By now, the third week of Israel’s Operation Projective Edge, surely there can be no one unaware of the tunnels Hamas spent five years – and millions of dollars of aid money – building to serve as underground bunkers for Hamas’s leadership and as infiltration routes into Israel.  Here are photographs of two such tunnels:

Actually, I just lied.  For while the top photo is indeed a Hamas “terror tunnel,” the bottom photo, however much it might resemble a tunnel, is in fact a bomb shelter, circa World War II.

Comparing the two photos, it would seem obvious that the tunnels Hamas built to attack Jews in Israel could serve just as well to protect Arabs in Gaza – not just in their solid construction, but in their proximity to Gaza’s civilian population.  Recall that these tunnels constitute a vast network, directly beneath the streets of Gaza, often with entrances located within Gazan dwellings.

So why, given the proximity of these tunnels, and the generous advance warnings given by the Israeli military – far more generous than the 15-second warnings Israelis get to seek shelter from Hamas’s rockets – does Hamas not allow their civilian population to use these tunnels as bomb shelters?

Some questions are so simple that they answer themselves.  The terrorist rulers of Gaza take no steps to protect their civilians because they don’t want to.

Incidentally, even Nazi combatants, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, wore uniforms to allow enemy combatants to distinguish them from the civilian population:

The Hamas Charter’s inclusion and endorsement of the Koranic prophesy that “Allah’s promise” will be fulfilled only when “Muslims will fight the Jews [and kill them],” and their daily, indiscriminate raining of rockets upon the only Jewish state, have prompted many to compare Hamas to the Nazis.  But anyone who compares the butchers of Hamas to Nazis owes the Nazis an apology.  Even the Nazis built bomb shelters to protect their civilians.

Yes, Hamas is every bit as evil as the Nazis were in their desire to exterminate Jews from the face of the Earth.  But what subterranean level of barbarity does it require for a movement wantonly to eschew taking even minimal steps to shield its women and children from the predictable responses to the attacks that Hamas themselves have initiated?

In their willingness, indeed eagerness, to sacrifice thousands of their own people for what amounts to no more – or less – than a macabre publicity stunt to turn world opinion against Israel and gain sympathy for Hamas, for civilian deaths for which Hamas itself is responsible, Hamas has shown itself to be more callous, nihilistic, and inhuman than even the Nazis were.

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words:

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