White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Oct. 27 that the United States isn’t trying to impose limits on Israel in its military operation to destroy the Hamas terror group that is said to be using human shields in places like schools and hospitals to protect its fighters.
“We’re not drawing red lines for Israel,” Mr. Kirby said at a briefing, adding that Washington supports Israel’s right to defend itself and its people after Hamas operatives raided Israeli communities on Oct. 7 and killed hundreds of civilians, including children, after subjecting some to torture.
His remarks come as some experts have questioned whether the reason that Israel’s expected ground invasion of Gaza hasn’t yet taken place is due to pressure from the United States.
Mr. Kirby’s insistence that Washington wasn’t imposing any “red lines” on its ally came after he was asked to comment on Israeli military plans to expand their ground operation in Gaza earlier on Friday.
The Israeli military said Friday that the Hamas terror group has dug in deep underground in Gaza while revealing intelligence showing a vast network of tunnels and control rooms under Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.
A Hamas spokesman denied the Israeli military’s claim about the network of tunnels and command rooms under the hospital, accusing Israel of spreading lies as “a prelude to committing a new massacre against our people.”
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry has said that since Israel began its campaign of airstrikes to degrade Hamas’ ability to operate, over 7,000 Gazans have been killed.
‘That’s What Friends Can Do’
The White House spokesman would not comment on the expanded ground operation but said that U.S. officials have been talking to their Israeli counterparts on the need to protect civilians in Gaza as well as efforts to safely return the hostages kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from their homes in southern Israel and possibly hidden away deep underground in stash rooms.“Since the very beginning, we have had and will continue to have conversations with them about the manner in which they’re doing this,” Mr. Kirby said. “And we have not been shy about expressing our concerns over civilian casualties, collateral damage, and the approach that they might choose to take.”
“That’s what friends can do, and we’re friends,” Mr. Kirby added.
“In addition to the attacks carried out in the last few days, ground forces are expanding their operations tonight,” Mr. Hagari said.
‘They Try to Cajole’
Some experts find that surprising given the fact that it has now been 20 days since Hamas terrorists mounted their surprise incursion into Israel and killed some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and Israeli leaders vowed a forceful response.One such expert is Victor Davis Hanson, a professor emeritus of classics at California State University and a senior fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University.
“The American people are with Israel, and Joe Biden knows that,” he said in an interview on JNS TV in the context of the country’s war against Hamas, citing polls that show roughly 65 percent of Americans support Israel’s right to take action in Gaza that would degrade Hamas’ ability to carry out future attacks against Israeli civilians.
“And that’s why he says things that seem supportive of Israel at times, and so does [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken,” Mr. Hanson continued. “I don’t think they are. They only put their hand in the wind and feel where the next poll is going.”
“Or that they are ideologically for—I don’t want to say for the killing of Hamas, that would be libelous—but I think they’re indifferent to the effect it has on Israel, and I say that without rhetorical exaggeration,” he said.
Mr. Hanson argued that the Biden administration finds Israel an “irritant,” but, given U.S. public support for Israel, they’re neither politically able to halt weapons flows to the country nor to say “you can’t do this” (i.e., drawing red lines).
So instead they “try to urge, they try to cajole, but they have a problem,” Mr. Hanson said, and that this “problem” is that “65 percent of the American people support what Israel is doing right this second.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli military insists that hundreds of Hamas operatives flooded into the Al-Shifa hospital to hide after carrying out their Oct. 7 attacks, adding that Israel is determined to take them out.
“Right now, terrorists move freely in Shifa Hospital and other hospitals in Gaza,” Mr. Hagari said at his briefing Friday.
“Hamas wages war from hospitals” in Gaza, he told journalists, adding that the group is using fuel stored in medical facilities to carry out its operations.
“Hamas terrorists operate inside hospitals precisely because they know the IDF distinguishes between terrorists and civilians. Israel targets terrorists, Hamas targets Israeli civilians and Gazan civilians,” Mr. Hagari said.
Not long before Mr. Hagari announced that Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza would expand, the country’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the ground operation could “take a long time” in part because it aims to dismantle Hamas’ underground network of tunnels.
