Hamas war crimes exposed

Washington Free Beacon:

A declassified intelligence report released by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) this week showed Hamas terrorists have been firing rockets at Israel from heavily populated civilian areas, including churches, United Nations facilities, Red Cross stations, hospitals, schools, children’s playgrounds, and a number of other areas.

The report, which was declassified by the IDF earlier this week, includes previously unreleased statistics and military surveillance videos showing Hamas launching missiles from many of these civilian locations, which constitutes a war crime.

New evidence is presented that Hamas used several United Nations schools run by the Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) as a base from which to fire rockets and mortars.

The revelation is likely to prompt further scrutiny of UNRWA’s activities during the most recent conflict, including the discovery of multiple rocket stashes that were later returned by UNRWA to Hamas.

At least 1,600 of the 3,600 rockets fired since July 8 at Israel by Hamas originated from civilian strongholds, according to the declassified report.

This included: Three rockets fired from churches, four from Red Cross stations, 10 from amusement parks, 20 from first aid stations, 30 from U.N. facilities, 41 from hospitals, 50 from children’s playgrounds, 85 from medial clinics, 248 from schools, 331 from mosques, and 818 from areas such as graveyards and power plants.
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While this is helpful in understanding the destruction in Gaza, Israel needs to do a better job of managing its message during the fighting.  The US also needs to be more aggressive in dealing with the UN complicity in helping Hamas with its war effort.  We should no longer donate money for their operations in Gaza as long as they are allowing their facilities to be used for war crimes.