Crimes Against Humanity

"Look at this ceiling. This is not just a regular tunnel. It's more convenient for long living. You have toilets and you have rooms that were built in order to contain people."

"The hospital is providing electricity. They're using the hospital infrastructure in order to provide this terror mechanism to stay alive and survive."

"This blast door allows them to prevent blasts by our air force, meaning it can maintain the preservation of parts of the tunnel."

"Above us, patients, wounded, doctors, all being a human shield for this tunnel system here at Shifa hospital."

"One direction [of a staircase] goes to the Shifa hospital. The other direction goes to different places where the terrorists can move using the safe haven, the human shield of the hospital, the human shield of these regular houses providing them shelter, held by civilians."

"And they choose it in the most barbaric and cynical way. They use it in a room that should have provided teaching for children. This is their choice. This is what we're fighting."

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman, Israel Defense Forces 

"The director of the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip was apprehended and transferred for ISA questioning following evidence showing that Shifa Hospital, under his direct management, served as a Hamas command and control centre."

"The Hamas terror tunnel network situated under the hospital also exploited electricity and resources taken from the hospital. In addition, Hamas stored numerous weapons inside the hospital and on the hospital grounds."

"In the hospital, under his [Abu Salmiya's] management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity. Findings of his involvement in terrorist activity will determine whether he will be subject to further ISA questioning."

Israel Defense Forces statement

These images released by the IDF on November 21, 2023, show the inside of a Hamas tunnel found under Gaza's Shifa Hospital. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

A video has been released by the Israeli military; its purpose is to visually guide viewers through a Hamas tunnel located under the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The amount of work represented by designing and building a network estimated to be between 250 and 500 kilometres in length is truly astonishing. Even the amenities built into the tunnel system are fairly shocking perhaps simply because it is all so unexpected. On a special guided tour, Rear Admiral Hagari takes journalists through some of the facilities underground.

At one point he reaches up to touch the drop ceiling tiles in one of the rooms off the main passage. "Look at this ceiling!" There are communications conduits and electrical outlets and Hagari explains that power emanates from the building above, the hospital. The tunnel hallways are constructed of concrete with arched ceilings to enable a man to walk through without having to bend his neck or crouch. Such arched tunnels are typical of many of the tunnels built throughout the past 15 years, he explains.

The bare essentials are augmented with handrails on stairs, kitchen countertops, tiles in kitchens and bathrooms, an air conditioning unit in one room. It was, in fact, the air conditioning mechanism on the outside surface that led the IDF investigators to locate the presence of the tunnels below surface. Interior doors are lightweight, but there is also a heavy steel blast door which can withstand invading Israeli troops.

 

Hamas terrorists bring a hostage into Shifa Hospital as seen on surveillance footage from October 7, 2023. (IDF)

 

The video, in fact, had been released on X; the guided tour for journalists enhances and explains what is seen in the video. Yet another video released on X draws viewers outside the hospital to a street located a block away from the hospital. There, an ordinary-appearing apartment hides a tunnel entranceway. Within the bombed-out structure appears what would have been a classroom with a chalkboard covered in English-language lessons.

The floor was lifted in a corner, revealing a short staircase leading to a glass door, and beyond it, a spiral staircase.The director of Al Shifa Hospital was arrested by Israeli forces last Thursday, and with him other several staff members of the hospital, while they were in the process of evacuating south, along the humanitarian corridor.  

A Hamas pickup truck is seen at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, as seen on surveillance footage from October 7, 2023. (IDF)

 

Following their invasion of southern Israel on October 7 -- where terrorists scoured Israeli towns, villages and kibbutzim, killing everyone they saw, mutilating people, torturing them before killing them, tossing bombs into homes, setting homes on fire that burned people's bodies to unidentifiable cores of blackened bones, gang-raping girls and women at the Nova Music Festival nearby the Be'ri Kibbutz, taking 240 infants, elderly, infirm, women, men and soldiers hostage into Gaza -- some of the hostages were taken to the hospital.

Cpl. Noa Marciano

A pathology report verified that one of the hostages, Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, had been murdered on the premises of the hospital.

"The pathology report states that Noa was injured by an IDF strike, but not in a life-threatening way, and this is contrary to the lies published by Hamas according to which Noa was killed by IDF strikes", explained Rear Admiral Hagari. "According to intelligence information, Noa was taken inside the walls of Shifa Hospital, where she was murdered by a Hamas terrorist."

 

"On November 2, Dr. Michael Ryan, director of WHO health emergencies program, said he knew what was going on ‘above ground’ at Shifa and was aware that the use of medical facilities for military purposes is forbidden according to international law. At the same time, he claimed he doubted that any terror activities were happening at Shifa."

"It is clear now that WHO has ignored the use of medical facilities as human shields and of Hamas’s refusal to allow civilians to evacuate from them… WHO’s failure to address these issues amounts to its contribution to the continuation of a conflict that is causing much suffering to so many."

Israeli Health Minister Uriel Busso and Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov.

An IDF infographic showing where the bodies of Israeli hostages Yehudit Weiss and Noa Marciano were found near the Shifa Hospital complex. (IDF)