President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter in Israel on Wednesday what made him confident that the Israelis weren’t behind the explosion that killed hundreds at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday.

Biden responded that it was “the data I was shown by my Defense Department.”

Two U.S. officials told ABC News the Pentagon independently concluded the Gaza hospital blast was likely caused by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short of its target.

  • freepalestine@monyet.cc
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    1 year ago

    I just want to respectfully remind everyone that just because this tragedy was likely not perpetrated by Israel, it does not mean they are absolved of any of the hundreds of war crimes they have already committed.

    • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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      Just because they did a lot of bad things doesn’t mean that you can blatantly lie about killing 500 civilians and then get away with it. Can Israel lie about Hamas beheading 500 babies? And when they do, are you going to accept the narrative of well even if they didn’t do it, they did a lot of bad things? Don’t think so.

      I get why you’re saying that, but that doesn’t help anyone.

      • SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I mean, Isreal bombed that same hospital 2 days earlier, was conducting bombing campaigns in the area, ordered the evacuation of the hospital less than 24 hours before, and kept changing their story around it. It was a pretty fair assumption that it was them until more evidence was produced.

        • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Israel was asking every place that had civilians in the north, including this hospital, to evacuate them south. Which itself is highly problematic, but the warnings were not specific to this hospital.

    • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      They killed multiple journalists earlier this week and killed at least 6 in a strike on a school and this hospital debacle has drowned all of that out.

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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      Can we hold hamas (and palestine for giving them a holdout) for their war crimes, or is your logic only one-way?

    • snooggums@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, is there any place in southern Gaza that isn’t packed full of the people they told to move there from the north for ‘safety’?

        • V17@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Israel has killed thousands and displaced millions…because they think it’s their god given right to conquer the land. most of the country agrees that arabic people should not have the right to live in land that was palestine a few years back.

          The goal of palestinian nationalists is literally the same thing with the roles reversed. I fail to see a difference apart from the fact that Israel is stronger and we’re more critical towards it since it’s a democracy and should know better.

          • freepalestine@monyet.cc
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            1 year ago

            Palestinians are brutalized on a daily basis. Their land was stolen after WW2 then slowly usurped and terrorized while the world kept funding Israel. That was originally palestinian land, and there were even jewish communities in that palestinian land. Now it is an ethnostate that lets new yorkers take some guy’s ancestral home because he’s of the correct ethnic category.

            e: it’s quite strange to have to explain to people why a genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid is bad.

            • V17@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Palestine as a country has never existed and Jews have as much of a historical claim to the regions as Palestinians do.

              • freepalestine@monyet.cc
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                1 year ago

                So for you, a millennia of history, distinct cultures, and dialect are meaningless. People who migrated and forcibly colonized in 1948, with no connection to the region or land have as much of a claim to it as an ethnicity who has lived there for centuries.

                So if that’s your argument do you just believe that israel has the right to go on a conquest and slaughter palestine? Genuine question.

                • V17@kbin.social
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                  So if that’s your argument do you just believe that israel has the right to go on a conquest and slaughter palestine? Genuine question.

                  I don’t believe my comment indicated that. I simply don’t believe that Palestine has the right to go on a conquest and slaughter Israel either.

                  There are things that Israel did that I strongly disagree with, in recent history most of them are connected to West bank settlements. There are more things that I disagree with that Palestine did. I think that the 1948 UN proposed 2-state solution would have been more than reasonable, and it would have likely put Palestine into a much better position than it’s in now, but one can’t change the past. We’ll see if Israel government becomes more reasonable and thinks of a more current lasting solution, but I’m not holding my breath.

                  So for you, a millennia of history, distinct cultures, and dialect are meaningless.

                  Why do you think so? Jews also lived in the area, and the ones who came later afaik generally migrated and purchased their land legally, with the exception of migration during WW2, which was not legal, but imo pretty understandable since it was literally done by refugees running from the holocaust. People argue that it wasn’t kosher since the region was under British control, but before that it was under the control of Osmans and before that the region was afaik under control of someone who conquered it for most of its history. It has never been a country.

                  Obviously this doesn’t give Israel a claim over the whole region, but I don’t think they have any less of a right for existence than Palestine.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago
    1. He was asked on the street by a random reporter.

    2. His quote includes “likely”

    3. For the last couple years Bidens off the cuff remarks haven’t exactly been reliable.

    Yet people are treating this as an official stance of the US Government…

    • li10@feddit.uk
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      I’ll take what the president says as the stance of the US government, and I don’t think that’s remotely unreasonable…

      If he’s making mistakes with off the cuff remarks, then he needs to stop making off the cuff remarks.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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        I’ll take what the president says as the stance of the US government

        It’s certainly more likely to be the correct way if looking at it than it was a few short years ago.

        • fubo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Nobody thinks it was Hamas. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is a different Iran-supported group.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            No one from the US government has said it was anyone…

            Just “it doesn’t look like Israel is responsible”

            Yet people are acting like it’s undeniable proof…

              • Fades@lemmy.world
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                The same people who jumped on the Israel definitely bombed that hospital bandwagon are now so sure that nothing short of 100% proof could ever sway them

    • vertigo3pc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Iraq has WMD’s” is a similar statement, backed by an entire administration, that also led to unnecessary deaths.

      Its a political statement, because if Israel did attack the hospital, then that’s another outright war crime right after Israel was threatened by Jordan, Lebanon, and Iran.

    • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Uh, did you miss this part?

      Two U.S. officials told ABC News the Pentagon independently concluded

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        Wow shocker the pentagon is defending its close partner in the war. Ill beleive them when they actually release evidence not just “The pentagon said so.”

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        The embedded tweet:

        While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday.

        So the investigation isn’t concluded, there might not have even been an official investigation, and all they’re saying is Israel “isn’t responsible”.

        None of what OPs headline claims.

        • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          That’s a tweet from the white house national security council. That’s completely independent of the article’s claim that two pentagon officials gave them info.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            So those two officials haven’t officially said it…

            And even if they did say it to journalists, there’s nothing to back it up?

            • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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              What exactly are you trying to get at? I’ve literally rebuked every claim you’ve made, but your stance just seems to boil down to “they are lying.”

    • Stamau123@lemmy.worldOP
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      1. He was asked on the street by a random reporter.

      Out of anything this is the strangest complaint. Why wouldn’t he answer a street reporter?

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        Because Biden’s biggest fans have spent years defending his misspeaking by saying his stutter makes him get words mixed up when he’s randomly asked questions…

        So when he’s stopped to get asked a random question, we need to wait a day or two to see if that’s what he really meant to say, or if his stutter made him somehow say the wrong words again.

        • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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          If the administration comes out with a revision or clarified updated statement then I’ll likely accept that too. For now, words out of the presidents literal mouth are as much of an official statement that I need.

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                For now, words out of the presidents literal mouth are as much of an official statement that I need.

                The most recent seven…

                I didn’t think I needed to specify that

                • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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                  Admittedly Biden is old and boring and sometimes confusing. Trump was a gaslighter whose words also represented the office, but that I couldn’t trust.

                  I don’t have to wake up worrying about some dangerous shit that Biden tweeted though. I’ll take this any day of the week.

  • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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    For the reference, this is about 500 people:

    Some radical estimations talked of -1000 deaths. This is 1000 people:

    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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      Both of those estimates come from Hamas sources (well the 1000 people one IDK where you got that from).

      JFC people you can criticize Israel without gobbling up a terrorist organization’s fat propaganda dick. For now we just have no way to know how many people died in that hospital. Find another war crime to criticize Israel for, they’re not that hard to come by.

      • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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        You don’t get it. This is to show how ridiculous 500 people claim is. Was the parking lot full of clown cars? If not, 500 claim is pretty much self evident fake news, let alone a thousand.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          Yeah if they’d said a dozen people died I’d believe it. That crater looked like a stick of TNT went up, not a 2000 pound bomb.

          If it has exploded directly overhead in the center of 500 people packed like sardines I don’t think it could have killed more than a couple dozen.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          Ooh gotcha. Unfortunately I’ve read some wild conspiracy theories about this in the last few days so I immediately thought this was more of the same… sorry lol

          • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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            I get that. It’s one thing to blame Israel for bombing civilian targets but those Hamas apologists are mental gymnastics Olympians.

        • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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          Yeah, the hospital wasn’t filled with civilians hurt/running away from bombings after Israel told them to run away because they’re gonna bomb them again.

          No way it would have had +500 humans in there.

            • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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              The parking loot is a part of the hospital.

              Does it seem out of this world to you that there would be +500 humans in the parking lot of a hospital in a crisis like this?

              • Spzi@lemm.ee
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                Yes, that might be the case under the current circumstances. The above picture helped to imagine what 500 people look like crammed squarely in a space. I doubt the 500 hypothetical people resting in the parking lot were placed more tightly than that.

                Next, look at pictures of the detonation crater, which has the size of a sewer manhole. Imagine that explosion going off in the middle of the audience of 500 people. Would they all die from that? The sheer amount of body mass and flesh would shield the people in rows 20+ from the explosion.

                I bet you couldn’t kill 500 people with whatever exploded there, if you tied them directly onto the bomb, or rocket, or whatever. Is there any precedent of a terrorist attack or military strike or anything which killed that many people with a similarly small explosion?

                • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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                  You can’t imagine people running away from being bombed being more tightly packed than people attending a conference?

                • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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                  You have never seen a parking lot as big as the conference in your image?

                  You can’t possibly imaging 500 hundred humans running from being bombed staying together in a parking lot of a hospital that is smaller than the conference in your images? You can’t imagine that at all?

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    I don’t consider the Pentagon to be a reliable source for information when they have a vested interest in the conflict. Remember when they said Saddam Hussain had “weapons of mass destruction” which was used to justify the Iraq invasion? Well there never were any. The Pentagon manufactured that disinformation, and media parroted it like loyal puppets.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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      Yeah why are people believing this? I’m sure someone will quietly peddle it back just like they did with the “40 beheaded babies” lie. This is blatant information warfare.

      • halfempty@kbin.social
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        The US State Department has a long-standing strong alliance with the Israelis. Billions of dollars of weaponry is sold to the Israeli military yearly, with a direct profit for the US defense industry.

        • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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          Israeli airstrikes killing civilians hasn’t stopped weapon sales before, so why would the pentagon lie about this one instance?

      • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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        Same as any other conflict… maintain the interests of US govt. and by extension rich oligarchs who have the house and Senate in their pockets.

  • GiovaMC@lemmy.world
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    This reads like: “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong”…

  • nephs@lemmy.world
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    Pentagon. The security agency of the country vetoing ceasefire agreement in the UN security council, in favour of Israel attacks.

    Independently of whom, exactly?

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      It is a different group. How much they align with each other and/or cooperate, I do not know.

      • hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest
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        Hamas is the closest thing to a real government that Palestine has. Hamas has stated a willingness to accept a 2 state solution, they used to want all the land back but now they just want peace. Some countries like NZ take the time to differentiate between Hamas (not terrorists, political arm) and Qassam Brigades (the terrorist military arm of Hamas).

        As far as I have read PIJ is just terrorist who wanna kill all Israelis.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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    The video seems pretty clear tbh. An aircraft dropping bombs would be quite loud, and a missile would be visible.

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      I haven’t seen anything personally convincing, there’s a photo of a pothole that’s supposed to prove something I guess?

      And the US government has a long and costly history of making up accusations against Arab Muslims.

      • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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        I’m not sure if you’ve seen the videos released by IDF of them bombing Gaza, but those bombs literally bring down entire buildings. They’re massive. If one like that fell on the hospital parking lot there would be a huge hole in the ground and the buildings around would be obliterated. Also if it was JDAM it would not have hit the parking lot unless for some reason that’s what they were targeting. It’s a guided bomb unlike the unguided rockets Hamas is using. JDAMs are accurate to 10 meters or so.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      Not to mention the damning word here is " likely "

      An area that’s small, and they don’t have it under 24/7 digital and visual surveillance? Doubtful

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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    Ah, if the CIA says it’s true, I’m sure they’re neutral and definitely not trying to push an agenda. The CIA famously never lies about the military capabilities of organisations against US interests.

    Seriously, you all fucking believe this? Shame on you all for your lack of pattern recognition skills.

    • Stamau123@lemmy.worldOP
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      I mean, it doesn’t appear to be out of the range of their other ordinance. Cars burnt out but Clay tiled awning still uncracked, road appears drivable. Unless you’re still working with the outdated information that this was an airstrike that killed ~500

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      If Israel was going to blow up a hospital, they would have done a better job. It’s pretty much the same blowback for partially and completely destroying one.

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      Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets towards Israel. (Pretty much all of them seem to have been blown out of the sky by the “iron dome” defense system.)