# Discussion thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel thread, October 2023

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Tags:** israel-hamas-war\
**Created:** [October 9, 2023, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317 "2023-10-09T15:10:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2174

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**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2023, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2174 "2023-12-04T03:45:35Z")

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…the “number of guns found” is just missing the point.

For starters: we aren’t just talking about Al Shifa. We are talking about al-Rantisi, al-Nasr, Indonesian, al-Awda, the International eye hospital, al-Quds, Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, the Psychiatric hospital. Hospitals have protected status in war. **They cannot be attacked or otherwise prevented from performing their medical functions**. There are situations that allow the protective status to be removed. But every expert in international law that I’ve seen have said the bar to removing that status _hasn’t been met_. Not at Al Shifa. Not at any of the other hospitals.

If this cache of arms, all gathered together in one place for a photo op is all of the evidence the IDF has, then that _isn’t_ enough to have lifted the protections for a number of reasons, the most important being the IDF didn’t know about the alleged presence of weapons until _they had taken over the hospital_.

The conventions require more than evidence gathered _after_ the hospital had been taken. To lose protected status hospitals would need to have been used as a “party to the conflict”, used to commit an “act harmful to the enemy”, and if there was any doubt about this, then **they should be presumed not to be so used**.

The _claim_ was that under Al Shifa was a command and control bunker. That wasn’t what has been presented here. But even if that collection of weapons wasn’t stored weapons of combatants getting treatment (allowable under the conventions) that doesn’t explain what happened at the _other_ hospitals in the north.

And the conventions provide that once taken over, the IDF should not prevent the doctors from performing their medical functions, and if they were unable to do so, then the IDF should have provided those services. But that didn’t happen at Al Shifa or at _any of the other hospitals_. Medical staff, patients and people sheltering at the hospitals were forcibly expelled from the hospitals. And those that were allowed to remain weren’t given the resources they needed, so had to abandon the hospital anyway. And once they left, critical equipment and infrastructure at the hospital were _destroyed_ by the IDF.

These are the things that actually matter here. That hospitals in the north have been effectively taken out of action. Critical infrastructure is gone. And everyone that wasn’t able to get to the south (not that it matters anyway as the south is now a target) have no access to _any_ sort of healthcare at all.

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