politics

Gaza put Hamas in charge a s Gaza keeps Hamas in charge. Despite that, Hamas members do things such as:

• telling Gazan's that airstrike warnings people receive via SMS and phone calls are hoaxes, and that they should stay where they are;

• physically blocking escape routes;

• shooting people trying to flee;

• brainwashing or indoctrinating their close family and friends, and most loyal supporters, to huddle up in rooms with them in hopes that it will stop the Hamas member(s) from being killed in an airstrike by making the incidental casualties too great;

• building hundreds of miles of tunnels in an area only 25 miles wide--used exclusively for organizing and commanding Hamas activities, smuggling rockets, rocket launchers, other munitions and weapons, fighters, including suicide bombers, mass shooters, hostage takers, along with hostsges, so, in other words, building legitimate military targets where regular people are most concentrated--with shafts leading under and often into major population centers such as schools, hospitals, large apartment buildings, and markets;

• by traveling with large groups of civilians into areas designated for civilians, and then using those places for command and control purposes, such as Hamas members who have been killed in and near humanitarian corridors and camps;

• refusing to wear uniforms or distinguish themselves from the innocent people they hide behind/under;

• encouraging through promotion and literally cash rewards for a culture of "martyrdom," in which the only civil obligation more revered than adding to the civilian death toll is to actually kill someone from Israel;

• using the same neighborhoods, week after week, to launch rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israel, making those neighborhood a legit military target (see above about encouraging people to ignore air strike warnings).

This is Hamas's only real strategy at this point: to get as many civilians killed as possible. That's why the death toll is so high. This strategy often works but ofter October 7, when the tunnels were literally used to launch a mass shooting of over 1,000 innocent people, with hundreds more taken hostage, the tunnels are obviously fair targets when combined with a reasonable attempt to warn innocent people, such as the initial and subsequent repeated orders to evacuate Gaza City, and the millions and millions of phone calls and SMS messages sent warning people of incoming strikes.

Here's a story that has stuck with me, and note the bit about how he was up against Hamas posts on Facebook that told his neighbors not to leave their homes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079

This culture has robbed generations of ever knowing hope, and has killed countless people. The seemingly high number of civilian casualties is a feature of Hamas's strategy, so that they can then cry foul, and trick well meaning westerners into joining Hamas in their opposition to Israel and subsidize their terror through charity to the innocent public. If the people of Gaza actually had to bear the consequences of Hamas's leadership (starvation, dehydration, and abject poverty), they wouldn't stand for it, let alone support it. It's a miracle Hamas has failed to get killed more than 1 out of every 100 citizens, and it's because of Israeli restraint that that number holds, and it's why the IDF says it's the most ethical army in the world; any other army would have flattened such an opponent decades ago. That's how I see it.