The US government is going to run out of adjectives soon
US official to address reducing harm to civilians during visit to Israel. Here's the latest
From CNN staff
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan will conduct “extremely serious conversations” with Israeli officials during his visit this week, the White House said, as the US looks to press Israel to conduct a more “surgical” campaign against Hamas.
Sullivan is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu along with the Israeli war cabinet during the trip, which begins Thursday. He also plans to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The visit comes as the White House struggles to square President Joe Biden’s comments about Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza with the administration’s insistence that Israel’s “intent” is to limit civilian casualties.
Aka damage control with Netanyahu for Biden's slip of the tongue. Kirby had his hands full with that one already.
How serious?
US State Department address Israel's treatment of detainees: Israeli officials told the US that, going forward, they will give detainees their clothes back "immediately" if strip-searches are conducted, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday. The remark comes after images emerged last week of men in Gaza who were detained by Israeli forces, blindfolded and stripped down to their underwear.
Miller also said that Israeli officials told the US that the photos should not have been taken or released, "and they made it clear going forward that that will not be their practice."
Can't make this shit up. Make sure no more images come out please.
Doctor says Gaza hospital staff and patients subject to harsh treatment by IDF
From CNN’s Kareem Khadder and Eyad Kourdi
A doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza told CNN on Wednesday that he and dozens of staff were taken from the premises by Israeli soldiers to a military screening center nearby.
The doctor, who declined to be named out of fear for his safety, said in a telephone interview that men at the hospital had complied with an order from the Israel military on Tuesday to form a line outside the hospital. They were then led about 500 meters away to a what he called a "filtration military camp" in Al-Birawi area on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya.
At that location, he told CNN, they were ordered to remove their clothes and were given blue overalls. They were handcuffed and sorted into groups based on their perceived threat level, the doctor claimed. He claimed the detainees were physically and verbally abused while handcuffed. At one point, the doctor said, when clashes broke out, Israeli soldiers had taken cover behind the detainees.
Who is using human shields now...
The doctor’s claims cannot be verified. CNN has asked the Israel Defense Forces for comment on how staff, patients and others at Kamal Adwan were processed after leaving the hospital. The doctor said that after several hours, the detainees — numbering about 1,000 people —were released and instructed to head toward specific areas in southern Gaza. Gunfire injured several of the group, he said, as they walked south.
“The IDF continues to act against Hamas strongholds in the north of Gaza, among them the area of Beit Lahia. The IDF takes all feasible precautions to mitigate harm to noncombatants, and is fighting against the Hamas terrorist organization, and not the civilians in Gaza or the medical teams operating there. This while following international law," the IDF said in a statement.
CNN received the same response from the IDF regarding several and separate instances about their operations in Gaza.
Tuesday’s casualties in Shejaiya are among the largest loss of life in a single incident for Israeli forces since their ground offensive began in Gaza.
The war "also comes with prices, but we will win,” the defense minister said. Gallant echoed the remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed earlier on Wednesday to continue the fight “until the end.” “I say this also in view of the great pain but also in the face of international pressures. Nothing will stop us. We go to the end, to victory,” Netanyahu said.
Gallant also said he was convinced that the continuation of Israel's military operation in Gaza will “pressure” Hamas to agree to another hostage release deal. When asked by a reporter whether Israel had reduced the number of air strikes in Gaza recently due to growing international pressure, Gallant said: “We are hitting the Gaza Strip with great force. Both in the north and in the south […] No one determines for us what to do.”
In response to a question about rising tensions between Israel and the US over the war in Gaza, Gallant said that US government officials are “doing a lot, above and beyond” to help Israel. “We will find the way to help the Americans support us, that’s the key. They want us to succeed,” he said.
Structure damage has doubled in the last month. Satellite analysis by researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University suggests that between 33% and 42% of all structures in the strip were damaged as of December 11. Comparatively, those figures were between 16% and 21% on November 10.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-gaza
Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas since October 7 have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs,” according to a new US intelligence assessment.
The assessment, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described to CNN by three sources who have seen it, says that about 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used have been unguided.
Asked for comment on the assessment, IDF spokesperson Nir Dinar told CNN, “We do not address the type of munitions used.”
Major Keren Hajioff, an Israeli spokesperson, said on Wednesday that “as a military committed to international law and a moral code of conduct, we are devoting vast resources to minimizing harm to the civilians that Hamas has forced into the role of human shields. Our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza.”
But experts told CNN that if Israel is using unguided munitions at the rate the US believes they are, that undercuts the Israeli claim that they are trying to minimize civilian casualties.
“I’m extremely surprised and concerned,” said Brian Castner, a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) officer who now serves as Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations.
“It’s bad enough to be using the weapons when they are precisely hitting their targets. It is a massive civilian harm problem if they do not have that accuracy, and if you can’t even give a benefit of the doubt that that the weapon is actually landing where the Israeli forces intended to,” Castner added.
A US official told CNN that the US believes that the Israeli military is using the dumb bombs in conjunction with a tactic called “dive bombing,” or dropping a bomb while diving steeply in a fighter jet, which the official said makes the bombs more precise because it gets it closer to its target. The official said the US believes that an unguided munition dropped via dive-bombing is similarly precise to a guided munition.
Again you can't make this shit up. Not that it matters when taking out whole buildings with people inside.
