On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby acknowledged that Hamas uses civilians as human shields “because they know that the burden is on the Israeli Defense Forces to try to preserve and protect civilian life” but responded to a question on Hamas terrorists hiding under hospitals and whether that makes them targets by saying that “This is the extra burden that we’ve been talking about for the Israeli Defense Forces as they try to go after Hamas leaders.”
Host Andrea Mitchell asked, “Even if Israel’s claim that Hamas command and control is under al-Shifa, as well as under other hospitals, other Hamas units, even if that were to prove true — and my understanding is that the U.S. has not independently confirmed that intel. — does that justify striking a hospital? Questions have been raised by Gen. Brown, C.Q. Brown, and others, that even getting a couple of terrorists or a terrorist cell doesn’t justify targeting a hospital.”
Kirby responded, “This is the extra burden that we’ve been talking about for the Israeli Defense Forces as they try to go after Hamas leaders. And you’re right, I’m not going to speak about intelligence matters, but we know, it’s open source reporting that Hamas headquarters themselves in things like hospitals and schools and they have tunnels underneath residential complexes. They’ve put the innocent people of Gaza at risk, in harm’s way just by how they headquarter themselves. And it does create an added burden now for the Israeli Defense Forces. They have a legitimate right and a need, in fact, a responsibility, to go after [this] leadership of Hamas, but they also have to be mindful of civilian casualties, as particularly when it comes to a hospital, where you have patients, who, they can’t evacuate on their own. They’ve got significant health issues and your reporter rightly talking about those young, premature babies. They are victims of this as well, and they can’t help themselves out of this problem. So, the Israeli Defense Forces have that extra burden, Andrea, of how to deal with this.”
Later, he added, “Hamas, they do headquarter themselves in places of civilian infrastructure, whether that’s schools or government buildings or hospitals, certainly, tunneling under homes. They deliberately try to place the people of Gaza, innocent Palestinians, between them and the Israeli Defense Forces, because they know that the burden is on the Israeli Defense Forces to try to preserve and protect civilian life. They know that and they’re deliberately putting these people in harm’s way. … It is against the law of armed conflict to do exactly what Hamas is doing, tunneling and creating human shields out of the innocent people of Gaza.”
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