CHUCK DEVORE: The U.N. shames Israelis for evacuating Palestinian – while Hamas uses the innocent as human shields. When will the world see that these vicious terrorists – not Israel – are Gaza’s worst enemy?

Chuck DeVore is an executive officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a retired US Army intelligence officer.

Israel is pleading with more than one million Palestinian civilians to flee Gaza City. The vile terrorists in charge of that doomed metropolis are telling innocent people to stay put.

Hamas has used the Palestinian people as pawns for decades. It is no surprise that they are now using them as human shields.

On Thursday, the Israeli Defense Forces, massing 360,000 troops on the Gaza border in preparation for the grim task of rooting out and dismantling Hamas, dropped flyers from planes ordering non-combatants to get out .

“Civilians of Gaza City, evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the IDF said.

Hamas responded: ‘Our Palestinian people reject the threat made by the leaders of the occupation and its call for Gazans to leave their homes and leave for the south or for Egypt.’

Like clockwork, the United Nations and America’s leftist, anti-Israel media picked up the Hamas narrative.

The UN called for the IDF evacuation request to be ‘rescinded’ and warned that a mass evacuation could be ‘catastrophic’. The Washington Post desperately described the Gaza Strip as a ‘kill box’. The ridiculous phrase was later redacted from the article, but this twisted narrative cannot be ignored.

The Gaza Strip is 140 square miles bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to its west and Israel to its north and east. Gaza City is the most populated area in the region, but there are large cities in the south near its border with Egypt.

Israel sees no military utility in indiscriminate bombing. They want to evacuate as many civilians as possible from the immediate war zone.

Hamas’s information warfare strategy requires them to stay.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, alluded to this on Friday. “Efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza are being complicated by the fact that Hamas continues to use innocent civilians as human shields and is believed to be blocking roads to prevent Palestinians from moving out of the way into southern Gaza.”

Indeed, Hamas thrives on tragedy. And one can see where this is all heading as the UN and a complicit press attempt to gradually erode global support for Israel’s offensive and force them to stop eliminating the terror threat in Gaza once and for all .

But in all this it must be understood that the ultimate blame for the despair of the Palestinian people does not fall on Israel, but on Hamas and its Islamic benefactors in Tehran.

Because they are the ones who for decades have valued their own political ends over the lives of innocents.

In 2005, Israel withdrew all its citizens – some voluntarily and some by force – from Gaza City and transferred government to the Palestinians.

A Palestinian unity government soon collapsed after Hamas waged a bloody civil war against the opposition party Fatah. The battle ended with Hamas operatives throwing rival politicians to their deaths from high-rise buildings.

Since then, local Palestinian elections have only been held three times – though only in the Fatah-controlled West Bank – while Hamas has rededicated itself to the destruction of Israel and always at the expense of its own people.

Under the scourge of indiscriminate rocket attacks, Israel and Egypt agreed in 2007 to prevent weapons, ammunition and other weapons-convertible goods from entering Gaza.

In response, Hamas turned their land into a weapons factory. Whatever they couldn’t smuggle in from Iran, they made themselves.

Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigade posted videos online of militants digging up water pipes to cut them down and turn them into rockets.

Is it any wonder that today only 10 percent of Gazans have access to clean drinking water?

Hamas rockets rain down on Israeli cities like Ashkelon – whose power station supplies Gaza with electricity for free because Hamas has prioritized war over civilian improvements. The lights are typically on for about half the day in Gaza – now the city is dark.

Despite all this, in 2010 Israel began to allow imports into Gaza for humanitarian projects such as building schools, hospitals and housing. But Hamas seized the concrete to build tunnels under the border to carry out attacks on Israel.

One such terror tunnel – which reportedly required 500 tonnes of concrete – was discovered by Israel in 2013. “Instead of building reservoirs for water or kindergartens, Hamas is investing in tunnels,” an IDF spokesman said at the time.

And of course, the lives of Gazans don’t seem to hold much value for their Hamas guardians

It is well known that Hamas’s de facto military headquarters is located in al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza because they know Israel will not bomb it. The IDF cares more about Palestinian civilians than Hamas.

Why else would Hamas store and fire rockets from inside Palestinian schools? The United Nations agency dedicated to helping Palestinian refugees uncovered this practice in 2014 when they discovered 20 rockets hidden in a single schoolhouse.

In the coming days, horrific images will be broadcast to millions that will surely shake the world’s conscience.

War is terrible.

But we cannot lose sight of the truth that Israel is trying to protect innocent lives regardless of nationality – and Hamas is the Palestinians’ worst enemy.