Updated 2023-12-01
2023-11-28 Jeremy Scahill: Israel’s “Lethal Lie” About Al-Shifa Hospital as Hamas Base Was Co-Signed by Biden The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill deconstructs Israel’s narrative around Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, including unsubstantiated allegations Hamas uses tunnels under the hospital as its command center — tunnels that Israel itself built. “We were told that this was like a Hamas Pentagon,” says Scahill, who describes how the Israeli military’s own evidence disproves its allegations that the hospital was dangerous enough to justify its siege and bombardment. The World Health Organization says Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, “is no longer functioning.” The Israeli disinformation campaign against it was a “lethal lie,” says Scahill. We also discuss the status of Palestinian prisoners who are now candidates for release in Israel and Hamas’s ongoing hostage exchange. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Tfkz33-sE
2023-11-27 Report: Israel Knew Real Hamas HQ; Lies Enabled “War of Obliteration of the Population “Although corporate news media have made it clear they don’t buy the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim that al-Shifa Hospital has been a cover for a Hamas command and control center and weapons armory, Western media have failed to report a much bigger story.
“The IDF and the Israeli government already knew when they launched their propaganda campaign about al-Shifa that Hamas had no military command and control facility hidden there because it had already found the complex kilometers away.” Porter gives details about the actual Hamas HQ, citing a leak to the Jerusalem Post.
“The real story of the Israeli effort to sell its argument that Hamas took over al-Shifa and other hospitals to coordinate attacks is the massive deception aimed at U.S. media and public opinion in order to justify Israel’s war of obliteration of the population of Gaza.
“That campaign of deceit has had the full-throated support of the Biden administration, which stands equally guilty of misleading the American people in its support for an illicit Israeli war.” https://accuracy.org/release/report-israel-knew-real-hamas-hq-lies-enabled-war-of-obliteration-of-the-population/?
2023-11-21 CNN Host STUNNED By Israeli Admission Tunnels under hospital built by Israel engineers in 1983. No conclusive evidence Hamas has command center there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTF1zLzrpw8
2023-11-21 Israel Built Bunker Under Shifa Hospital, Ex-Israeli PM Say Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said bunkers underneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza had been built by Israeli engineers decades ago and were later used by Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have targeted Gaza’s biggest medical facility which it said was the site of a Hamas command center, a charge denied by the group.
On Sunday, the IDF and Israel’s Shin Bet security agency released footage it said showed the site was a Hamas command center, with a clip of a tunnel shaft and a winding staircase which descends for 20 feet until it reaches a tunnel.
Amid widespread condemnation about Israel’s targeting of the hospital, CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour asked Barak if the IDF and the Israeli government had done a “good enough job of proving their claim” that there was a “major” Hamas command center and bunker under Shifa.
Barak replied “It’s already been known for many years that they have a bunker that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa,” which was used as a “command post” for Hamas and as a “junction of several tunnels”
“I don’t know to say to what extent it is a ‘major.’ It’s probably not the only…command post. Several others are under hospitals or in other sensitive places.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-built-bunker-under-shifa-hospital-ex-israeli-pm-says/ar-AA1ki5ib
2023-11-20 What Israel’s video of ‘Hamas tunnel’ under al-Shifa tells us The Israeli military also released a video that was recorded using two separate cameras on November 17. Spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters the entrance was uncovered when a military bulldozer knocked down the outside wall of the hospital, revealing a metallic spiral staircase that descended 10m (32ft) and led to a blast door, which is typically a metallic door with strong closures and hinges, designed to resist explosions. Such doors are usually found on facilities such as bomb shelters.
But military analyst Zoran Kusovac quoted a civil engineer from Gaza who suggested that the video is actually clips of two different tunnels spliced together. The first section of the video shows the vertical shaft that goes down. It shows features such as load-bearing concrete columns. They seem to be built with regular civil engineering techniques, which would have required large and loud machines such as concrete mixers. Such a construction could not have been done in secret, the way Hamas tunnels are usually built. The purpose of this construction remains unknown.
The second part of the clip shows the horizontal tunnel. This displays features characteristic of Hamas tunnels — pre-fabricated pieces connected together section by section. A control centre has not been found so far. Israeli troops have not yet tried to open the blast door at the end of the tunnel that they claim was under al-Shifa, fearing it could be booby-trapped, said Hagari.
Al-Shifa is not the only hospital that Israel has alleged is used by Hamas as a military base. On November 8, Al Jazeera’s verification unit Sanad disproved Israel’s claim that there was a Hamas tunnel under the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, commonly known as the Qatari Hospital.
Satellite images and archival photos showed that the hatch that Israel claimed was the tunnel entrance was actually part of a water reservoir system that was used to fill therapeutic pools for amputees, water the grounds, and also was an emergency water source.
2023-11-19 ‘It’s basically hell on earth’: Gaza City left totally bereft of healthcare In the early hours of Saturday morning, over piles of concrete and rubble, crowds of doctors and patients walked miles through the destroyed streets of Gaza City, forced to evacuate on foot from what remained of its hospitals. Medics said they feared leaving critically ill patients behind in a city now largely reduced to rubble and overtaken by Israeli forces, where hospitals had been operating without power, fuel, water or food.
“It’s basically hell on earth,” said William Schomburg, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, describing what remained of life inside the city.
For weeks, tens of thousands of people had hoped that taking refuge in Gaza City’s hospitals would provide the closest thing to safety as the enclave endured intensifying bombardments. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/19/its-basically-hell-on-earth-gaza-city-left-totally-bereft-of-healthcare
2023-11-17 Majority of ICU patients at Gaza’s largest hospital have died, Al-Shifa doctor says Most of the intensive care unit patients, who were on ventilators due to the lack of fuel and oxygen at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, have died, the doctor who leads the burns department at the hospital told Al-Jazeera over the phone from inside the facility on Friday.
Dr. Ahmad Mofeed Al-Mokhalalati noted a significant decrease in the number of premature babies in their care, with little hope for the survival of the remaining infants under the current conditions.
The hospital, which is Gaza’s largest, is grappling with a severe shortage of basic necessities — no water and no electricity in the main buildings of the compound, the doctor said. As a result, surgical operations have come to a halt due to the lack of electricity. This has led to an increase in suffering, especially among children who are now facing severe intestinal infections, a direct consequence of the unavailability of clean water, Al-Mokhalalati added. And although he noted that Israeli forces promised to provide food, the supply delivered was grossly insufficient, catering to for only 40% of those inside the hospital, he said. The situation escalated when the Israeli forces stormed two buildings within the medical compound, with tanks still present in the area, the doctor said. Snipers have been deployed around the hospital, adding a layer of fear and uncertainty according to Al-Mokhalalati. https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-11-17-23/h_97fe902b6b49d81f27362059314b87e9
2023-11-15 Israel army claims it found Hamas items at Al Shifa Israel’s army claims its troops have located a small number of items belonging to Hamas inside Al Shifa Hospital. Weapons and some gear were shown in video provided by the Israeli military. The claims cannot be independently verified. Hamas denies using the hospital as a base. The troops are seen searching the MRI building of the Al Shifa hospital complex. Mustafa Barghouti, the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, joins Al Jazeera live from Ramallah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qs829DDrSo
2023-11-15 IDF “Stripping” People At Al-Shifa | Israel A “Terror State”, Hamas A “Political Entity”: Erdogan Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel a “terror state” that is committing war crimes and violating international law in Gaza. Speaking to lawmakers in parliament, Erdogan repeated his view that Hamas is not a “terrorist organisation” but a political entity elected by the Palestinian people. The Turkish leader also called on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to announce whether Israel has nuclear weapons. An Al-Shifa Hospital official said the Israeli army was “blindfolding, stripping and taking displaced people sheltering to an unknown destination”. A video released by Gaza’s Ministry of Health shows medics at the Al-Shifa Hospital were hit by a shell while attempting to evacuate patients. Watch this video to know what’s latest in the Israel-Hamas conflict.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jln4HDJkiwo
202311-15 Hamas blames US for giving Israel ‘green light’ to raid al-Shifa Hospital US President Joe Biden is “wholly responsible” for the Israeli assault on Gaza’s largest hospital, said Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules the enclave. The accusation came in a statement on Wednesday, a day after the White House said US intelligence sources corroborated Israel’s claims that Hamas has buried an operational centre under the hospital. Al Jazeera’s White House correspondent, Kimberly Halkett , joins live from Washington, D.C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UOx_sgeKP8
2023-11-15 Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza raided while families of Hamas hostages march | DW News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuTUeoxRxKA
2023-11-15 ‘Time of truth’ on Israeli ‘command centre’: Analysis Andreas Krieg, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, says Israel’s allegations of al-Shifa Hospital being a Hamas command centre have been “going around for a decade”. “Israel has always pushed that narrative and now it’s the time of truth. They have boots on the ground and now they have to come up with evidence that this is actually true,” Krieg told Al Jazeera. “Evidence presented over the last couple days from other hospitals has not only been inconclusive but to a great deal has been inconsistent and showed a lot of flaws and misinformation, which also makes it difficult to trust their word. “From an intelligence point of view, I’d say the Americans are just copying the Israelis instead of actually presenting their own evidence. So there isn’t a lot out there.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaN_x05_NCc
2023-11-15 Worse Than Hell: Dr. Mads Gilbert Decries Israeli Military Raid on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza The Israel military raid on Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, is an “unprecedented attack on civilian society” in the “darkest time in modern history,” that is being justified in the West by “a deep-rooted and frightening racism,” says Dr. Mads Gilbert, who worked at Al-Shifa. “You don’t do these things to people you consider equal.” Dr. Gilbert is a Norwegian physician who just spent weeks in Cairo trying to enter Gaza to help his colleagues and has worked extensively in Palestine since 1981. “The civilian population of Gaza [have] done nothing wrong other than being born Palestinians in Gaza,” he says. “Israeli impunity has reached a new level, and we are all sinking into that abyss of disregard for human life.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4U-g9JIoQA
2023-10-25 Gaza’s Al-Shifa: A hospital on the brink On the verge of collapse, Gaza’s biggest hospital faces darkness as fuel, water and medicine are running out. Gaza’s main hospital is overflowing with both the living and the dead. The morgues are at capacity, and the bodies spill onto the street outside Al-Shifa Hospital.
Inside, hundreds of seriously injured people fill the hallways as the doctors decide which lives they can save. Men, women and children are among the wounded, and doctors work under immense pressure, knowing all services will soon grind to a halt when the backup generators stop working.
Israel’s siege on Gaza has meant no food, no water, no electricity and no fuel. As these necessities deplete faster than the hospital can cope, Al-Shifa is on the brink on catastrophe. While the hospital struggles to cope with arrivals of the injured, its staff also worries for other patients – 70 people on ventilators, hundreds receiving dialysis and 118 babies in incubators. Without electricity, they will die. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called the escalation of the conflict “abhorrent”.
“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken. Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues,” Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said in a statement.
We visit Al-Shifa’s neonatal intensive care unit. Most of the babies in incubators there are connected to mechanical ventilation. As the generators fall silent, the incubators will stop working, and most of these babies will die. Dialysis patients face the same fate. The dialysis department at Al-Shifa treats 1,800 patients who receive dialysis three times a week. We meet some of these patients whose lives are not only threatened by the bombardments but who are also vulnerable if they are unable to receive this life-saving treatment.
The hospitals of Gaza have also become a shelter to many Palestinians, and Al-Shifa is no different. It is now home to hundreds of displaced people with nowhere else to go. With basic services and necessities no longer available, we hear from several who had no choice but to come to the hospital for refuge. With so many dead, the morgues are overwhelmed. Undertakers struggle to identify and bury the deceased. When the generators stop working, the morgues will no longer be able to function.
No one knows the reality of what is happening in Al-Shifa better than the medics. They may be doctors or nurses, but they are also residents of Gaza. We meet these medical teams who tell us about the daily horrors they have witnessed since Israel’s latest assault began. https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2023/10/25/gazas-al-shifa-a-hospital-on-the-brink
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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