Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with Israeli ‘intelligence’

[IBDaMann]

I think that most if not all here would agree that the U.S. is engaged in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

I disagree. The US is simply supporting Ukraine. Notice that the US did not employ Ukraine to invade Russia, and only took sides after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Due to Iran's support of Hamas and the U.S.'s support of Israel, I think that we could also agree that Iran is involved in a Proxy war with the U.S. in Gaza.

Nope. Iran wants to destroy Israel. That has nothing to do with the US and everything to do with the Ayatollah revealing himself as the twelfth imam. Israel did not invade Iran, so the US isn't attacking Iran through Israel. Iran's attack on the music festival was absolutely nothing new.

However, I also strongly suspect that the U.S. is spending an awful lot more to support Israel than Iran is to support Hamas.

Sure. If you are going to tell me that the US gives away taxpayer dollars like Santa Claus gives away gifts, I'll tell you that whatever you say is an understatement.

 

[Walt]

I'd also like to point out that I think the evidence is quite compelling that there is a better alternative, that being negotiations, which is finally what's happening now.

This is what Hamas wants, so it would be difficult to negotiate with them a better alternative.

 

[Scott]

I think Israel's government chose the option they thought to be best.

... and immediately launched air strikes against civilian noncombatants that never attacked Israel, against noncombatants who Israel had an obligation to protect the moment they invaded Gaza. I don't see how you think that was somehow the right response and attacking Iran was somehow not.

Who said I think it was the right response? As far as I'm concerned, it was a terrible response. I said "I think Israel's government chose the option they thought to be best", and I still think that's what they did. I just think their thinking on this matter is poorly informed.

Ofcourse, we need to consider that this is a government that has long wanted a "Greater Israel"

In much the same way Hitler wanted to restore the magnificence of the Reich ...

Indeed. Truly tragic that a nation of jewish people would do something so similar to what was done to jewish people during World War II.

...and to remove the option of the Gazan palestinians from having much say in who governs them.

In much the same way Hitler eliminated the civil rights of the Jews.

Agreed.

 

[Scott]

Again, I strongly disagree with this statement. I think that the cause of these attacks is not Iran,...

Iran is responsible for all the attacks on Israel. All of them.

It's easy to make unsubstantiated assertions. It's much harder to show solid evidence for them. From what I've read, I think the evidence is strong that Iran has aided Hamas in their military endeavours, but I haven't seen any evidence that they planned any of their actions. I -have- heard that they have explictly said that they weren't informed of the October 7th attack in advance, strongly suggesting that they had little if anything to do with that specific military initiative carried out by Hamas.

...but rather Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Nope. All the attacks are committed by Hamas and Hezbollah, who are hired and directed by the Ayatollah.

2 things here:

1- We can certainly agree that the October 7th attack was committed by Hamas.

2- I've seen no evidence that Hamas is simply a hired hand of the Ayatollah. I just read an article from The Guardian that detailed the planning for the October 7th attack. Iran was mentioned all of once deep into the article. Here's what they said:

**
Israeli security officials believe that Hamas’s political leadership overseas was not told the details of the operation, and nor were Hamas’s sponsors in Iran, though both were probably aware that something was being planned. “It was a very tight circle,” a source close to Hamas told Reuters last month.
**

So there you have it- Israeli security officials opining that Iran was "probably aware that something was being planned". Hard to get much vaguer than that, and ofcourse no evidence that even that was true.

Therefore, the path to minimizing civilian deaths is to treat these Palestinians in a more humane way.

Check your timelines. You'll notice that the Ayatollah sends Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel even when Israel treats the Palestinians very, very well ... because the two are independent. Iran will never stop attacking Israel unless somebody makes them stop.

Telling me to check my timelines isn't evidence of anything. If you believe that the Ayatollah is 'sending' Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel, show me the evidence. From where I stand, I think it's more that Hamas and Hezbollah are composed of people who want to fight- Iran's just one of their financiers. As to your notion that Israel has at times treated Palestinians "very, very well", do you have any evidence for this?

 

[Scott]

Regardless, I think Israel's setting the tone for more animosity towards it from its neighbours, which I think we can agree should be something that any intelligent government should try to avoid.

Israel wants the additional animosity. Israel wants other Arab countries to enter the fray so that Israel can "cry for help" and then laugh when other countries begin annihilating Arabs at a much greater rate. It will be the Israeli dream.

I haven't seen any evidence for any of these assertions.

 

[Scott]

IBD is convinced that "antisemitic" means "against Semites", including Arabs - although, as I pointed out, NO dictionary even mentions this.

I certainly haven't seen a dictionary that says that "antisemitic" means "against Semites", but IBD did point to a dictionary that references the fact that Arabs are members of a semitic group. From there, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to intuit that someone who is antisemitic would be against not just jewish people, but other Semetic people as well. You may wish to ask yourself why it is that this isn't the case. I suspect it has to do with that old adage about winners writing the history books- I think we could agree that they tend to write the dictionaries as well.

The Hamas control centers must be somewhere,

If they still exist, sure. Again, I think IBD's response to your point, also in his post referenced above, is worthy of note. In essence, the fact that Hamas control centers must be somewhere, assuming there are still one or more of them in Gaza, is hardly a good rationale for bombing a hospital.

 

[Scott]

Im sorry, but it's impossible.

Well, I tried .

 

[Hawkeye10]

Scott Ritter, who is on my grapevine because he has established a strong record of being right, reports that the IDF is getting their asses kicked by both Hezbollah and Hamas:

Scott Ritter: From Ceasefire to Crossroads: Decoding Israel's Strategic Choices

Also, he as from the jump been saying some variation of "Look, I know the reputation of the IDF and Mossad, but the truth is they are not very good, they have long not been very good, Lebanon 2006 being just one example".

 

[Hawkeye10]

There are only two choices re oct 7/8....either both the IDF and Mossad turned up completely incompetent, or what happened is what the Zionists currently in control of Israel wanted to happen.

Either way Israel is fucked.

 

[Scott]

There are only two choices re oct 7/8....either both the IDF and Mossad turned up completely incompetent, or what happened is what the Zionists currently in control of Israel wanted to happen.

Either way Israel is fucked.

From what Scott Ritter said, looks like it was more the first. Not completely incompetent, there were those female monitors and some others warning the brass to go on alert, it's just that the higher ups had become arrogant in their belief that Hamas wasn't going to attack to the point that they refused to listen to the soldiers on the ground.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

From what Scott Ritter said, looks like it was more the first. Not completely incompetent, there were those female monitors and some others warning the brass to go on alert, it's just that the higher ups had become arrogant in their belief that Hamas wasn't going to attack to the point that they refused to listen to the soldiers on the ground.

plus, a massive attack with dead babies gains more public support for bombings.

 

[Hawkeye10]

From what Scott Ritter said, looks like it was more the first. Not completely incompetent, there were those female monitors and some others warning the brass to go on alert, it's just that the higher ups had become arrogant in their belief that Hamas wasn't going to attack to the point that they refused to listen to the soldiers on the ground.

As time goes on my sense is that there are increasing doubts that this was incompetence as Netanyahu is using the situation to stay in power and out of jail, and the Zionist hard liners are using it to drive the Palestinians out of GAZA. Do not forget there were extensive reports that Arab powers made it clear after the last mowing of the lawn that that was the last time that they would pay to rebuild GAZA.

 

[Guno צְבִי]

Scott Ritter, who is on my grapevine because he has established a strong record of being right, reports that the IDF is getting their asses kicked by both Hezbollah and Hamas:

Scott Ritter: From Ceasefire to Crossroads: Decoding Israel's Strategic Choices

Also, he as from the jump been saying some variation of "Look, I know the reputation of the IDF and Mossad, but the truth is they are not very good, they have long not been very good, Lebanon 2006 being just one example".

Ritter is a convicted sex offender

 

[Guno צְבִי]

I just saw an article with a similar name as the name of this thread, thought it was good considering some people here seem to believe the Biden Administration's line here. Quoting its introduction and conclusion below, constructive comments welcome...

**
Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’

WYATT REED·NOVEMBER 15, 2023

As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis.

With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked.

“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used 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,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”

On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated.

“This is newly-downgraded information that we felt was important to get out today, because there have been a lot of questions about the hospital and how Hamas operates, and so it was important to get out there,” Singh insisted.

Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes, and both local healthcare workers and international humanitarian organizations back that up. “I’m sick and tired of these [Israeli] claims that there are Hamas command centers [in hospitals],” Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert told Al-Jazeera on November 12 [video link in original] . Having performed life-saving procedures for several weeks inside Shifa during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Gilbert noted, “As I’ve said 100 times… we’ve never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Al-Shifa,” adding “we’ve been able to roam freely.”

But that did little to prevent Israeli troops from waging an all-out assault on the facilities. As Israeli forces surrounded Shifa hospital on Tuesday with the full-throated support of the Biden administration, arresting journalists outside the facility and violently clearing displaced people from its grounds, doctors inside were forced to move babies in intensive care from one wing of the hospital to another to save their lives. A lack of fuel had already forced many of those infants off vital oxygen supply units.

[snip]

Throughout the blood-spattered onslaught on the Gaza Strip, US officials have consistently taken Israeli claims at face value, even parroting Tel Aviv’s excuses when prompted. Following Biden’s now-retracted claim to have seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” US officials continue to exhibit a remarkable willingness to side with the Israeli government and echo its talking points.

During a November 14 press briefing [video link in original] , a reporter asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about the Israeli government’s habitual spreading of “misinformation.” Miller responded by brushing off Israel’s parade of fabrications as an inevitable feature of the “fog of war.”

“In the fog of war, from thousands of miles away at the podium,” the spokesman insisted, “I have no way to independently adjudicate the various claims that are being made.”
**

Full article:
Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’ | The Grayzone

You have been outted as russian disinfo slug

 

[Guno צְבִי]

Claim: "I went to prison for three years because of what I believe in."

Who said it: Scott Ritter, the disgraced U.N. weapons inspector, anti-war zealot, and Russian propagandist who was convicted of multiple sex crimes in 2011 after exposing himself on a web camera while chatting with an undercover police officer who repeatedly identified himself as a 15-year-old girl.

Context: The former inmate made these comments while promoting his new book in Russia, where he is warmly received thanks to his enthusiastic support for the invasion of Ukraine. Ritter was briefly suspended from Twitter last year for calling President Joe Biden a "war criminal" and accusing Ukrainian authorities of committing mass murder against their own citizens.


https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/...-went-to-prison-because-of-what-i-believe-in/