Via NY Post
I spoke last week with “Major Y.,” an American who went to Israel to fight in a special forces unit in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7. He told me that Hamas routinely uses civilian houses as weapon stores, in complete violation of the laws of war, including the Geneva conventions which mandate that armies must not use civilian sites for military use. Major Y and others I have spoken with say one in every two or three homes in Gaza they go into has military weaponry, including AK47s, grenades and rocket launchers.
They routinely find entrances to Hamas tunnels inside civilian houses, most often in the children’s bedrooms. This is such a pattern that when they search a house they now go straight to the children’s bedrooms to uncover weapons caches and tunnel entrances. Every single mosque they go into has a Hamas weapons store, as has every UN school, violating every rule of war.
On one occasion recently, Major Y’s unit spotted an old lady in a wheelchair alone on a street corner in the south of Gaza. As they approached her, they were suddenly fired on by a Hamas terrorist who was under her wheelchair. On another occasion, the soldiers saw a 13-year-old boy running with a bag near an UNRWA school. He put it down and ran away. A few minutes later it detonated, badly wounding an Israeli soldier.
Recently, a group of old women and old men came out of a building waving a white flag. Then someone from within their ranks started shooting at the soldiers. Because of the civilians, the Israelis did not shoot back at the terrorist. Situations like this happen every day, says Major Y.