The most cowardly way of fighting: Israel’s attack on Gaza hospitals, with Jon Elmer

I find it unspeakable that Israel's first targets of this ground operation were the hospitals I mean we showed uh a map earlier where you can clearly see uh the incursion zones um and then the attacks on hospitals so the Israeli Army has attacked uh sniper positions across from hospitals shooting into hospitals before they lifted up one trap and walked into a tunnel so I think that gives you an idea of what this war is about you can see those hospitals in the north they're they're basically um eliminated they're wiping out the hospitals they're moving all of the people that are taking shelter at the hospital they're killing people inside the hospital from outside the hospital and like those testimonies um um from hinden suar said that people were being sniped as they're leaving the hospital they created utter Panic um because people believed that uh you know even with their experience in all of these wars um people believed that shifa the the the largest hospital in Gaza um would kind of be the last place that you could be in Gaza um and Israel flipped that script and made it the opposite it they made it the first place targeted for eradication before they're able to even move into uh Gaza City they move in from the periphery and raid which is the words that they use that they Raid inside Gaza City so they're not actually moving and staying inside Gaza City they're raiding Gaza City to attack hospitals as the principal objective of their ground operation um a ground operation that they say the Israelis say um they've used 5,000 air strikes just in the two weeks of the ground operation 3,300 from airplanes 900 from Attack Helicopters and they're using drones um people talked about drones shooting at people leaving the hospitals so there's no access to and from the hospitals at all and they're laying Siege uh to the primary care facility that people have um you know that are living in the most desperate situations that's what they're um that's what their army has decided is the principal military objective in the Gaza Strip at this point and I think you know we talked on this program for a while about the cowardice of Israel and I want to say that on Friday watching this happen on Friday and Saturday was unbelievable believable I couldn't believe what we were watching the utter cowardice of attacking hospitals in the way that they did leaving people to die when they don't have the courage to stand and fight in any of these areas face to face with soldiers um but are willing to attack intensive care and Cardiology units and to cut uh you know neonatal uh premature babies off from their access like the brutality of that even after all these decades covering this conflict was shocking to me it was shocking to my colleagues um talking to them on Friday about what was happening um the Panic that ensued from a mechanized uh infantry attack on an unguarded hospital for all this Hamas command and control garbage the hospital was uh you virtually unguarded because it's a civilian facility with uh no military purpose um and that was their first Target but we see that they haven't been able to fight their way into banoon in the north um they're moving down the coastline from the north and they can't enter the beach refugee camp which is the uh buttress uh on the outside of attacking Gaza City they tried we can read from their reports they tried for two weeks to attack from the north to get at sh and they weren't able to get through the shotti camp the Israelis on Friday on the day that they were attacking these hospitals released a video showing their troops operating in the shatti refugee camp which on that map is uh is between al- Nasser hospital and Al shifa Hospital they're on the outskirts of that which means basically they've only driven down the beach uh on the Mediterranean Sea um and they showed photos being on the outskirts of shotti with their troops facing the sea because they're terrified of being attacked by Kasam frogmen who will attack them from the sea um and they're moving from there into the city to attack the hospitals the way that they moved to get at the hospitals if you look at the south of that map um in the bottom area where you can see the striped lines that's essentially The Cordon Zone that the Americans uh and the un uh negotiated with Israel to allow people um to to leave through those corridors Israel has used that Corridor to move its armor down to the beach front and attack from the south and move up an attack from south to North which is the opposite push of their entire two week ground campaign and in order to do that they had to attack Al's Hospital in tahaa which people reported from inside the hospital were shooting children inside of the hospital they had a snipers Nest across from the hospital but they're not leaving their armor they're not leaving their tanks um but they're attacking from the air um with artillery um and from drones attacking in the most cowardly way the most vulnerable Target in the entire Gaza Strip and when we've heard these Health reports you're talking about the most dire situation on planet Earth there's no other hospitals that are functioning doing surgeries uh without any tools at all the footage from alud hospital on Friday showed people surgeons doing surgery using cell phone lights the brutality of that type of Warfare when you don't have the courage to actually get out of your tanks and fight with the thousands of soldiers um that the Palestinians have defending their territory it just really I want to just say it was shocking even to me the red lines that Israel has crossed in this uh monthlong situation is just it's brutal and it's unspeakable and I can adjust and do the military analysis but I want to just say um that it's deeply disturbing what we're watching um and the fact that this is just allowed to happen and that the Americans talk about uh their humanitarian wing of this operation while we're watching this happen at shifa people in shifa are crowded inside the basement inside the the single uh building that's remaining Israel has bombed the entire Campus of shifa and taken out all of the buildings surrounding it we used to see pictures from shifa with hundreds and hundreds maybe thousands of people sleeping on the campus in the parking lot they're not doing that anymore because Israel dropped bombs the same bombs that uh Dr gassan talked about uh the ninja bomb they call it the Ginsu knife bomb that drops uh you know thousands of of knives on people Ming them and leaving them in the parking lot and then attacking the rescue workers in the parking lot of the hospital so that people can't actually leave shiffa Hospital the the paramedics the surgeons the doctors can't go out into the parking lot and get the people the journalists in in one of the cases which is part of the reason why the journalists left um because if you're just going to be massacred um and they're going to shut off the lights and invade the hospital and arrest the doctors what's what's the move for Israel here what happens when you occupy shiffa are they going to go and pretend they found tunnels inside shiffa hospital um it's just it's unbelievable and I'm old enough to remember uh when they said shiffa was a command center before there was even tunnels and it was the most ludicrous claim in 2003 because the entire Gaza Strip is in pitch black darkness and the only place with a light on in the entire strip and this has been the case for 20 years of wars is shiffa hospital it's the only place there's television cameras it's the last place a militant would go let alone a famous leader of an underground movement to go into the only lit place in the only place where there's journalists the only place where there's cameras in the entire Gaza Strip so I mean it's enraging I'm I'm extremely angry I know that everybody watching this is extremely angry at what they're seeing um it's the brutality of this ground war that we talked about um this is what it looks like if you're not willing to fight and you're only going to attack soft targets uh where doctors uh you know talk about how they've given 15 years of their lives uh of training um to go and work in these situations and and that's the Target that Israel chooses with its vaunted army with the 400,000 reserves that it called up you know the first time ever that they've had an entire division in uh in combat Reserve division in combat at once they're bragging about all of these um these new Innovations they've got new weapons they've got new armored vehicles that they're testing out um it's a laboratory but it's a laboratory for attacking civilians they have this drone that people were talking about outside of shifa um that's shooting at people um those drones aren't built for shooting Fighters a fighter would turn and shoot it out of the air these are civili Massacre tools I've actually seen footage of that uh which was not published because uh it it could have it could have endangered people because it was clear whether it could have been clear to the Israelis they might have been able to figure out where where it was filmed so there was uh wasn't uh published but I've seen footage in the vicinity of a hospital in Gaza City a complex of hospitals this is not alifa but another of the major hospitals of a quadcopter this is one of those helicopter drones firing just firing its guns down towards people in the street randomly and in fact the footage showed that drone being shot down by Fighters they were able to to shoot it down so so that that that shows what you're saying John that this is not an effective weapon against the resistance because they can pretty easily shoot it down it's a weapon of Terror against the civilian population to try to force people to leave to GA leave Gaza City that's what they were using this for this for as well as incendiary flares as well as tear gas dropping tear gas from drones again all in order to terrorize the civilians into leaving but what I what I want to uh ask you about John if we go back to the map that uh we have that we have uh we let me just jump in really quickly before we move on the Drone Ally they used that drone on people who were walking in the first days we've talked about for the last five days on electronic inata updates about the number of people that have fled Gaza City but earlier in the week people weren't leaving because they were terrified because they were attacked by these quadcopters while they were walking to the South and they they left body parts and people all over the road that hind was talking about fired from those quadcopters and only reason we saw it was because somebody rode their bike somebody from Gaza rode their bike through the Carnage and showed us this and it wasn't a bomb scene there wasn't a crater it was a this quadcopter shooting people out like like sitting ducks and murdered them and so for the beginning of last week people wouldn't leave Gaza City because they were like there's no way we're leaving you're massacring people which is why you started to hear this like Corridor happening and why the United States started you know saying no there's going to be four hours each day they had to to really explain to people that this was happening this way the Israelis had to bring their tanks and and stand on top of their tanks to show people that those tanks weren't going to shoot people because they were shooting people and that's why people didn't leave Gaza City um because these quadcopters were massacring them and as you said any fighter just looks in the air and takes down the copter it has no military purpose whatsoever and of course and as I pointed out at the beginning in my in my opening remarks the interview from Dr Monir Alor in uh who at alifa and he's the director general of the uh the health Ministry in Gaza was saying this morning on Al jaaz or this afternoon in Gaza uh on Al jazer that the Israelis his words are playing games with people they're they're sending people at the hospital uh text messages saying you have to leave you have to leave you have to evacuate there are safe corridors this is what he he said this this afternoon uh and then when they would try to step out of the gate they would be shot right away and dropped right on the ground in front of the hospital for everyone to see yeah so it is it is sort of a sadism that is very difficult to to to to comprehend even from the perspective of of the logic but I I want to uh and also I think it's worth emphasizing again here the fact that uh we've had last week uh Antonio gues the UN Secretary General and then yesterday uh Jo yoseph barell the EU foreign policy spokesperson repeating the Israeli line that Palestinians are using civilians and hospitals as human Shields like how do you use I mean what where are civilians going to be except in the hospital I mean that's what it's for it's for but it's important to point out that the repetition of th this lie is incitement not just cover not just an excuse it is incitement to Israel to commit crimes against humanity by attacking hospitals and all those officials whether they're American European or un officials who repeat this is Israeli propaganda about human Shields should be charged under the genocide convention because this isn't this is a genocide an incitement to genocide is a crime under that convention and we should seek to hold them accountable uh the hospitals are not on the way to their objective it's not like the hospital is in the way of where they're going and so they have to make some kind of military concession to what's happening in the hospital they're literally structurally attacking the hospitals from their positions moving into the hospitals and then moving back to their positions the objective is the hospital it's not in the way of their other objective they have gone at the most vulnerable per people in Gaza as their primary objective yeah thanks for watching this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel hit like leave a comment these engagements help us with the YouTube algorithm and it helps us to get around Silicon Valley censorship as much as possible it does make a difference you can also support our journalism by going to electronic in.net and clicking on donate now thank you