretz staff. 

Kubovich does not cite a single piece of evidence for Hamas’ culpability in using the hospital for military purposes that did not come directly from the military spokesman.

The reporter recommended by Kaplan with such high confidence relied completely on the most self-interested sources imaginable on the issue — the IDF’s leading propagandist. It is a source lacking in any independent judgment. 

The IDF’s position on Gaza’s hospitals, as articulated by its chief spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, has been extremely rigid and unyielding, in line with the Israeli policy aim of imposing maximum human costs not only on Hamas but on the entire civilian population of Gaza.

That policy requires that all the hospitals must be shut down, and the society be systematically deprived of food and fuel and put under military pressure. 

First Rantisi Hospital, Then al-Shifa 

When hospitals are used for military purposes, they can lose their protected status under international laws of war.  

A common denominator in IDF operations regarding hospitals in Gaza is to repeatedly release videos showing weapons either inside or next to a medical facility to justify shutting it down.

Before the IDF spokesman and his staff had even moved to al-Shifa, the IDF ordered Rantisi Hospital for Children closed after Hagari showed footage of an alleged Hamas weapons cache in the basement.  

After Rantisi Hospital it was al-Shifa’s turn. On Nov. 11, the IDF began a drumbeat of propaganda ahead of its takeover, calling al-Shifa “the main hub of Hamas activity.”  

The Pentagon, which has extremely close ties to the IDF, gave its wholehearted support to the accusation. 

To its credit, Haaretz picked up an AP report saying that Israel, “without providing evidence, has accused Hamas of concealing a command post inside and under the compound, allegations denied by Hamas and hospital staff.”

We now know, however, that this well-organized propaganda campaign against al-Shifa could not have been based on actual intelligence on what lay in the tunnel under the hospital.  No outsider could have possibly been inside the tunnel to report on what was to be found there, because the entrance to the tunnel had been sealed for an unknown period of time. 

Also, the IDF was recently found exaggerating evidence of a Hamas command center under the hospital. As Consortium News reported last week, the IDF on Oct. 27 provided a visual depiction of a vast Hamas presence in no fewer than five buildings of al-Shifa’s enormous campus, as well as what it called a “Hamas underground complex” below the main building.  Spokesman Hagari also claimed that there was an entrance to that underground floor from within the hospital building, further incriminating the management of al-Shifa. 

But that entire Israeli-U.S. propaganda line was discredited by the subsequent discovery by the IDF — never widely covered by the Western press — that a tunnel below the above-ground office of Hamas held what the IDF believed was the actual high command headquarters of Hamas, as reported by The Jerusalem Post on Nov. 14.  

IDF Knew Real Hamas HQ While Lying About al-Shifa  https://t.co/HP6mxRYFk7

While telling the world that Hamas HQ was under al-Shifa Hospital, the IDF had already found the actual command center 8.5km away, reports Gareth Porter.

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) November 23, 2023

The IDF spokesman then explained that the map he had previously presented to the media was meant only to be “conceptual” and, according to a Nov. 23 AP report, not to be taken “literally.” 

Evacuation Strategy 

By Nov. 12, the IDF strategy for emptying al-Shifa Hospital was already well underway. Haaretz reported on that date that the IDF had phoned the office of the hospital to demand it be completely evacuated.