Buried Beneath Gaza
The tunnels were sold as “resistance”. In reality, they became underground prisons, propaganda assets, and death traps built beneath civilians.
These tunnels are deliberately embedded beneath civilian infrastructure so that sanctimonious useful idiots, Peter Tatchell being a particularly exhausting example, can shriek that Israel “murders children” while obediently laundering Hamas propaganda into respectable conversation. An arrangement so cynical it would almost deserve admiration if it were not built on corpses, camera crews, and activist narcissism. Hamas’s documented use of civilian infrastructure and human shields as part of its military strategy has been extensively discussed in both research and testimony.
Naturally, Tatchell repeats lines such as “Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians (mostly women & children)” despite the obvious and repeatedly documented problem that casualty figures in Gaza routinely fail to distinguish between civilians and Hamas combatants. Even major analytical studies examining the war have raised substantial concerns about casualty counting methods, manipulations, and the reliability of combatant-versus-civilian classifications. The slogan itself functions less as analysis and more as emotional theatre for people who confuse moral panic with intellectual rigour. Verification, apparently, is now considered a form of oppression.
The Nazis, particularly Joseph Goebbels, would probably marvel at Hamas’s achievement. Historically, propagandists had to pay people to distribute messaging. Hamas managed to create an ecosystem where Western activists, influencers, academics, and parts of the media perform the labour voluntarily, often while believing themselves morally heroic for doing so. Quite efficient, really. Grim. But efficient.
Hamas spent years siphoning Palestinian money and resources into digging hundreds of kilometres of tunnels beneath Gaza, marketed as essential to “protect the resistance”. Yet the post October 7 war exposed something awkward: most senior Hamas figures killed by Israel were not discovered heroically commanding operations from underground bunkers. They were hiding in civilian areas, tents, flats, schools, hospitals, crowded neighbourhoods, ensuring that whenever Israel struck them, Palestinian civilians would die alongside them. Research examining the war specifically highlights Hamas’s embedding of military infrastructure beneath and within civilian areas as a central tactical doctrine.
Yesterday’s strike on Izz al-Din al-Haddad follows the same pattern seen with Mohammed al-Deif, Marwan Issa, Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Barhoum, Salah al-Bardawil, and others. The grand mythology of the tunnels increasingly resembles a grotesquely expensive fraud: billions poured into underground concrete labyrinths while Gaza above ground remained economically shattered. Digging holes, it turns out, was easier than building a functioning society. A bit like student politics, really. Lots of slogans, very little plumbing.
In practice, many tunnels appear to have served primarily as storage networks, military transit systems, and prison cells for some hostages kept in horrific underground conditions, while numerous other hostages were held above ground with Hamas linked families or embedded among civilians in homes, markets, schools, and medical facilities. Which, strangely enough, rarely appears in activist Instagram infographics. Funny that.
And this is the central obscenity of the entire thing: Hamas’s strategy depends on civilian suffering. The deaths are not simply collateral to the strategy; they are part of the strategy. The more civilians die, the louder the outrage abroad becomes, the more pressure mounts on Israel, and the more useful idiots in London, New York, and university campuses perform outrage on Hamas’s behalf. Even academic discussions around antisemitism and anti Zionist rhetoric increasingly note how anti Israel discourse often collapses into narratives portraying Israel as uniquely evil, genocidal, or Nazi-like.
Gaza cannot rebuild while the tunnel network remains intact. Every surviving shaft is effectively a ready made sanctuary for Hamas to store weapons, move fighters, regroup, and sabotage any future administration attempting to stabilise the territory. Leaving the tunnels untouched while demanding reconstruction would be like trying to rebuild a house while politely agreeing to keep the termites. Very compassionate. Very progressive. Utterly insane.