Biden says hospital bombing 'was not done by the Israelis' while offering no evidence
Until Biden or the State Department release convincing evidence showing that Palestinians bombed the al-Ahli Hospital, their claims should be met with the utmost skepticism.
During his address from the Oval Office on Oct. 19, President Joe Biden claimed the bombing of a hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds was not perpetuated by Israel, despite offering no evidence to support his claim and despite Israel’s track record of targeting civilians.
Just before 7 p.m. local time on Oct. 17, an airstrike hit the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Horrific scenes from the incident quickly swept social media, (including that of a Palestinian man carrying the dismembered body parts of his dead children in bags) sparking outrage around the world at yet another atrocious attack on Gaza, an area that has already been struck with over 6,000 Israeli bombs.
In a press conference the following day, Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum confirmed that the al-Ahli Hospital had received multiple warnings from Israel to evacuate prior to the airstrike. Though the archbishop stopped short of placing blame for this specific airstrike on Israel, he immediately went on to say “there are many buildings, there are many houses, there are many places, that they’re being bombed by airstrikes, Israeli airstrikes.”
That same day, President Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and refrained from placing blame on Israel.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Netanyahu. Whatever it is Biden purports to have seen that exonerates Israel from such accusations remains unknown.
During his address on Thursday evening, Biden took a more definitive stance that Israel is not responsible for the bombing, while not mentioning any group who may be responsible.
“Like so many other[s], I’m heartbroken by the tragic loss of Palestinian life including the explosion at the hospital in Gaza, which was not done by the Israelis,” Biden said.
Later in the address, Biden said he discussed with Netanyahu “the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war; that means protecting civilians in combat as best as they can.”
In the hours leading up to the address, reports were emerging that Israel had bombed the Saint Porphyrios Orthodox Church in Gaza, the site of which was originally built in the 5th Century. The Holy Orthodox Order of Saint George reported they believe between 150 and 200 people seeking refuge were killed. It’s also been reported that Israel has destroyed the Al-Omari Mosque in Gaza, just the latest mosque to be bombed in this siege.
Biden then went on to say he “secured an agreement” between Israel and Egypt for U.N. humanitarian aid to reach civilians in Gaza. And yet the day prior, the U.S. was the only country that vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have called for humanitarian pauses in the conflict to allow humanitarian aid access to those in Gaza.
Biden’s address signaled an attempt to have his cake and eat it too. Calling for more funding for weapons to Israel while portraying the U.S. as a benevolent world power seeking to “build a world that is safer, more peaceful, more prosperous.”
The bombing of the al-Ahli Hospital and the images that followed were too shocking for Americans to ignore; too sickening for Western stomachs compared to the more (for lack of a better term) mundane bombings of entire neighborhoods that have occurred and will continue to occur while Israel has the U.S.’ blessing.
Biden famously said (and has reiterated numerous times) that “were there not an Israel the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region. The United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.”
Clearly Israel is too valuable of a partner in oil-rich West Asia to allow such pesky little things such as blatant war crimes to get in the way.
With worldwide outrage brewing in the hours after the hospital bombing, Israeli social media accounts attempted to collect evidence that the attack wasn’t carried out by their military, despite an early hiccup from Netanyahu’s social media advisor Hananya Naftali. In a since-deleted post on X roughly an hour and 20 minutes after the bombing, Naftali implicated the Israeli military as responsible by saying that the “Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists are dead.”
The @Israel account on X posted CCTV footage after the bombing in an attempt to implicate the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group as being responsible. The post was later edited and the video was deleted, due to the fact that the timestamp on the CCTV footage showed it was recorded at 7:59 p.m. local time, an hour after the bombing.
But perhaps the most ridiculous defense that has been trotted out is a conversation between two “Hamas operatives” that was supposedly intercepted by Israeli intelligence. Conveniently, one of the “operatives” is quoted thus: “They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local and not like Israeli shrapnel.”
As Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone has pointed out, it’s interesting how Israeli intelligence is just incompetent enough to not intercept such Hamas conversations prior to Oct. 7, but is competent enough to intercept this smoking gun just hours after the hospital bombing! New York City-based illustrator Eli Valley aptly compared the audio recording to an Abbot and Costello sketch.
Some American news outlets are acting as though we shouldn’t rush to judgement that the same military which has dropped over 6,000 bombs on an area roughly the size of the Detroit should be the lead suspect in this hospital bombing.
Between 2000 and 2020, Palestinian rockets killed a total of 38 Israeli civilians, according to a report from Newsweek citing Israeli data. We’re expected to believe that Hamas had a weapon capable of killing hundreds and only just now decided to use said weapon, and only used it against on their own people, based on little more than what Biden may or may not have seen, on unspecified State Department evidence that has yet to materialize, and on the dubious claims of an Israeli military that has been caught telling one lie after another.
Anyone who doesn’t suspect the Israeli military as culpable in this barbaric attack is willfully ignorant to the current situation in Gaza, in which “Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing” in the name of self-defense, to quote UN human rights expert Francesca Albanese.
As well, while the horrific images in Gaza are rightfully leading to protests everywhere, it should be noted Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have killed dozens of Palestinians and displaced at least two Palestinian villages, according to a report from The Intercept. Again, the mundane everyday violence Palestinians experience is treated as business as usual by those responsible, while occasionally their PR personnel have to do damage control when their crimes are just a little too unpalatable for American eyes.
In times such as these, it is necessary for there to be accurate reporting on the motivations, histories and actions of all parties involved.
20 years after the U.S. invaded Iraq based on the deliberate lie that it possessed weapons of mass destruction, the word alone of the U.S. President and the State Department during times of war should not be enough to satisfy anyone.