By Seth Mandel
Friday, February 20, 2026
From the Now It Can Be Told files come a couple more
revelations about Gaza worthy of attention.
The BBC reports what has been
true for over two years: Hamas is bleeding Gazans dry while violently cracking
down on, as one Gazan described it, “people with opinions.”
The BBC has recently been embroiled in numerous ethics
scandals around its reporting on the conflict. This report is an indication of
what it might have looked like had the Beeb reported honestly and ethically for
a single day during the war.
“At markets across Gaza,” BBC reports, “stallholders
describe regular police patrols—and a renewed iron grip on official fees and
taxes.” The market sellers can’t really afford what Hamas is demanding. “Should
I pay them, or feed my children?” one asks.
As the piece explains, “food and some other basic goods
are flowing into Gaza more freely. The few key traders with a license to bring
them in from Israel say Hamas have reimposed strict control over taxing the
imports. One trader, who agreed to share details anonymously, told us force was
used against those who refused to pay.”
Same old story—Israel is letting in goods and food, and
Hamas is taking it out of the mouths and pocketbooks of Gazan civilians and
disappearing those who put up any resistance. The preceding sentence has never not
been true since Hamas took control of the enclave close to two decades ago. If
you want Gazans to be able to eat and earn a livelihood, you’ve got to remove
Hamas. Because its policies are the same whether it’s peacetime or wartime: there
is no such thing, in fact, as peacetime Hamas.
Interestingly, one trader told the BBC “that traders used
a code-word for Hamas when discussing tax payments, so that Israel wouldn’t
learn that money was being siphoned off to the group.”
Even Hamas’s victims have been helping the terror group
cover up its crimes. What that means is simple: Hamas has, all along, been
siphoning off a much larger share of goods and food and money than anyone
claimed. If anything, the Israelis understated the extent of the problem.
In fact, it’s going to be difficult for anyone on the
outside to get the full picture: “Hamas now has a database of all the traders
who import goods into the Gaza Strip,” activist Mohammed Diab told the Beeb.
“The trader pays in cash, not through bank transfers, so that the flow of funds
cannot be traced. It is gradually restoring the system that was in place in the
past, but away from the spotlight so it can’t be monitored.”
The longer it takes to disarm Hamas, the longer
Palestinians will be immiserated and oppressed. It’s really that simple. And
there’s nothing Israel can do to change that unless the world asks it to go in
and disarm Hamas itself.
Then there was the announcement over the weekend by
Doctors Without Borders that it would be suspending most of its operations at
Nasser hospital in Gaza. Why? Because—I hope you’re sitting down for this—Hamas
has been operating in the hospital, undermining medical work in the complex
while endangering every doctor and patient.
The organization said
that its “teams have reported a pattern of unacceptable acts including the
presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients and a recent
situation of suspicion of movement of weapons.”
Hamas has been operating out of hospitals since the
beginning of the war, because such buildings not only offer more security but
also a place to bring hostages—sometimes to execute them. Hamas has also been
caught building tunnels underneath the hospital complexes. This is one of those
subjects on which the anti-Israel media/NGO complex does Palestinians another
great disservice by covering up the truth and thus enabling the hospitals to be
used for war crimes by Hamas.
Nasser hospital did not deny the presence of armed men.
It just claimed
they were there for everyone’s protection. Again, at this point, there is no
one still disputing Israel’s proven claims about Hamas terrorists operating out
of Palestinian hospitals.
It is sobering to think of how many Palestinian and
Israeli lives might have been saved had the media and NGOs told the truth
earlier. Perhaps they’re considering, for the first time, choosing the welfare
of Gazan civilians over Hamas.
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