The United Nations and its network of international NGOs have systematically whitewashed Hamas’s reliance on human shields in Gaza, sweeping aside mountains of evidence revealing how the terror group intentionally places civilians in harm’s way to maximize bloodshed, a new report finds.
The first-of-its-kind investigation, conducted by the Henry Jackson Society’s Centre for the New Middle East, presents “the ‘missing chapter’ in all the U.N. and NGO reports” issued since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Its authors reveal in detail how the terror group transformed civilian residences and infrastructure into military outposts, all while evading international scrutiny.
One video referenced in the report, which Hamas members filmed themselves, shows terrorists planting mines among children’s toys inside a civilian building. Other pieces of evidence the Henry Jackson Society published include footage of rockets stored inside a child’s bed in a Gaza apartment and speakers—nestled among dolls and backpacks—playing the sounds of children crying, meant to lure Israeli soldiers into booby-trapped homes.
The U.N. has issued 367 individual reports on the war since Oct. 7, none of which affirmatively state that Hamas has turned residential areas into battlefields and hid behind civilians.
“The U.N. has rarely acknowledged and never asserted the use by Hamas of ‘human shields,’” according to the report. “The phenomenon of ‘human shields’ has only been mentioned four times, in each case in only a single sentence, as either an ‘allegation,’ an Israeli ‘claim,’ or an unverified ‘report’ that this practice occurred.”
While the U.N. has not issued any analysis of Hamas’s tactics, it has accused Israel of launching “indiscriminate attacks” and “attacks on hospitals” in Gaza without mentioning the reality that the terror group uses these sites as weapons depots and operational headquarters.
The report’s authors conclude that the U.N. and associated NGOs “deliberately omit” Hamas’s practices because admitting them would “undermine their entire argument that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians.”
The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) December 2023 legal filing accusing Israel of genocide is one particularly notable example. The 84-page complaint does not acknowledge that Hamas started the war against Israel, nor does it discuss the terror group’s use of civilian shields.
“The word ‘tunnel’ appears only three times, all in critical references to Israel,” the investigation found. The only instances in which the ICJ mentions human shields are to accuse Israel of employing the tactic against Palestinians.
“There is no acknowledgment of Hamas embedding rocket launchers within or near civilian infrastructure,” the report notes. “The document entirely overlooks Hamas’s broader military strategies and its use of civilian areas, attributing all blame for civilian casualties solely to Israel.”
Hamas members have admitted the terror group’s attitude toward civilian casualties in Gaza. The day after Oct. 7, for instance, Hamas official Ali Baraka told Russia Today TV that “the Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs.”
Terrorists’ admissions of their own tactics have not prompted the U.N. to acknowledge them. In one notable display noted in the Henry Jackson Society compilation, a U.N. official said “word count” prevented the international body from noting Hamas’s reliance on human shields in a June 2024 report on “Children and Armed Conflict.”
A separate U.N. report from September 2024 contains similar omissions. The word “tunnel” does not appear in the 27-page dossier at all. The name “Hamas” appears only four times, with the U.N., portraying the conflict “as though Hamas is completely absent, not a party to the war, and bears no responsibility for the suffering in Gaza.”
High-profile human rights organizations that work alongside the U.N. have also downplayed—or outright ignored—Hamas’s intentional endangerment of civilians.
One such group, Amnesty International—known for its hostility to Israel—released a December 2024 report accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. The 296-page report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, barely mentions Hamas’s battlefield tactics, the Henry Jackson Society’s analysis shows.
Much like the ICJ’s filing, Amnesty International “deliberately omits any discussion of Hamas’s extensive tunnel network,” mentioning them only in the context of Israeli military operations.
A 2024 report from Human Rights Watch contained similar accusations of genocide without any discussion of Hamas’s tactics.
“Over hundreds of pages of text, the reader would struggle to realise that Hamas even exists in Gaza,” the Henry Jackson Society analysis reads. “These documents largely erase Hamas from the narrative, portraying the conflict as if Israel is targeting only defenceless civilians rather than engaging with a force of over 30,000 organised fighters that have rigged the landscape of Gaza for combat.”
Though the U.N. and its partner organizations have been unwilling or unable to expose Hamas’s decades-long use of human shields, the Henry Jackson Society’s report may have an attentive audience in President Donald Trump’s White House.
As the Washington Free Beacon previously reported, the Trump administration has indicated it will use a 2018 law—one the Biden administration ignored—that requires the president to sanction terror groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, that use “innocent civilians as human shields.”
Congress amended the legislation shortly after Oct. 7 to include mention of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and compel the Department of Defense to submit a report on its work “hold[ing] accountable terrorist organizations for the use of human shields.”
