Letter: Hamas Tunnels Designed to Increase Civilian Casualties

Dear editor:

What Bernie Sanders refuses to admit is that Hamas deliberately designed its extensive network of terror tunnels in a manner which guaranteed that Israel’s exemplary efforts to kill only combatants in its response to Hamas’ despicable direct attacks on Israeli civilians (and non-Israelis who were working for Israelis or just visiting Israel) could not be 100% effective. (Column: A Call to Arms – for Hamas, Not Israel Boulder Jewish News April 17, 2025) Perhaps the terrorists dared to think that Israel would not respond to the October 7 atrocities out of fear of harming innocent civilians in Gaza. But Hamas’s vow to inflict 1,000 October 7’s on Israelis (and the fact that Palestinians cheered this vow) convinced Israel that the time had come for Israel to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas, to be followed by the demilitarization of Gaza and the deradicalization of the Palestinians. And all the voices calling for ceasefires and condemning supposed Israeli excesses have just prolonged the suffering of the hostages and the Gazans living under Hamas’ mismanagement.

https://www.mitchellaerospacepower.org/on-the-ground-in-gaza-the-reality-of-israels-military-operations

Furthermore, people need to understand that 1-ton bombs are needed to destroy fortifications located deep underground and that buildings will collapse when the tunnels underneath them are destroyed. A recent report in the Jerusalem Post noted that only one-quarter of Hamas’s tunnels have been destroyed and that many still intact tunnels can be used by Hamas to smuggle munitions into Gaza.

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-849430

Anyone who truly seeks peace should be urging Hamas to surrender, ordering its fighters to lay down their arms. The end of hostilities should be followed by a restructuring of the Palestinian educational system, aimed at undoing decades of anti-Jewish/anti-Zionist indoctrination. If the Palestinians are ever to have the state their leaders have been claiming to want, it must agree to co-exist, peaceably, with the nation-state of the Jews.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-gazans-return-to-school-study-finds-their-pa-textbooks-still-rife-with-incitement

Toby F. Block
Atlanta, GA