No. of Recommendations: 2
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/10/wor...https://archive.is/C1qm7The Hamas militants who launched a bloody attack on Israel last month have built a maze of hidden tunnels some believe extend across most if not all of Gaza, the territory they control.
And they are not mere tunnels.
Snaking beneath dense residential areas, the passageways allow fighters to move around free from the eye of the enemy. There are also bunkers for stockpiling weapons, food and water, and even command centers and tunnels wide enough for vehicles, researchers believe.
Ordinary-looking doors and hatches serve as disguised access points, letting Hamas fighters dart out on missions and then slip back out of sight.The IDF have shared videos of abandoned cars that serve as clandestine tunnel entrances, for example.
What's interesting about this is how NYT readers - not terribly informed about the Middle East - are reacting to this story. Hat tip to HotAir:
One question: given that anyone would have known Israel’s response to October 7, why weren’t/aren’t these tunnels being used to protect civilians-at the very least children? Instead Hamas organized about the most vicious attack possible to elicit the most brutal response imaginable without doing one thing to protect even their children. I just don’t understand.No, you don't understand. Not until you understand that Hamas views its own citizens as merely political props who are more useful as martyrs for the cause of destroying Israel; then you'll get it.
Another:
Well, this schematic sums it up pretty well. A hidden city under a city. And for everyone screaming about Israel’s blockade, it apparently hasn’t been too effective. The tunnel system didn’t get built with magic materials and magic carpets.
You gotta hand it to Hamas — they knew Israel would strike back hard, but they wanted to win the PR war. And they succeeded in getting many people marching and protesting around the world because they stuck their citizens right over those targets.Indeed. Hamas counts on the media to try to play the "both sides" game.
But perhaps this audience is waking up:
Tunneling is one of the most expensive and resource intensive enterprises known to man, the cost of the “Gaza metro” must reach billions of dollars. Imagine how much better the life of the Palestinian people would be if Hamas would have spent those billions of dollars of foreign aid on hospitals, schools, desalination plants, solar panels etc.
Hamas is absolutely the worst thing to have happened to the Palestinian people, similar to the equally ethnocentric and fanatical regimes of Germany and Japan during WW2, the life of the Palestinian people will never improve while Hamas exists, keep in mind that even if Israel where to cease to exist Hamas would blanket the middle east with a fundamentalist, corrupt and oppressive regime equal or worse to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where human suffering knows no bounds.Indeed.
