… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Joe Biden

  • Demands grow for a permanent ceasefire

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    Original article republished from people dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialist organizations raise demands following the announcement of a 4-day pause in aggression in Gaza

    Thousands gather outside of the Pennsylvania Station in New York City on November 17 (Photo: Wyatt Souers/ANSWER Coalition)

    In the early hours of November 22, Israeli and Hamas officials announced that they accepted the agreement brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States for a 4-day pause in aggression in the Gaza Strip, which includes the exchange of 150 Palestinian political prisoners for 50 non-military Israeli hostages, as well as the entry of 300 trucks of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip. 

    This temporary pause comes after Israel has slaughtered over 14,500 Palestinians in Gaza, with 7,000 still trapped under the rubble and over 35,000 wounded. Israel’s airstrikes on hospitals and civilian infrastructure as well as the complete blockade on the enclave means that the thousands of injured have limited access to care and the population overall has restricted access to medicine, water, food, fuel, and electricity. The Government Media Office in Gaza reports that 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced, with 233,000 homes partially damaged and 45,000 completely damaged. 266 schools have been damaged, and 67 are now out of service. Israel has completely destroyed 85 mosques, and significantly damaged three churches. 

    “The steadfast resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people has delivered a 4-day pause in the ongoing genocide while securing the imminent release of 150 Palestinian political prisoners,” read a statement signed by the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, and the International Peoples’ Assembly. 

    The groups have called on people to remain in the streets around the world, to ensure that a permanent ceasefire is reached: “We must intensify our commitment and efforts until every single one of our demands is fulfilled: a permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege on Gaza, and an end to all US, Canadian, and European aid to Israel.” 

    “We call on people of conscience everywhere to Shut it Down on November 24th and to continue protesting, planning and implementing direct actions, and drive campaigns focused on our primary demands,” the statement read, referring to the 3rd announced day of “shut downs” for strategic actions for Palestine. 

    International NGOs are also pushing for a more permanent ceasefire. In a press briefing on “Ceasefire, Pauses and Safe Corridors” held on November 22, hours after the deal was reached, Joel Weiler, executive director of Médecins du Monde, said “for a medical organization, four days of pause is….band aid, not health care,” arguing it would be insufficient time for treatment of serious injuries. Danila Zizi, Handicap International director for Palestine, said “it’s a kind of drop in the ocean if we don’t have fuel and we don’t have access,” complaining about the lack of clarity around the agreement.

    “The only way to meet all these needs,” or respect for human rights and access to healthcare, “is a permanent, sustained cessation of humanitarian law violations and a cease fire long enough to restore human rights to millions of people,” said Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. “That’s why we’re joining this call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire.”

    Regarding the announcement of the agreement, Hamas stated, “The terms of this agreement were formulated according to the vision of the resistance and its determinants, which aim to serve our people and enhance their steadfastness in the face of aggression, constantly mindful of their sacrifices, suffering, concerns, and managing these negotiations from a position of steadfastness and strength in the field, despite the occupation’s attempts to prolong and procrastinate the negotiations.”

    Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that this exact same deal was put forward to Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously, but was rejected. According to an analysis piece in the Israeli paper of record, Netanyahu caved under pressure from the families of Israelis held hostage in Gaza as well as the IDF, Shin Bet, and the Mossad. Multiple reports indicate that Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed many of their own hostages.

    On Wednesday, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht, the IDF’s international spokesperson, said in a press briefing that, “our terminology is not ceasefire, our terminology is an operational pause,” implying that Israel could resume violence once the hostage exchange is complete. Hecht also suggests that the pause might not begin in over 24 hours. 

    Wounded and hospitalized Gazans continue to be targeted by the IOF, with convoys evacuating the wounded obstructed by Israeli forces at checkpoints or Israelis launching further airstrikes near hospitals, such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital. 

    “As medical humanitarians, we reassert that hospitals should never, under any circumstances be a target,” asserted Avril Benoît, Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States, in Wednesday’s press briefing. She added, “It’s dangerous and terrifying to think what is happening to the norms, to the laws of war. It’s like this dystopian reality now where all the normal scaffolding of what is the conduct of responsible parties in a conflict are being completely perverted.”

    Original article republished from people dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Israel is assassinating journalists in Gaza

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    Original article by Amanda Yee republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    As part of its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel is killing media workers at an unprecedented rate, seemingly to prevent the world from seeing the unspeakable atrocities it carries out.

    Relatives, colleagues and loved ones of Palestinian journalists Sari Mansour and Hasona Saliem, who were killed while working, mourn during funeral ceremony in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on November 19, 2023. Photo: Anadolu Ajansı / Ali Jadallah

    Israel is intentionally assassinating journalists in Gaza. As it wages its genocidal onslaught on the enclave, having murdered at least 13,000 Palestinians so far, Israel is simultaneously killing media workers in order to prevent the world from seeing the unspeakable atrocities it carries out.

    The situation at hand is as dire as it is unprecedented. Since October 7, the Israeli military has killed 60 media workers, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. The Committee to Protect Journalists has stated this is the deadliest month for attacks on journalists since it started keeping record in 1992. Additionally, many other Palestinian reporters outside of Gaza face intimidation and harassment by Israeli forces.

    “We have never experienced anything like this and we are overwhelmed,” admitted Nasser Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, a Ramallah-based trade union representing Palestinian media workers. “We are losing colleagues and friends every day as a result of the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people and the policy of targeted killing against journalists.”

    “We can’t keep up with the number of attacks against our journalists,” Abu Bakr continued. “We are receiving more calls and information about … incidents than we can process. Our journalists have always been a target for the Israeli military, but Israel moved from killing [an average of] one Palestinian journalist a year before October 7 to killing [over] one a day.”

    And it’s not just Palestinian reporters the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)  is attacking—any journalist who may potentially disseminate information critical of Israel is a potential target.

    Among the long list of reporter casualties is Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed by an October 13 Israeli strike on the Lebanese border while covering clashes between Hezbollah and the IDF. According to an independent investigation by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), Abdallah was explicitly targeted by Israeli forces—he was clearly identified as a journalist through his press helmet and vest, and he was standing next to a vehicle marked “press” on its roof. Immediately before the attack, other journalists in the area had witnessed an Israeli helicopter flying overhead, so the military was able to clearly see that Abdallah was a non-combatant. According to ballistic analysis done by RWB, the missiles were launched from the side of the Israeli border and “two strikes in the same place in such a short space of time (just over 30 seconds), from the same direction, clearly indicate precise targeting.”

    Not even the families of journalists are safe from Israeli retaliation. After learning on air that an Israeli air raid had killed his wife, son, daughter, and grandson, Gaza Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh rushed to the hospital, followed by press cameras. Upon finding his son there, he knelt over his lifeless body and lamented, “They take revenge on us with our children.”

    On November 7, Mohammad Abu Hasira, a correspondent for Palestinian news agency Wafa, was killed by an Israeli air raid, along with 42 members of his family. And just days before that, an Israeli strike killed Palestine TV reporter Mohammad Abu Hattab and 11 members of his family in south Gaza, including his wife, son, and brother.

    Israel invents lies to justify war crimes

    Just as it has claimed that Hamas was hiding in Gaza hospitals, near schools, and in ambulance convoys in order to justify its bombing and killing of civilians, Israel has peddled the same predictable excuses for these targeted assassinations of journalists. In a chilling November 2 article that effectively doubles as a hit list, the Jerusalem Post spotlighted several independent Palestinian journalists who had been reporting from Gaza and smeared them as part of “Hamas’s propaganda team.”

    Then, pro-Israel media watchdog group HonestReporting released a report on November 8 claiming—with little evidence—that the Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters freelance photographers in Gaza knew in advance of the October 7 Palestinian Resistance counter-offensive and even collaborated with Hamas in order be on location to get their shots during the operation.

    Israeli officials quickly jumped on the story to vindicate their assassination campaign against Palestinian reporters.

    In response to the report, former Minister of Defense and current member of Israel’s war cabinet Benny Gantz said, “Journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.”

    Danny Danon, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, went so far as to declare that these reporters would be put on a hit list, stating on X, “Israel’s internal security agency announced that they will eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre. The ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.”

    Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting, later admitted that he had no evidence to substantiate the claims made, but was just “raising questions.” According to Hoffman, he and HonestReporting “don’t claim to be a news organization.”

    Accusations that Palestinian reporters are embedded within and acting in coordination with Hamas lay the propaganda groundwork to depict journalists as legitimate military targets.

    Israel restricting information coming out of Gaza

    Not only is the IDF killing Palestinian journalists on the ground, but the Israeli government is actively denying access to foreign press into Gaza. The only reporters allowed into the strip are those embedded within the IDF, and media outlets such as NBC and CNN have confirmed that in exchange for access, they must submit all materials to the Israeli military prior to broadcast for review and approval.

    Additionally, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate reported that as many as 50 media outlets in Gaza have been partially or entirely destroyed by Israeli air strikes since October 7. If Israel is not outright bombing news outlets, then they are actively trying to repress the flow of information coming out. In late October, the Israeli government approved regulations that would allow it to shut down any foreign news channel if it believed the outlet posed a threat to national security. This regulation was then used to block the programming and website of Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen, because of its “wartime efforts to harm [Israel’s] security interests and to serve the enemy’s goals,” according to a statement released by the Israeli security cabinet.

    In the absence of foreign press bearing witness to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, Palestinian civilians have taken to documenting the horrors themselves and sharing them on social media sites such as X and TikTok for the outside world to see.

    The Israeli government has responded by repeatedly shutting down internet and communications systems across Gaza, even further restricting the flow of information coming out.

    History of Israel targeting journalists

    Even before its current war on Gaza began on October 7, Israel had a long history of targeting reporters and news networks. During its 2021 military incursion on Gaza, Israel was accused of “silencing” journalists by press freedom advocates after it bombed the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. This occurred just days after it had bombed another building that housed a number of other news outlets, including Al Araby TV, Al Kofiya TV, and Watania News Agency, among others.

    According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Israel killed 55 journalists from 2000 to 2022, either by live fire or bombardment. This figure includes Shireen Abu Akleh, the beloved Palestinian-American journalist and longtime Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot by Israeli forces while reporting on IDF raids in Jenin, as well as Yaser Murtaja, a cameraman for Palestinian network Ain Media, who was shot and killed by the IDF while covering the 2018 Great March of Return.

    Like so many other Palestinian journalists Israel murdered on the job, Abu Akleh and Murtaja were both wearing their press vests at the time of their killings. Immediately after his death, Israel predictably—with no evidence—rushed to accuse Murtaja of being a Hamas fighter in order to cover its tracks.

    The day after Murtaja’s killing, Israel’s then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman bluntly stated, “In the march of terror, there were no innocent civilians. They were all Hamas.”

    Israel is losing the information war

    Israel relies on its advanced military weaponry and billions of dollars in funding from the US to carry out its genocidal violence against the Palestinian people across Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Its Hasbara and “Brand Israel” campaigns work around the clock to justify its war crimes through outright lies and disinformation.

    However, Israel has suffered significant losses in the information war as reports and images of the atrocities have reached millions across the world, many of whom have joined the mass mobilizations in support of the Palestinian cause. On the international stage, Israel is further politically isolated, with more and more countries cutting ties or recalling their diplomatic staff.

    This battle of ideas cannot be won through sheer force and US-backed military superiority. Israel cannot prevent information about its atrocities from leaking out, especially in an age of social media in which ordinary Palestinians are emboldened to act as citizen journalists, documenting what they are living through in Gaza for the world to see. As Israel escalates its assassination campaign against media workers, support for the Palestinian Resistance continues to grow.

    Grim as the current situation may seem, it speaks to the reality at hand: The people of the world are waking up to the atrocities carried out by the Zionist state and refusing to allow it to continue.

    And that speaks to another reality: Israel is living on borrowed time, and that time is running out.

    Amanda Yee is a journalist and organizer based out of Brooklyn. She is the managing editor of Liberation News, and her writing has appeared in Monthly Review Online, The Real News Network, CounterPunch, and Peoples Dispatch. Follow her on X @catcontentonly.

    This article was produced by Globetrotter.

    Original article by Amanda Yee republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Biden’s Key Climate Law Gives Big Oil a ‘Massive Escape Hatch’: Analysis

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Freshly painted banners for the ‘People vs. Fossil Fuels’ protests on October 11-15, 2023 are seen outside the White House in Washington, D.C.  (Photo: Josh Yoder/Look Loud )

    “While the IRA was touted as the ‘largest investment in climate and energy in American history,’ it could turn out to be a failure if Biden doesn’t also take bold action on fossil fuels,” said Oil Change International.

    The 2022 law heralded as U.S. President Biden’s key climate achievement may support an expansion of clean energy, but a new analysis out Monday demonstrates how the Inflation Reduction Act leaves the fossil fuel industry with vast opportunities to extract more oil and gas and continue boosting its record-breaking profits at the expense of frontline communities.

    The report, said Oil Change International (OCI) as it released the new findings, proves that the Biden administration can’t rely on the IRA to demonstrate its commitment to the emissions reduction that scientists agree is needed to mitigate the climate crisis.

    Titled Biden’s Fossil Fuel Fail: How U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Rises Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Exacerbating Environmental Injustice and released 10 days before the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the analysis uses previously unpublished data from climate modeling by the Rhodium Group, an environmental think tank.

    “The model projects that despite the IRA’s investment in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and batteries, the United States could still miss its Paris Agreement goal of reducing U.S. emissions by 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030,” reads the report, noting that as the world’s largest historical emitter of fossil fuel emissions, the U.S. has a responsibility to “cut its emissions faster than the global average.”

    The group’s model projects that domestic fossil gas demand in the U.S. will decline by 16% by 2035, yet production is expected to rise by 7%. Petroleum demand is expected to decline by 20%, yet production will rise by 13%.

    “The gap between production and demand is filled by surging exports,” explained OCI. “Gas exports are projected to double by 2035, while oil and petroleum product exports rise 23%.”

    Wind and solar power are expected to replace gas domestically, added the organization, but the positive effects of the decline in gas demand in the U.S. are “tempered by an increase in gas consumption within the oil and gas industry itself.”

    The “energy-hungry” liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector will essentially cancel out progress made by surging wind and solar power in the U.S., said OCI, with gas consumption by LNG export plants growing 140% by 2035.

    “The Biden administration touts the Inflation Reduction Act as a centerpiece of its achievements on climate,” said Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager for OCI. “In reality, the bill leaves a massive escape hatch for the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual.”

    Rhodium’s modeling projects that the U.S. will miss its targeted emissions reduction for 2030 by 16-18 percentage points if the Biden administration relies on the IRA and its investments in technological fixes like carbon capture and storage and fossil hydrogen production while allowing continued investments in oil and gas exports.

    “While the IRA was touted as the ‘largest investment in climate and energy in American history,’ it could turn out to be a failure if Biden doesn’t also take bold action on fossil fuels,” said OCI in a statement. “As the world gathers for COP28, Biden still has a chance to be the climate leader he claims he is by making a commitment to phasing out fossil fuels.”

    The phase-out of all oil and gas production in the U.S. is widely recognized as necessary by energy and climate experts, and has long been demanded by advocates for frontline communities, which bear a disproportionate public health burden due to the strong links between fossil fuel extraction, storage, and transport and harms including respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and poor outcomes for pregnant people and infants.

    Boosting fossil fuel production and exports “while exacerbating pollution in environmental justice communities,” said OCI, is a “deadly combination.”

    Roishetta Sibley Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said Biden’s approval of projects like the Willow oil drilling initiative in Alaska, nearly $2 billion for publicly financed fossil fuel projects abroad, and his support for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, among other pollution-causing infrastructure, has shown frontline communities that the president’s campaign promises regarding environmental justice were “nothing but a smokescreen.”

    “We supported [President Joe] Biden for change, not to deal with deadly decisions made without us at the table,” said Ozane. “The fight against climate disaster is collective, and the United States cannot preach about caring for communities while exporting pollution globally.”

    The pollution impacts of continued fossil fuel production and exports will be “disproportionately borne by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities—specifically in Appalachia, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico,” said OCI.

    To align with Biden’s stated climate goals, the group said, the president’s efforts must go far beyond the IRA and include a phase-out of oil and gas exports, an end to fossil fuel leasing on federal lands, and a halt to all approvals for new fossil fuel infrastructure.

    “At COP28 the spotlight will be on our collective effort to end the fossil fuel era,” said Rees. “Will the United States deliver, or will Biden’s climate legacy be one of disastrous oil and gas expansion and failure to adequately tackle the climate crisis?”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Palestinians File ‘Urgent Motion’ to Stop Biden From Backing Genocide

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    Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
    Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    “Our team has had to update more than once the numbers of our clients’ relatives who have been killed as we prepared this lawsuit and motion.”

    A group of Palestinian Americans on Thursday urged a federal court to issue a preliminary injunction barring the Biden administration from providing any additional weaponry or diplomatic support to the Israeli military as it carries out mass atrocities in Gaza.

    The “urgent motion” comes days after the group, represented by the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), sued President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a federal court in California, arguing that the top officials are “failing to prevent an unfolding genocide where they have influence over the state of Israel to do so, and directly abetting its development with weapons, funds, and diplomatic cover” in violation of international law.

    The plaintiffs in the case are U.S. citizens with family in Gaza, which has been under relentless assault since a deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel last month. At least 116 of the plaintiffs’ family members have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the latest Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza began.

    “Our team has had to update more than once the numbers of our clients’ relatives who have been killed as we prepared this lawsuit and motion,” Astha Sharma Pokharel, an attorney at CCR, said Thursday. “There is no starker illustration of how urgently this injunction is needed.”

    The Biden administration has opposed calls for a cease-fire and pledged unconditional support to the Israeli government as it wages war on the besieged Gaza Strip with the help of U.S. weaponry, including thousands of Hellfire missiles and army vehicles. That support has continued in the face of a horrific death toll and humanitarian crisis and amid global alarm over Israeli officials’ genocidal rhetoric.

    In an emergency briefing paper released less than two weeks into Israel’s assault, CCR warned that the U.S. “is not only failing to uphold its obligation to prevent the commission of genocide, but there is a plausible and credible case to be made that the United States’ actions to further the Israeli military operation, closure, and campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza rise to the level of complicity in the crime under international law.”

    The lawsuit filed earlier this week echoes that case, stating that the “unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza has so far been made possible because of the unconditional support given by the named official-capacity defendants in this case”—Biden, Blinken, and Austin.

    The lawsuit and push for a preliminary injunction are backed by leading scholars of genocide and the Holocaust, including William Schabas, a world-renowned expert on international human rights law.

    In a declaration supporting the lawsuit, Schabas wrote, “There is a serious risk of genocide committed against the Palestinian population of Gaza and that the United States of America is in breach of its obligation, under both the 1948 Genocide Convention to which it is a party as well as customary international law, to use its position of influence with the Government of Israel and to take the best measures within its power to prevent the crime taking place.”

    The new motion was submitted Thursday as Israel raided Gaza’s largest hospital and prepared for an assault on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, prompting fears of a widening military campaign.

    Meanwhile, little humanitarian aid has been allowed to enter the blockaded territory, leaving millions of lives at risk as most of the population lacks water, food, medicine, and other basic necessities.

    The World Food Program warned Thursday that “nearly the entire population” of Gaza “is in desperate need of food assistance.”

    “The small quantities of food that can be found are being sold at alarmingly inflated prices and are of little use without the ability to cook, forcing some to survive on one meal a day,” the U.N. organization said. “For the lucky, that includes more than solely canned food, though some people have resorted to consuming raw onions and uncooked eggplants.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Probe Demanded Over ‘Absurd’ Israeli Narrative About Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital

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    2023.10.08 Pro-Palestinian Rally, Washington DC. Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
    2023.10.08 Pro-Palestinian Rally, Washington DC. Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    “Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians,” said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

    A human rights monitor in Geneva on Friday called on the United Nations to help get to the bottom of Israel’s claim that its bombing and raid of Gaza’s largest medical complex this week was necessary to stop Hamas from running a vast military compound beneath it—an allegation that more than two days after the attack began, has been backed up only by images Israel released of a small cache of weapons.

    Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the time has come for an independent international investigation into “Israel’s absurd narrative” about al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, and noted that administrators at the facility are also demanding a probe “that includes a United Nations inspection.”

    Israel did extensive damage to al-Shifa’s cardiac care department, surgical ward, and a pharmaceutical warehouse when it began bombing the hospital at dawn on Wednesday in just one of more than 245 attacks on medical facilities in Gaza since October 7. Israeli officials said they expected to find “the beating heart” of Hamas’ military operations in the hospital.

    But after searching basement areas and several health departments as well as conducting a “violent interrogation campaign” targeting displaced people and medical personnel, Euro-Med said, Israel has so far produced only a video showing a small number of weapons.

    “The absence of any neutral international party’s involvement in the Israeli military raids and searches of al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the strip raises widespread doubts about the Israeli narrative,” said Euro-Med. “Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians.”

    “We are left with nothing—no power, no food, no water. With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons.”

    Separately, the BBC aired a segment on Friday in which the network noted the Israel Defense Forces first released a seven-minute video displaying the weapons it found—a video that appeared to be edited despite IDF claims that it was filmed in a single shot with no edits, and that raised several other questions.

    “This IDF video was posted, then deleted, then reposted, this time without a section referring to an Israeli soldier who’d been held hostage,” reported the BBC.

    Reporters from the network arrived at al-Shifa a few hours after the IDF released the original video, and were shown a different selection of weapons than those that appeared in the military’s video.

    https://twitter.com/_RichardHall/status/1725498963174752490?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1725498963174752490%7Ctwgr%5E625d358c2e3a367d9e3d245bbf052640ce85b5c6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fisraeli-claims-al-shifa

    “What we see in this IDF video doesn’t equate Israel’s description of an ‘operational command center for Hamas,’” the BBC reported.

    The footage, released late at night “after long hours of searches and fruitless inspections,” said Euro-Med, “raises a lot of questions, especially since no gunman has been arrested and no evidence has been found to back the previous claims about the presence of tunnels beneath the hospital.”

    The IDF has also claimed that Hamas “knew we were coming” and had likely “made off with or hidden traces of their presence” at al-Shifa, The New York Times reported.

    Israel’s narrative about al-Shifa has also drawn scrutiny from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, who said that even if the hospital were being used as a command center for Hamas, “protecting [patients] is paramount.”

    “Even if health facilities are used for military purposes, the principles of distinction, precaution, and proportionality always apply,” Tedros said.

    The director of al-Shifa, Muhammed Abu Salmiya, toldAl Jazeera Friday that staff are still trying to save as many of the 7,000 patients and refugees in the hospital as they can amid Israel’s ongoing siege, but they “lost all those who were in the intensive care unit” following the attack on Wednesday.

    “We are left with nothing—no power, no food, no water,” said Abu Salmiya. “With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons.”

    The Biden administration, which has continued supporting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as the death toll has grown to at least 11,470 in less than six weeks, said this week it believed the IDF’s claims about al-Shifa, with President Joe Biden saying it was a “fact” that Hamas has “their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital.”

    A day after the bombing, as observers awaited evidence of an extensive command center beneath the hospital, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller appeared less confident in Israel’s narrative, telling reporters that the White House “never said there were command posts in every hospital in Gaza.”

    “We don’t want to see hospitals struck from the air,” said Miller. “We understand that Hamas continues to use hospitals in places where they embed their fighters.”

    After the BBC reported on the IDF’s changing video documentation of its findings, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft called Israel’s “propaganda” supporting its onslaught in Gaza “increasingly clownish.”

    “Only Joe Biden seems to believe it,” said Parsi.

    Journalist Jeremy Scahill pointed out that Israel itself is known to have built “an underground operating room and tunnels under the hospital” in 1983.

    “This is not a secret,” Scahill wrote on social media, noting that Israel has claimed Hamas expanded the tunnels in recent years.

    Allegations of a Hamas command center, supported by the U.S., said Scahill, “should be backed up by clear evidence, not a Geraldo Rivera/Al Capone’s vault-style video presentation featuring an English-speaking IDF soldier.”

    “No matter what is or is not found, there is no justification for the repeated attacks against civilian hospitals—in fact al-Shifa is the largest hospital treating the most vulnerable people in Gaza, including NICU babies,” he added. “The mere existence of tunnels, originally built by Israel, does not prove the specific allegations made by the U.S. or Israel. The standard for such evidence should be very, very high.”

    Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).