Kharkiv & Hamas

By Shlomo Maital  

      Kharkiv is the second-largest city in Ukraine, next to Kyiv the capital.  It is on the northeastern border with Russia.   It had a population of 1,421,125 (2022 estimate) — it is thought that some 600,000 people have been evacuated, in the face of Russian missiles and artillery shells raining down on the civilian population,  with many deaths.

       Kharkiv has an underground Metro.  It is being used now as a bomb shelter – and as schools.  Some 9,000 children attend school there, according to the National Public Radio correspondent there, Joanna Kakissis —  who, by the way, is exceptionally courageous, as she almost daily reports from the battleground.    

        Kharkiv’s underground schools have been so successful, that several more such schools are under consideration and planning, for Kharkiv’s 65,000 schoolchildren.

         Contrast this with the Hamas tunnel system, now estimated at over 700 kms.,  in the Gaza strip which is only 40 kms. long (meaning tunnels crisscross the width and length of Gaza many times).  Only Hamas terrorists shelter in the tunnels, including their peerless fearless leader Yahya Sinwar and his family.  The people?  Who cares.

         The comparison between Ukrainian schoolchildren going to school underground, sheltered, protected, but still in fear, as the Russian war on Ukrainian civilians enters its second year, with Hamas’s hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, safe haven for its leaders and their bodyguards and families only….  It is obscene.  And as corrupted as are the politicians who continue to block vital US aid to Israel and Ukraine. 

Underground school in Kharkiv