WASHINGTON — White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the United States has its own intelligence assessment that “corroborates” Israeli claims that Hamas used Shifa Hospital in Gaza as a “command and control node”.
Watch the briefing in the player above.
Hamas has denied claims that it is operating from inside the hospital or from tunnels below.
Kirby said the U.S. government had no information on whether Hamas was also using the Indonesian hospital in Gaza, where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks. On Monday, 12 people were killed when a shell hit the second floor of the hospital as Israeli forces battled militants around the hospital.
Israel denied bombing the hospital, saying its troops returned fire at militants targeting them from inside the compound.
Kirby said he had no news of negotiations to release the hostages. But Kirby said pauses in fighting would be necessary for the hostages to be freed.
Federal government employees from the State Department to NASA are circulating open letters demanding that President Joe Biden pursue a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas. Members of Congress take microphones outside the Capitol and condemn what they see as lawmakers’ silence on the toll on Palestinian civilians.
As the death toll rises in Gaza, Biden and Congress face unusually public challenges from within over their support for the Israeli offensive. Hundreds of administration and Capitol staffers are signing open letters, speaking to reporters and holding vigils, all in an effort to shift U.S. policy toward more urgent action to stem Palestinian losses.
“Most of our bosses at the Capitol don’t listen to the people they represent,” one of the members of Congress told the crowd at a protest this month. Wearing medical masks that hid their faces, the hundred or so congressional aides laid flowers in front of Congress to honor civilians killed in the conflict.
Federal employees’ objections to U.S. military and other support for Israel’s Gaza campaign are in part a result of changes occurring in American society more broadly. As the United States becomes more diverse, so does the federal workforce, including more people of Muslim and Arab descent. And polls show public opinion is shifting toward U.S. ally Israel, with more people expressing dissatisfaction with the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
After weeks of seeing images of bloodied children and fleeing families in Gaza, a significant number of Americans, including in Biden’s Democratic Party, disagree with his support for Israel’s military campaign. A poll conducted in early November by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 40 percent of the American public believed Israel’s response to Gaza had gone too far. The war shook college campuses and sparked nationwide protests.
By the end of last week, an open letter had been endorsed by 650 staff members of diverse religious backgrounds from more than 30 federal agencies, organizers said. Agencies range from the Executive Office of the President to the Census Bureau and include the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Defense.
A Biden policy official who helped organize the multi-agency open letter said the president’s rejection of calls to push Netanyahu for a long-term ceasefire had left some federal staffers feeling ” dismissed, in a way.”
“That’s why people use all kinds of dissent cables and open letters. Because we already tried to do it internally,” this person said.
The letter condemns both the Hamas killings of around 1,200 people in Israel during the militants’ October 7 incursion and the Israeli military campaign, which has killed more than 11,500 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Defense. health. The letter calls on the United States to press for a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians who the signatories say are being unjustly held by Israel, as well as greater overall action in favor of civilians in Gaza.
Organizers of the executive branch and congressional protests all spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, citing fear of professional and other repercussions. Federal employees who oppose U.S. policy appear to be seeking a balance, raising their objections in a way that doesn’t deprive them of a seat at the table or endanger their careers.
Some current and former officials and staffers said it’s the public nature of some of the federal employees’ struggles that is unusual. This worries some because it poses a potential threat to the functioning of government and cohesion within agencies.
The State Department has an honored tradition of authorizing formal, structured statements of dissent to American politics. It dates back to 1970, when U.S. diplomats resisted President Richard Nixon’s demands to fire foreign service officers and other State Department employees who signed an internal letter protesting the U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
Since then, foreign service officers and civil servants have used what is known as the dissent channel during moments of intense political debate. This includes criticism of the George W. Bush administration’s continuation of the war in Iraq, the Obama administration’s Syria policy, the Trump administration’s immigration restrictions on primarily Muslim countries and of the Biden administration’s handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
