‘Check to see who you’re hiring’: Israel slams doctor’s group

Fadi Al-Wadiya was a key figure in developing Islamic Jihad’s rocket program and its general knowledge of electronics and chemistry.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

The Israel Defense Forces responded to criticism from Doctors Without Borders after a Tuesday airstrike killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket specialist who also worked as a doctor for the humanitarian organization, insisting the attack was not a case of mistaken identity.

“Always check to see who you’re hiring…,” the IDF wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Your colleague, Fadi Al-Wadiya, was a significant terrorist in Islamic Jihad. He advanced the terrorist organization’s rocket array, also known as a way to endanger the lives of civilians.

“He is just another case of terrorists in Gaza exploiting the civilian population as human shields.”

Wadiya was a key figure in developing Islamic Jihad’s rocket program and its general knowledge of electronics and chemistry.

Footage of the strike released by the army showed a person riding on a bicycle or motorcycle followed by an explosion.

The Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders (MSF) denounced the airstrike, saying Wadiya was a physiotherapist who was killed while bicycling to work. MSF added it was continuing to verify the details of the incident.

Eighty-five percent of Gaza’s hospitals have been used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for terror according to the military.

As reported by The Press Service of Israel in October, Hamas made extensive use of the Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center.

Hamas launched rockets from its compound, hid hostages in the bowels of the building, tortured collaborators, and dug tunnels connecting Shifa to nearby sites.

Israel also released a recording of a phone call confirming that Hamas also stores at least a half-million liters of fuel underneath the compound.

In March, Israeli forces raided Shifa after learning that Hamas established a small government administration center there. On the day that Israeli forces entered the Shifa compound, Hamas was about to pay salaries to hundreds of its civil and military officials. Soldiers arrested more than 800 terrorists.

In December, Ahmed Kahlot, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, confirmed to Israeli interrogators that he and other staff were Hamas operatives.

During the interrogation, Kahlot described how Hamas used hospitals and ambulances to hide operatives, launch military activity, transport members of terror squads and even deliver a kidnapped Israeli soldier.

Other Gazans have told Israeli interrogators Hamas deeply embedded itself in the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to use hospitals as a base for attacks.

At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 116 remaining hostages, more than 30 are believed dead.