It was a terrorist command center in a former school, stupid!
An infographic of terrorists eliminated in the strike on the Al-Taba’een school compound in Daraj Tuffah, Gaza, Aug. 10, 2024. Credit: IDF.
by Ruthie Blum
(JNS) — Following the strike on Aug. 10 in Gaza that eliminated 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, international media outlets promptly published the lie told to them by residents of the Strip about the number and identity of the casualties. Nothing novel about that.
Since the start of the war on Oct. 7, the press has cited Gaza Health Ministry figures — and the global bodies that gleefully buy them — to bolster false accusations of crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces against civilians in the Hamas-run enclave. Nor has factual evidence caused the claims to dissipate.
This is partly the fault of the IDF, which is often very late in refuting the rumors. Worse, its spokesman’s unit rarely seems to prepare in advance for the anti-Israel propaganda onslaught that always comes on the heels of military moves that provide photos of rubble — whether or not the images even depict the areas under discussion. Indeed, sometimes, the pictures are taken from other countries and conflicts.
What makes this failure of preemption especially disturbing is that IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari is always quick to announce the launch of investigations relating to the potentially inappropriate behavior of soldiers in and beyond the battlefield. The phenomenon is part of Israel’s obsession with having the “most moral,” rather than fiercest, army in the world.
Since Israel’s ethics are intact, it shouldn’t be necessary to prove it at every juncture, especially not to those who wish it ill or never give it the benefit of the doubt. Still, playing catch-up with sensationalist reports is both exhausting and ultimately pointless.
After all, once a piece of juicy slander is out there, it’s hard to reverse its damage. The current deception is a perfect case in point.
Take CNN’s headline on the incident, for example, which reads: “Israeli strike on mosque and school in Gaza kills scores, sparking international outrage.”
Then there’s the post on X by chief European Union Israel-basher Josep Borrell, who hastened to write: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, w/ reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”
The predictable list goes on.
But here’s what actually happened. The IDF and Israel Security Agency carried out a pinpoint attack on a Hamas command-and-control center that was embedded in a mosque inside a school compound. As Hagari’s office explained, albeit with customary tardiness, “The strike was carried out using three precise munitions, which… cannot cause the amount of damage that is being reported by the Hamas-run Government Information Office in Gaza.”
Furthermore, it added, “no severe damage was caused to the compound where the terrorists were situated. Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of a small warhead, aerial surveillance and intelligence.”
That’s not all. It turns out that men, women and children were located on different floors of the building in question, and Israel’s security forces targeted and hit only the level on which the terrorists were located. It’s the kind of feat for which the IDF continues to arouse awe among urban-combat experts.
By now, anyone who denies that Hamas purposely ensconces its warriors in schools, mosques and hospitals, using the people it controls as human shields, is either sympathetic to the terrorists’ goal of annihilating the Jewish state or serves as a fellow traveler on that pernicious journey.
All other arguments about what’s going on in Gaza constitute ill-intentioned background noise that should be ignored.
Ruthie Blum, a former adviser at the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is an award-winning columnist and a senior contributing editor at JNS. She is also co-host, with Ambassador Mark Regev, of the JNS-TV podcast “Israel Undiplomatic.” She writes and lectures on Israeli politics, culture and U.S.-Israel relations. Originally from New York City, she moved to Israel in 1977 and is based in Tel Aviv. She is a regular guest on TV and radio, appearing on Newsmax, LiveNOW from Fox, i24News, ILTV, WION, NTD TV, TheDove TV, Scripps TV, Main Street Radio, Joe Paggs, Rob Schilling News Radio and others.
