More tales are emerging of the ways Hamas utilized civilians during Israel's 22-day war against the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip, including accounts from Gaza residents who accuse Hamas of using them as human shields.
In one case, after engaging with terrorists holed up inside a civilian apartment complex, the Israel Defense Forces seized an Arabic-language note left behind, addressed to one of the apartment's occupants. "Greetings, honored residents of this house," reads the note, obtained by WND. "We, your brothers, holy war fighters used this house and some of the things in it. Our apologies." Last week, the Sydney Morning Herald interviewed Muhammad Shriteh, a Gaza-based ambulance driver, who complained Hamas would "lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety." He told the paper his ambulance company "coordinate[d] with the Israelis before we picked up patients … so they would not shoot at us." Shriteh recounted one instance when he was called to an emergency in the Jabaliya camp in the northern Gaza Strip only to find Hamas terrorists waiting inside a civilian apartment complex, hiding from Israeli fire. "They were very scared, and very nervous," he said. "They dropped their weapons and ordered me to get them out, to put them in the ambulance and take them away." Shriteh stated he refused to help because, he believed, if the IDF saw him transporting Hamas gunmen, he would not be able to pick up any more wounded people. He recounted one of the Hamas operatives putting a gun to his head, but he still refused and then they allowed him to leave. He said at one point Hamas attempted to hijack the ambulances at one of the main hospitals in Gaza City. "You hear when they are coming. People ring to tell you," Shriteh said. "So we had to get in all the ambulances and make the illusion of an emergency and only come back when they had gone." Also, in a piece entitled "Parsing Gains of the Gaza War," the New York Times quoted a source it said was close to Hamas, describing how the group "fired rockets in between the houses and covered the alleys with sheets so they could set the rockets up in five minutes without the planes seeing them. The moment they fired, they escaped." The Italian daily Corriere della Sera last week published an article translated into English by Israel's Center for Special Studies quoting Gaza residents accusing Hamas of shooting from their homes and then preventing the residents from fleeing when Israel returned fire. http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87755 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
