In this image taken from a video released by the Israeli Defense Forces on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, Israeli soldiers conduct combat operations in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. [AP Photo/Israel Defense Forces via AP]
For weeks, Israel used its claims that the Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest, was being used as a military command center to justify a relentless bombardment of the hospital that killed dozens of people and prevented the wounded from entering or leaving, in a series of flagrant war crimes.
Admitting that there were no hostages inside the hospital, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, “We had strong indications that they [the hostages] were held in the Shifa hospital. If they were [there], they were taken out.”
In an October 27 post on X, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asserted that Al Shifa “acts as the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity.” The post was accompanied by an animation showing a sprawling complex, spanning hundreds of meters, underneath the hospital. Israel’s claims were reiterated multiple times by officials from the White House, Pentagon and State Department.
On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby asserted, “We have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.”
Biden repeated this unsubstantiated claim on Thursday, declaring, “Here’s the situation: You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital. And that’s a fact.”
Asked by a reporter to “detail for us what kind of evidence the U.S. has seen that Hamas has a command center under Al-Shifa Hospital,” Biden replied, “No, I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you.” An appeal from David North: Donate to the WSWS today
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On Wednesday, the IDF posted a video showing a half-dozen assault rifles, two flak jackets, and a computer which it claims were hidden behind an MRI machine at Al-Shifa. There was no attempt to explain why an MRI machine, with its powerful magnetic field, did not cause the weapons to fly across the room when it was in operation. This image taken from a video released by the Israeli Defense Forces, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, shows a few rifles the IDF says were found at the MRI center at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. [AP Photo/Israel Defense Forces via AP]
Israel’s “evidence” was so flimsy that even the US government was not shameless enough to back it.
In a press briefing Thursday, Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane asked Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, “So you’re saying that the video of a blurred laptop, flak jacket, a handful of rifles—that that backs up what you’ve been saying that Hamas is operating in the hospital?”
To this, Singh replied, “Hamas uses—Al-Shifa being one of them—hospitals in Gaza to conduct and to operate out of and to further execute on terrorist actions.”
Culhane asked, “Is there video to back that up?” to which Singh replied, “I’m just going to leave it at that.”
Later on Thursday, after searching the hospital area for two days, the IDF claimed to have found a vehicle on the hospital grounds packed with assault rifles and an opening leading to an underground structure.
In the 1980s, Israel itself undertook a renovation of the hospital, including what Haaretz noted was a “large cement basement that housed the hospital’s laundry and various administrative services.”
Since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the World Health Organization has recorded at least 137 attacks on healthcare facilities, resulting in 521 deaths and 686 injuries, including 16 deaths and 38 injuries of health workers.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is disastrous, amid mass hunger and dehydration. Thursday marked the fifth consecutive day with no update to the death toll, which stood at over 11,078 on Friday, of whom 4,506 were said to be children and 3,027 women. The United Nations attributed the lack of reporting to the “collapse of services and communications at hospitals in the north.”
Gaza’s telecommunications services were again shut down on Thursday, after providers announced that they had completely run out of fuel, and after Israel conducted strikes on communications infrastructure.
For the second consecutive day, no aid trucks entered Gaza, following the collapse of humanitarian infrastructure in the country due to lack of fuel. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said that it will no longer be able to coordinate any humanitarian aid convoys starting Friday.
Israeli forces attacked the Central Petroleum Station at the northern entrance of Al Maghazi refugee camp, killing nine people and injuring dozens more. The picture of the humanitarian situation provided by the United Nations is disastrous:
Active ground operations in the heart of Gaza city have continued to disrupt the movement of rescue teams and ambulances and people to obtain their essential needs, particularly food and water. Households in the western neighbourhoods of Gaza city appealed for help after their remaining food and drinking water had been depleted. Reportedly, they were unable to leave their homes because of the presence of Israeli ground troops and fighting. Multiple appeals by stranded households and family members underneath struck buildings and homes went unanswered; the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has been unable to respond to hundreds of calls to assist and evacuate.
There have been no bakeries active in northern Gaza for over ten days, and no wheat flour is available on the market. In a post on X, the World Food Program wrote, “23 bakeries on Oct 7th. 5 bakeries on Oct 17th. 1 bakery on Oct 31st. ZERO bakeries today. @WFP’s last contracted bakery in #Gaza has shut down due to the lack of fuel. Today, nearly the entire population is in need of food assistance.”The last working-class hero in England.
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According to the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, he has seen "no definitive evidence" that Hamas was using the hospital as a command centre or base for its operations. Surely the easiest person to convince in the whole that the IDF were right in asserting this must be Bowen. And even he isn't convinced. Perhaps next they'll call on Father Christmas to swear on the Bible or the Koran or the IKEA catalogue that there definitely are weapons stashed there because he has the letters written by children asking for AK-47s as presents, so what other proof do you need?
Analysis IDF evidence so far falls well short of al-Shifa hospital being Hamas HQ Julian Borger in Washington
Footage to date fails to prove Gaza complex was nerve centre for attacks on Israel, as military has claimed
Prior to their capture of Dar al-Shifa hospital, the Israel Defense Forces went to great lengths to depict the medical complex as a headquarters for Hamas, from where its attacks on Israel were planned.
The evidence produced so far falls well short of that. IDF videos have shown only modest collections of small arms, mostly assault rifles, recovered from the extensive medical complex.
That suggests an armed presence, but not the sort of elaborate nerve centre depicted in animated graphics presented to the media before al-Shifa was seized, portraying a network of well-equipped subterranean chambers.
Even the videos produced so far have raised questions under scrutiny. A BBC analysis found the footage of an IDF spokesperson showing the apparent discovery of a bag containing a gun behind an MRI scanning machine, had been taped hours before the arrival of the journalists to whom he was supposedly showing it.
In a video shown later, the number of guns in the bag had doubled. The IDF claimed its video of what it found at the hospital was unedited, filmed in a single take, but the BBC analysis found it had been edited.
Israeli forces say they are still carefully exploring the site. The video presentation of al-Shifa did show the main facilities lay deep underground, and it is quite possible the Israeli soldiers have not reached them yet, so there could be much more to come. But the attempt to present what has been found so far as significant is bound to fuel scepticism about whatever is presented later.
There are questions over how much of its graphic presentation of the network under al-Shifa was based on what Israel knew already; its own architect had built an extensive basement area there the last time Israel directly occupied Gaza, up to 2005.
All of this is significant under the Geneva conventions, which forbid military operations against hospitals unless “they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy”. This exception, spelled out in article 19 of the fourth Geneva convention, states specifically: “… the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants and not yet handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy”.
Israel ratified the Geneva conventions in 1951 and claims to observe the principle of proportionality under international humanitarian law, in which the direct military advantage anticipated from a military operation outweighs the civilian harm that can reasonably be anticipated as a consequence. Its observance of those principles is what is in question.
“Israel has failed to provide anywhere even close to the level of evidence required to justify the narrow exception under which hospitals can be targeted under the laws of war,” said Mai El-Sadany, a human rights lawyer and the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, in Washington.
“In the rare case that protection is lifted, Israel would have to provide civilians with a meaningful chance to evacuate and even still, any civilians who remain in the hospital following an evacuation order would still be protected by the rules of proportionality,” El-Sadany added. “At every stage of this legal assessment, Israel has fallen abysmally short. It has provided photo and video footage that is far from commensurate with its initial claims.”
At some point, these issues could be submitted to formal judgment. Israel does not recognise the international criminal court, but the court recognises Palestine as a member, and has been conducting an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territories since 2021.
Any such judgment would be years away. More immediately and directly, the details of the Shifa raid have an impact on the international climate in which Israel is conducting its war. Countries such as the UK, Germany and most importantly, the US, have resisted calls for a ceasefire on the grounds that Israel’s actions constitute legitimate self-defence. Every day without convincing evidence from the raid makes that argument harder to pursue.
The Biden administration has not only defended Israel’s operations but presented independent claims based on its own intelligence about the hospital. John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, framed the alleged Hamas facility there as a command “node” rather than a centre, and a possible weapons store.
The absence of evidence so far, is beginning to recall past US intelligence failures, most dramatically those preceding the Iraq invasion. It further isolates Washington on the world stage, and deepens already significant rifts within the administration itself.
This all smacks of what I've commented on previously with regards to the media switching to a more critical posture; calling for ceasefire now all the killng has been done, pretending to care about the civilian toll, calling for aid flows, FINALLY doubting the apartheid state's propaganda.
Still, if even the frigging fraudian is calling out your bullshit, you really have to up your game....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.