Yesterday, a Finnish reporter confirmed rockets were being fired by Hamas next to the Al-Shifa Hospital. “Right in the back parking lot of Al Shifa Hospital, a rocket was launched, two o’clock in the morning,” she said. “Really, it happened right in the area, the sound of it was really loud,” she said. “It’s true that rockets are launched here from the Gazan side into Israel.”
Many foreign journalists have reported that Hamas was using the hospital as a headquarters, but typically their reports were withdrawn, deleted on social media or actually taken off their newspaper websites because of fears for their safety and Hamas retribution.
Perhaps the time has come for the UN to conduct inspections of this and other Gaza hospitals. Another idea would be to bring in Doctors Without Borders, a Nobel Prize winning organization whose charter states that it speaks out when hospitals are threatened. In the case of Al-Shifa, the Hamas is creating a threat to the hospital.
When [Doctors Without Borders] witnesses extreme acts of violence against individuals or groups, the organization may speak out publicly. We may seek to bring attention to extreme need and unacceptable suffering when access to lifesaving medical care is hindered, when medical facilities come under threat, when crises are neglected, or when the provision of aid is inadequate or abused.
The organization issued a strong condemnation, which seemed to point a finger at Israel, making no mention of the hospital's alleged links to terrorist activities.
Meanwhile Wall Street Journal reporter Tamer El-Ghobashy posted a photo from the scene and tweeted that the “low level damage suggests Hamas misfire.” El-Ghobashy deleted and reposted the photo, this time with the message, “Unclear what the origin of the projectile is.”
Once it was established that Israel was not responsible, the media seemed to lose interest in the incident.
One day later a journalist reporting from the hospital is startled as a rocket is launched.
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