Another reporter confirms that Hamas uses human shields in Gaza’s civilian population, intentionally putting Palestinian lives in jeopardy.

Taghreed El-Khodary’s candid interviews of wounded Palestinians and their families in the emergency room at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital is revealing for its candor.

Dr. Awni al-Jaru, 37, a surgeon at the hospital, rushed in from his home here, dressed in his scrubs. But he came not to work. His head was bleeding, and his daughter’s jaw was broken.

He said Hamas militants next to his apartment building had fired mortar and rocket rounds. Israel fired back with force, and his apartment was hit. His wife, Albina, originally from Ukraine, and his 1-year-old son were killed.

A young Hamas terrorist proudly tells the New York Times reporter that “we run into houses to get away” from the Israeli military.

“Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.

He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.


“Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”

A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.

“Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.

“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

With Israel’s current military operation in Gaza has generated renewed interest in Hamas’ strategy of using human shields as a central tool in the terrorist organizations strategy.

Israel’s Defense Force is targeting Hamas weapons caches to reduce the number of long-range missiles, rockets, munitions, and arms. On a practical level, however, Hamas leaders and terrorist fighters deliberately use human shields to hide themselves and their arms in mosques, schools, and crowded residential areas.

But Hamas’ calculated strategy of putting Palestinian civilians in harms way is anything but new. It is an core part of the group’s terror machine.

Just read and watch to Hamas MP Fathi Hammad’s proud February 2008 confession in Gaza on Al AqsaTV, captured by the MEMRI TV Project:

The enemies of Allah do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its (methods) of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.”

Listening to his exhortation is like watching Hitler’s fanaticism.

There is a disturbing parallel between Hamas’ and the Nazi’s shared hatred of, and desire to eliminate, the Jewish people.

In a show of just how close Iran’s military, philosophical, and financial support for Hamas is, on Friday, ”Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed [today] to keep supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas until the “collapse of Israel.”


Iran’s record of providing support to Hamas to help it carry out terrorist attacks against Israel has been longstanding.

Earlier this spring, Iran promised Hamas advanced missiles, weapons systems, and financial support when the terrorist group’s head Khaled Meshaal went to Tehran to meet with Ahmedinejad.

The New York Times reported last August that:

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them.

On March 9, 2008, the The Sunday Times reported that a senior Hamas commander boasted that 300 of the organization’s “best brains” were secretly sent to Iran for military training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard:

“Iran is our mother,” the commander said. “She gives us information, military supplies and financial support.”

The Sunday Times report said that since 2005, at least seven (7) separate groups of Hamas fighters trained with Iranian instructors so that they could be snipers, make explosives out of everday items, and make deadlier rockets to use in terrorist attacks against Israel.

In an all too familiar Gaza episode, masked Hamas gunmen shot and paraded their way through the streets of Gaza to show inhabitants that they are truly street thugs.


The BBC interviewed one Fatah supporter in Gaza, Ahmed Abul Nasser, who described how Hamas sent “maybe 20 gunmen” to take him from his home while his family watched. He says he was released only after signing a boilerplate form promising to not associate himself with Fatah and “respect the Hamas government.”

Many other Fatah supporters that Hamas rounded up were beaten, Nasser said.