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By Eric Mack From Newsmax

The Israeli Defense Forces continue to expose the Hamas terrorists’ plan to hide out in areas around children in order to blame Israel when innocent children are killed in the war, using children as human shields and foment worldwide scorn for the loss of innocent lives.

The IDF is sharing videos by soldiers of the 551st Brigade and photos of a Hamas-plotted terrorist hideout by soldiers of the 401st Brigade, which show a rocket launcher site at a children’splayground and near a children’s pool.

“IDF soldiers continue to expose Hamas’ exploitation of the civilian population – including children – for its terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF wrote in a statement Sunday morning to Newsmax. “During fighting in the Gaza Strip, IDF soldiers are exposing how the Hamas terror organization systematically uses civilian facilities for its terror activity.

“IDF soldiers located rocket launchers near a children’s swimming pool, as well as launch pits and rocket launchers in an old children’s playground in the Gaza Strip. This is further proof of Hamas’ deliberate use of civilian infrastructure and civilians – including children – as human shields for its military operations.”

The IDF has warned mainstream media of the Hamas scheme after it waged a massive attack on Israel on Oct. 7, taking hostages from Israel and using them and the women and children of Gaza as human shields to protect it from Israel’s retaliatory military operation to free the hostages.

“All of this is in the heart of a residential neighborhood,” a soldier explained in the video.

Hamas has fired more than 8,000 rockets at Israeli civilians since Oct. 7, when thousands of its terrorists invaded the western Negev, murdering 1,400 persons, wounding over 5,000 others and taking more than 200 hostages back to Gaza.

The Hamas terrorist plan to hide behind children is a long-running one, according to IDF spokesman Maj. Doron Spielman to Newsmax this week, because it risks the lives on innocents and helps feed the worldwide media on a narrative that Israel is targeting children in its Gaza operation.

Instead, the innocent lives are at the hands of Hamas, because they are refusing to permit Gaza citizens to leave, knowing it would leave them vulnerable to more Israeli strikes at terrorist targets.

“What we can see is when we take out terror operatives, there’s an entire spiderweb,” Spielman told Wednesday’s “National Report.” “The network that they built underground was literally built beneath all these buildings, so any compression that happens in those — in that vast tunnel network — affects the buildings overhead.

“But this was all part of Hamas’ plan. It was scripted in advance, because we know their civilians really just are there to provide cover for the terror activities, and the proof is we keep asking the civilians to move, and they keep asking them to stay.”

Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, according to the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry. The strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas leaders, who are using refugee camps, hospitals, and children areas to inflict mass media damage on the Israel operation.

Israel has rejected the idea of halting its offensive, even for brief humanitarian pauses, because as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week, “a cease-fire means Israel’s surrender to Hamas” terrorists.

An Associated Press reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, who had been brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the hospital corridor by an adult holding her hand, her clothes caked in dust, an expression of shock on her face.

The camp, a built-up residential area, is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians in Gaza to seek refuge as it focuses its military offensive on the north.

Blinken met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a day after meeting with Arab foreign ministers in neighboring Jordan.

Abbas, who has had no authority in Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007, said the Palestinian Authority would only assume control of Gaza as part of a “comprehensive political solution” establishing an independent state that would also take in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel seized in the 1967 war.

His remarks seemed to further narrow the already slim options as to who would govern Gaza if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas. The last peace talks with Israel broke down more than a decade ago, and Israel’s government is dominated by opponents of Palestinian statehood.

Blinken had met with Netanyahu on Friday, who insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

Arab leaders have called for an immediate cease-fire. But Blinken said that “would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” when the group launched a wide-ranging attack from Gaza into southern Israel, triggering the war.

Israeli planes once again dropped leaflets urging people to head south during a four-hour window Sunday. Crowds of people could be seen walking down Gaza’s main north-south highway on foot with only what they could carry in their arms, while others led donkey carts.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Related Stories:

• Obama: ‘Nobody’s Hands Are Clean’ in Israel’s War on Hamas
• IDF Maj. Doron Spielman to Newsmax: Hamas Using Civilians as Shields

Eric Mack | [email protected]

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

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