Nasser Hospital, Moral Bankruptcy, and Frightened American Jews
The Nasser Hospital. Tragedy?
One of the great challenges the Jewish army of Israel faces in Gaza is that it wins battles, kills hundreds of Hamas fighters and rapists, destroys underground military-terror infrastructure, and then leaves the “cleaned out” area only to see it revived by Hamas which then needs to be attacked again.
Nasser Hospital is a case in point. What took place this week was the second time we had to attack there.
A Little Hamas Context
Before zooming into the Nasser Hospital events, let’s zoom out for a bit of basic Hamas context. Like its mothership, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a Jihadi organization whose mission is the total annihilation of the Jewish state as a first step in creating an Allah-Akhbar Caliphate across the Middle East.
For twenty years before Oct. 7th, the booming Gazan construction industry successfully implemented one of the most sophisticated multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects in the history of the Middle East, the construction of the largest underground military complex in history. Consider this: Gaza is a quarter the size of London and yet its underground system of military tunnels, command centers, barracks, and weapons development and storage sites is 150% larger than the London subway system. An enormous project requiring the investment of billions of dollars and thousands of workers, this vast tunnel system was designed and built to do two things: One, wage Jihad against the Jews, and two, use the above ground civilians of Gaza as helpless human shields against Israeli retaliatory strikes. You see, in addition to conventional weapons like guns, missiles, and bullets, Hamas sees the men, women, nurses, hospital patients, and school children of Gaza as unconventional weapons as well. While soldiers wear body armor as protection, Hamas fighters wear women, the elderly, and day care centers as their protective armor. And what is virtually impossible for American college students and the professors that teach them to understand, is that these civilians are happy—happy—to see their children die on the altar of Hamas led Jihad. Gazan parents and grandparents pass out candies and celebrate when their children die. Not even Nazi mothers did that.
But how can that be? Simple: For Muslim believers like most of the population in Gaza, martyrdom means they will have given their lives for Allah. Hamas, and millions of Jihadis around the world, well understand that the higher the number of civilian deaths, the better. Why is that? Because they know that while they are happy to die as heaven bound martyrs, that people in Europe, alongside countless college kids in America, will be outraged by the Palestinian deaths that Palestinians celebrate. So, for Palestinians and others like them, high numbers of civilian deaths is a win-win-win situation. (i) The dead Muslim goes to heaven, and if he’s a male, that includes 72 virgins as a cherry on top of all the heavenly goodies every other martyr gets. (ii) The dead muslim shield either saved a Jihadi warriors life, helped kill a Jew, or both. (iii) Hamas gets to leverage the death of civilians to turn world opinion against the evil Jews, which apparently isn’t hard to do. Mind you, that’s just one slice of the Hamas contextual pie. (For further context please see my blog https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hell-yes-in-my-name)
Nasser Hospital
Nasser Hospital, like other hospitals in Gaza, is fully integrated into the Hamas above and underground military infrastructure. It’s quite simple. In war, places like churches, day care centers, and hospitals are off limits. They’re not to be used as military sites and are certainly not legitimate targets. But what happens if a fighting force—let’s say Hamas for example—puts command centers under hospitals, uses hospital facilities to store weapons, dresses fighters in scrubs, and keeps hostages in the same rooms as patients. Then what do you do? Then what the hell is Israel supposed to do? File a complaint with the NFL Referees Association? For God’s sake, Hamas has very effectively weaponized dead and hungry Gazans. This cynical, conniving barbarity is what Israel confronts every day in Gaza.
In 2024, Israeli forces first targeted the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. During that operation, the IDF killed or captured hundreds of Hamas fighters dressed in hospital gowns hiding among Gazan patients, “their own people.” As if they give a damn if their own people die. Additionally, large caches of weapons and ammunition were found, and outrageously, boxes of desperately needed medications with Jewish hostage names on them were found unopened. Hostages were kept in hospitals, tortured in hospitals, and deprived of medical care right smack in front of Gazan medical professionals sworn to “do no harm.” And do you know how many brave Gazan doctors, administrators, and nurses opened anonymous social media accounts to protest the use of their beloved hospitals as hubs for war and torture? The answer is somewhere between zero and one.
Ilana, Matan, and Nasser
On October 7th, Ilana Gritzewsky and her partner Matan Zangauker were kidnapped by Hamas. 691 days after being taken hostage, Ilana, who was eventually freed and still hopes Matan will survive, testified in the UN. “They dragged me across the floor and threw me against the wall. I begged them not to rape me, not to shoot me.” Ilana blacked out and when she regained consciousness, she was surrounded by gunmen, her jaw was broken, her pelvis fractured, and there were burns on her body One terrorist told her she was “beautiful,” promising she would marry him and bear his children. During her captivity Ilana was starved, given very little water, and was moved between several civilian homes where she was subjected to regular strip searches. She was also held at Nasser hospital where she was subjected to the horrific opposite of humanitarian care. Nasser, a hospital for Gazans, is a living hell for kidnapped Jewish girls.
Now consider this: In that first Nasser Hospital operation aimed at eliminating those that snatched and abused Ilana, the immoral Israeli army installed back-up generators to ensure that the hospital would continue to function in case its main power source was damaged. Israeli soldiers also brought in large quantities of food for the staff and patients, and when the operation was over, and hundreds of Nasser shielded Hamas forces were no more, the IDF literally swept the floor on its way out and left behind food for patients and the brave staff. Evil, genocidal Jews!
Surprise, Surprise: Back to the Future
Not for the first time, Israeli soldiers have found themselves returning to fight again in places they thought were rendered Hamas free. Recent events at the same Nasser Hospital is a case in point. For some inexplicable reason, it seems that the good doctors and nurses at Nasser didn’t notice that Hamas fighters had reinserted themselves into their facility of healing and mercy, but that’s what happened, and so, once again, Israel needed to train its sights on a hospital. Welcome to war, Hamas style.
War: Where Hellish Tragedies Happen
Tragically, tragically, Israeli soldiers have killed over forty Israeli soldiers. On the hellish landscape of war, “friendly fire” is an unavoidable and horrific reality. In a country that is essentially one big extended family, and where the army is made up of hundreds of thousands of volunteers in their 30’s and 40’s who have dropped everything and left their wives, husbands, children, and careers to protect their shared home, this tragedy strikes very deep. And if anything could possibly be worse, Israeli soldiers also accidentally killed three escaping hostages whom they mistook as Hamas fighters. None of us will ever forget that day. And so …
…when Hamas returned to the scene of its hostage torturing crime, and once again used the patients of Nasser Hospital as human shields, and when journalists chose to be there in the hope they could see an Israeli soldier mistakenly shoot a nurse or two, if those journalists end up taking a bullet in the name of front line journalism, well, when you’re in hell, hellish tragedies happen, and for Hamas, those dead journalists are strategic victories. Yes, Hamas is thrilled these journalists are dead. Its only regret is that a few nurses weren’t also caught in the crossfire. Here’s the bottom line—
Moral Bankruptcy and Moral Outrage
Everything, absolutely everything taking place in Gaza today is the direct result of the utter hell of war that Hamas unleashed on the Jews of Israel. On October 7th, Hamas opened the gates of hell that it had been building for years. Hamas and only Hamas forced the Jews of Israel to enter those cursed gates and to fight on the children-are-shields landscape of hell; a Hunger Games like landscape conceived, designed, and constructed over decades. In Gaza, an entire society became one giant human shield forged, not by the devil, but by Hamas and countless Gazans that actively supported and assisted in the most hellish project since the construction of Auschwitz.
There are only two good things that can come out of the hell Hamas built; ALL of our tortured hostages, and the permanent head-to-toe crippling of Hamas. And anyone! Anyone who dares support the barbaric, demonic Islamic beasts of Hamas, in any way—be they Reuters reporters, European diplomats, or American college professors and students—you know where you can go. To the Gaza that Gazans built. To the hell that you support.
Jewish Fear, and Courage
There’s a lot of pressure being exerted on American Jews today, and for the first time, there is fear. It’s not easy being the target of the vast majority of religion-based hate crimes in America, being constantly derided by a prominent chorus led by people like Nicholas Kristoff, while being accused of supporting the starvation of children and belonging to a people perpetrating genocide. It’s getting far less comfortable for Jews to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Jewish state, and far more tempting to pander to the popular spirit of the times. This too is part of the hellish plans of Hamas; to turn ignorant college students and a happy-to-blame-Israel media against the Jews, to transform Jews into social outcasts, and to leverage that pressure to turn Jews against themselves. Tragically, Jews that wring their hands and echo the “not in my name” theme song in their writings and social media posts, parrot hate laced Free Palestine nonsense, or whitewash Hamas atrocities at Passover Liberation seders, are at best ignorant puppets of Hamas, or at worst, knowledgeable cowards. But there is another way. The way of knowledge and courage.
Jews that are returning to campus in the coming weeks—
Get to know https://standwithus.com
Jews that have been dropped and blocked by “friends” since October 7th—
Get to know https://www.instagram.com/letsdsomething/
Jews that now look over their shoulders as they walk to synagogue, enter a JCC, or wear a star of David. To those Jews of America and elsewhere, the Jews of Israel say—
Jews. Be brave!
Jews. Declare the truth! Stand for the truth. Stand for and with your people.
And American Jews that see in Gaza a Judaism based “moral priority to feed the hungry,” need to straighten their crooked moral compass and muster the guts to say, “Here’s some shining Jewish morality for you: Just like Judaism is clear that when someone rises to harm us we are bound by Jewish values to rise and slay them first, there is a similar moral imperative when it comes to helping those in need: Family. Comes. First. And family means the Jews of Israel. As long as there are thousands of Jewish families in Israel whose homes were burned and rocketed, who are still struggling to rebuild, and who lost everything, including loved ones; as long as there are thousands of Jewish families who are struggling to make ends meet because their husbands and fathers have sacrificed much of their livelihood to fight for our homeland; as long as there is a dire need for new facilities, new initiatives, and newly trained professionals to address the pressing physical and emotional needs of tens of thousands of survivors, and their families, wounded soldiers and their families, and countless anxiety filled children that don’t see their fathers for weeks and months on end; as long as there are all these urgent needs—and far more—then every spare shekel in Israel, and every spare dollar in every Jewish wallet in America, must go directly, quickly, and solely to the Jews of Israel, and not a nickel to Gaza. There is more than enough wealth in America, among UN member states, and certainly in the Muslim world, to help Gazans. As Jews, we never wish the innocent harm, but God knows that little if any of the vast potential generosity in America, Europe, Qatar, or elsewhere will go to the Jews of Israel, and so we are morally, and duty bound—Jewishly bound—to take care of family first.”
Jews of America. I’m sorry, this is no time for nuance or for saying or doing anything that aids and encourages our enemies in any way. Jews of America, this is a time for wall-to-wall standing with the IDF, the citizen-soldier angels of Israel, not the Jihadi demons of Gaza.
Jewish students of America. It’s not easy at all, but this is your hour, your historic moment. You absolutely must march: March to free, free the world from the sadistic likes of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and others. March for your starved, tortured, and sexually brutalized brothers and sisters languishing in the bowels of hell beneath the schools and hospitals of Gaza. March for Matan, a sick and starving young Jew whom Ilana Gritzewsky longs to see and marry. And know that when you stand courageous—when we all do—loud and proud; campus will take notice, the world will take notice, and both will learn from your example and moral fortitude, and even stand with you too.
Am.
Yisrael.
Chai.