Israel at War: What happened on day 40?

IDF Chief Spokesperson R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari on Wednesday night presented Hamas weapons, military equipment, and intelligence technology which IDF soldiers found in more than 18 hours of searching Shifa Hospital since the early morning.

However, at press time, the IDF's findings were not the same level "smoking gun" as the vast explosives, advanced weapons, and hostage holding room which it found at Rantisi Hospital just a few days earlier.

As Israel’s war efforts against Hamas and its vast infrastructure continue in Gaza, a couple of elements have become clearer and clearer.

Israeli claims that Hamas has been using Gaza’s civilian population as human shields in the most cynical and cruel way have proven to be completely true.

On Monday, IDF Spokesman R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari revealed an underground Hamas command center under Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital (named after Hamas leader Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was killed by Israel in an air strike in 2004), which not only contained assault rifles, suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, and other weapons but also items – such as baby bottles – that Hamas had presumably held Israeli hostages there.

Hagari said there was evidence and independent separate intelligence that Hamas terrorists had returned directly to the hospital after participating in the massacre on October 7.

He also noted that an IDF robot found additional tunnels equipped with electricity being siphoned off the hospital for use by the terrorists underground.

Israeli military spokesperson R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari shows what he says is the house of a senior Hamas naval commander located next to a school at a location given as Gaza, in this still image taken from video released November 13, 2023 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

At the same time, IDF troops have closed in on Gaza’s Shifa Hospital – the territory’s largest – under which Israel has long said Hamas runs its command and control center.

Hamas hospital launch pad

CNN reported Monday that a US official with knowledge of American intelligence confirmed that Hamas maintains a command node under Shifa and uses fuel intended for it and that its fighters regularly cluster in and around the hospital.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also confirmed Hamas’s modus operandi to CNN. “You can see even from open-source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters. Without getting into this specific hospital or that specific claim, this is Hamas’s track record, both historically and in this conflict,” he said.

US President Joe Biden’s call that Israel take “less intrusive action” at hospitals across Gaza aside, Sullivan’s remarks and others he made on Monday, demonstrate that the US understood Israel was obliged to continue focusing on Gaza hospitals due to Hamas’s practices.

The Israeli army is facing “murderous terrorists who continue to say that their goal is the destruction of the State of Israel,” Sullivan stated. “You are dealing with a terrorist organization, Hamas, that takes civilians, hostages, including little children, that uses civilians as human shields, that uses civilian infrastructure – even hospitals, in the most cynical ways possible – as fighting positions, as military operation centers,” he said.

“Israel has to confront that while at the same time not wanting to go assaulting hospitals in firefights that could put innocent people who are getting life-saving medical care in the crossfire. This is the complexity, this is the burden that the Israel Defense Forces are facing as they conduct their operations,” he explained.

The other truth that has emerged during the war is the scope of what Hamas was planning to do to Israel on October 7, and the realization that this war must end the threat the terrorist group poses to Israel and its citizens once and for all.

According to The Washington Post report published this week, Hamas had hoped to push into large Israeli cities and even to the West Bank. Their aim was to provoke a huge Israeli response and launch a regional war.

Those elements, bolstered by Hamas statements made since October 7 that it will continue to launch more murderous strikes against Israel whenever it can, provide more than enough evidence that Israel must continue its morally just battle against the evil force that controls Gaza, and holds hostage not only the 240 people in captivity, but also all the innocent Palestinian residents of the enclave.

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters on Monday, citing growing international calls for a ceasefire, that Israel has “two to three weeks” to complete its war against Hamas.

Israel has made the case that it is fighting this war not just for itself, but for the democracies of the West, as part of the battle against Iran’s influence across the globe.

The most productive move the leaders of the free world can take right now is to provide Israel with all the time it needs to finish the job and eradicate Hamas, now and forever.