Israel raids Gaza Al Shifa hospital with Biden’s blessing
Israel’s IDF have stormed the hospital which has been much in the news as they believe that there was a hamas bunker operating below. But how seriously can these claims be taken given the IDF’s previously amateur fake news report?
Israeli forces said on Wednesday November 15th that they were carrying out an operation in Gaza’s largest hospital, targeting a suspected Hamas command centre located below thousands of ailing and sheltering civilians, reports Al Jazeera, Reuters and others.
Despite warnings from the United States and others that the Al-Shifa hospital must be protected, the Israeli forces said in the early hours that they had entered the compound in Gaza City.
“Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital,” the military said in a statement.
Hamas said in a statement thought that it “holds the occupation (Israel) and President Biden fully responsible for (the) occupation army’s raid of Al Shifa medical complex”.
Hamas said a US intelligence statement the day previously that the US supported Israel’s conclusion that the militants had operations at Al Shifa “was a green light” for the raid.
“The White House and the Pentagon’s adoption of the false (Israeli) narrative, claiming that the resistance is using Al Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation to commit more massacres against civilians,” Hamas said.
There was no immediate US comment on the raid.
Hamas however denies deliberately locating paramilitary assets and personnel at hospitals, schools and other civilian buildings.
The military operation, according to some, appears to be a stunt of some sort, as it is odd that Israel is not being honest about its intentions.
Few western journalists even have bothered to look into the building and whether the claim by Israel about the lower leveled Hamas base has any credibility.
Hamas denies deliberately locating paramilitary assets and personnel at hospitals, schools and other civilian buildings.
According to Tablet Magazine however, “the Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker, however, not because they are trying to score propaganda points, or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters—but because they built it. Back in 1983, when Israel still ruled Gaza, they built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath Shifa hospital—which is one among several reasons why Israeli security sources are so sure that there is a main Hamas command bunker in or around the large cement basement beneath the area of Building 2 of the Hospital…”
It’s hard to take at face value what the IDF is claiming and what it tells journalists about the hospital raids and other attacks on them. Just the day previously, a video made by the IDF claimed that another hospital was being used by Hamas, but has since been dismissed as fake news by most western news outlets except CNN. A diagram on a wall which is claimed to have been a staff sheet for hamas fighters was a work rota for doctors, an elevator shaft was presented as an entrance to a tunnel (above) and weapons which are claimed to have been found are almost certainly arranged by the IDF.
Given this, it’s difficult to know just how much we are being presented by the IDF as truthful. The United Nations estimates that at least 2,300 patients, staff and displaced civilians are inside the Al Shifa hospital trapped by days by Israeli air strikes.
READ: Top EU diplomat outlines post-war plan for Gaza
Witnesses have described conditions inside as horrific, with medical procedures taking place without anaesthetic, families with almost no food or water living in corridors, and the stench of decomposing corpses filling the air.
“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” said hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” he added, estimating that 179 bodies had been interred so far, including seven newborns who died when their incubators lost power.
Before the assault, US President Joe Biden urged Israel to take “less intrusive action relative to the hospital.”
“The hospital must be protected,” he said.
The White House said previously that US intelligence sources had corroborated Israel’s claim that Hamas has buried an operational centre under the hospital.
Hamas and another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, “operate a command and control node from Al-Shifa in Gaza City,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“They have stored weapons there and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility.”
Reuters/AP/AFP
