Fact-Check: Is Israel Bombing Palestinian Mosques and Schools?
It’s easily the most damaging and hurtful claim made against Israel in its response to the Hamas attacks launched over the weekend — that the Israel Defense Forces have been bombing Palestinian schools and mosques.
If you’ve been following the conflict on social media since it began on Saturday, you’ve likely seen posts featuring footage like this, framed as if Israel were indiscriminately bombing civilian targets in Gaza:
While Palestinian fighters were given strict orders to respect churches and monasteries, Israel responded to the attacks by bombing a Mosque in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/ob0TlKcY7X
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) October 8, 2023
LATEST: Israel warplanes bombing the Islamic University in Gaza, Palestine #Israel #Palestine #Hamas #طوفان_الأقصى #IsraelPalestineWar #طوفان_القدس #IsraelUnderAttack #GazaUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/W7cXTI4r4w
— Hareem Shah (@_Hareem_Shah) October 9, 2023
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) October 9, 2023
But are these claims factual?
FACT-CHECK: Is Israel targeting mosques, schools and other civilian infrastructure as video on social media seems to suggest?
CONCLUSION: Missing important context.
As it turns out, these videos are missing critical perspective — because, while Israeli forces may be bombing mosques, schools and marketplaces, they aren’t just being used mosques, schools and marketplaces.
First, it’s important to understand that Hamas is both a terrorist organization and the governing authority in charge of the Gaza Strip. This gives it enormous latitude in the tactics it uses, which differ significantly from how most nation-states at war would operate.
Take the mosque attack in the first post, for instance.
The IDF was quick to point out that, while the building was a house of worship, “Hamas uses mosques to store weapons, hide its terrorists and even fire rockets” and that it “cynically uses these mosques, knowing that the IDF does all in its power to avoid hitting such infrastructures.”
🔻00:35 am: IDF aircraft struck two operational situation rooms, located inside mosques, used by Hamas in Gaza. 3/4
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 8, 2023
While holy sites are protected under the Geneva Convention, the IDF noted, they lose that protection once they become instruments of war.
“Military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage,” the Geneva Convention reads.
“So why does Hamas use mosques as weapon warehouses? To address this question, one should first be aware of Hamas’ main strategic element — exploitation of the Palestinian civilian population as human shields for its operations and infrastructure,” the IDF said, calling it an “ages-old Hamas tactic.”
“In the most recent armed conflict between Israeli and Gaza, Operation Cast Lead in 2009, one can clearly see that Hamas militants were using a mosque as a weapons depot and an area of operation,” the IDF said, sharing a YouTube video of the cache of weapons found there:
Nor is it just the IDF confirming this, either; media reports have also noted Hamas’ sinister tactic of using civilian infrastructure to further its terrorist operations.
In a 2014 article bluntly titled, “Why Hamas stores its weapons inside hospitals, mosques and schools,” The Washington Post’s Terrence McCoy said that strikes against these structures were “one of the most troublesome facts of the Gaza Strip conflict.”
“According to longtime Middle East analyst Matthew Levitt, Hamas has long planted weapons in areas inhabited by vulnerable residents,” McCoy wrote.
“‘It happens in schools,’ [Levitt] wrote in Middle East Quarterly. ‘Hamas has buried caches of arms and explosives under its own kindergarten playgrounds,’ referencing a 2001 State Department report that said a Hamas leader was arrested after ‘additional explosives in a Gaza kindergarten’ were discovered.”
McCoy cited a Washington Institute for Near East Policy report stating that Hamas had planned on the “[integral] use of civilians and civilian facilities as cover for its military activity; schools, mosques, hospitals, and civilian housing became weapons storage facilities, Hamas headquarters, and fighting positions.”
“The outcome of this practice is indisputably devastating — both in Palestinian lives lost and Israel’s standing in the international community,” McCoy wrote.
“As images of death and tragedy clog news outlets, international condemnation of Israel mounts. Which, according to the Israeli military, is exactly what it predicted would happen.”
That was nearly a decade ago — and the playbook remains the same.
For its part, Hamas admitted it used schools and hospitals as rocket launch sites during the 2014 clashes but chalked it up to a “mistake,” according to The Associated Press.
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, argued that they were left with no choice but to use areas in close proximity to schools and hospitals during the war — and insisted that civilian deaths were Israel’s fault.
“The Israelis kept saying rockets were fired from schools or hospitals when in fact they were fired 200 or 300 [yards] away. Still, there were some mistakes made and they were quickly dealt with,” Hamad said.
If what the IDF is saying is true, the same “mistakes” are being repeated nine years later.
The fact is that, disturbing though these images may be, they lack a wider context of how Hamas views civilians and the infrastructure they need to survive — as collateral damage at best, and more realistically as human shields.
The evidence has been sitting in front of our faces for years. Yet, once again, social media posts showing destruction are circulating in an attempt to turn Israel into the pariah in this conflict.
It is gruesome, ugly and regrettable. It is also wholly avoidable — if, of course, Hamas wishes to avoid it.
What those posting this footage won’t tell you is that, far from looking to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas is encouraging them as a propaganda tool.
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