Andrew Bolt: Hamas wilfully exposes its citizens to likely death

Hamas just wants Israel dead. And it will sacrifice its women and children if that gets Western journalists on its side.

You don’t have to know all the history to understand this war on Israel.

You just need to know one shocking fact: there are no bomb shelters in Gaza.

A Palestinian activist reminded us of this on Sky News this week, hoping to paint Israel as viciously callous in bombing this Palestinian enclave.

Instead, he told us all we need to know about the Hamas terrorist group that runs Gaza, and how it plays naive Western journalists like a fiddle.

Remember this fact whenever journalists point at the Palestinian dead, talk about all the children tragically killed, and attack Israel.

Remember this as Australia’s journalists’ union, throwing away any pretence at impartiality, promotes a petition demanding journalists treat Palestinians as the “victims”, and Israel as the “instigators” of a “violence disproportionately endured by Palestinians”.

No bomb shelters in Gaza.

Doesn’t this show Hamas actually wants Palestinian women and children to die to create anti-Israel propaganda?

Members of Israeli security and emergency services work on a site hit by a rocket in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv.

What government does not build bomb shelters for its people before launching yet another missile war against Israel, this time firing more than 3200 rockets into a country it knows must fire back to defend itself?

What government does not build bomb shelters when it yet again fires many of those missiles from between homes in crowded residential areas, knowing any attempt by Israel to shoot back puts the neighbours in deadly danger?

Why has Hamas not built those shelters, when it has enough equipment and concrete to build many kilometres of tunnels underneath Gaza — to smuggle goods in from Egypt and terrorists out to Israel, and to store things like the rockets it smuggled in, too?

Israel claims it’s so far destroyed 15km of tunnels, many running underneath the most densely populated parts of Gaza. Hamas built tunnels there, but did not build one bomb shelter.

I don’t understand why journalists do not pause at that fact. It says so much.

Most of all, it shows a contempt for life — including the lives of Palestinians themselves.

Al-Qaida terrorist Osama bin Laden, who murdered more than 3000 people in the 9/11 attacks on America, famously taunted the West that Islamic armies would triumph because they “love death as you love life”.

In Gaza, Hamas cultivates that same death cult. Its military wing has made videos warning Israel: “The Al-Qassam Brigades love death more than you love life.”

Hamas TV also broadcast a young girl, encouraged by the host, saying she wanted to become a policewoman so she could “shoot Jews … all of them”.

And Amnesty International reported: “Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly shown total disregard for … the right to life, by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and by using Palestinian children in armed attacks.”

So it’s not surprising Hamas wilfully exposes its citizens to likely death, not even bothering to install air-raid sirens. Civilians, too, are required to die for the Hamas cause.

There is one more thing to say about that contempt for life. If that’s how Hamas regards its own, imagine what it would do to any Jews it could get its hands on.

The night sky above the Gaza Strip.

In fact, you don’t have to imagine. Just look at video shot on May 9 of Fathi Hammad, a Hamas Political Bureau member and former interior minister, telling a crowd: “People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives.”

He adds, pointing to his jugular vein: “ With your hand, cut their artery from here.”

Don’t shrug this off. Don’t think this does not represent the real Hamas, banned in Australia as a terrorist group, or help to explain this war.

I know, journalists assure you the shooting started a few weeks ago because a Jewish landlord went to court to evict six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem — who, they don’t add, refused to pay rent on houses in an area where the Arab population is growing, not being ethnically cleansed.

Reject that propaganda.

The deputy chief of Hamas, Saleh Al-Arouri, boasted a year ago Iran was backing the terrorist group, and a new uprising to destroy Israel “may happen sooner than people expect”. And now it’s here, with rockets from Iran.

Arouri said back then it was useless to ask Hamas to make peace with Israel. Even if Israel offered to give up half its land, “we would not accept this compromise”.

Hamas, officially, just wants Israel dead. And it will sacrifice its women and children if that gets Western journalists on its side.

No bomb shelters in Gaza.