Biden Backs Israel’s Denials About Horrific Gaza Hospital Bombing

President Joe Biden on Wednesday expressed agreement with Israel in denying that the Israeli military was responsible for a catastrophic explosion at a hospital in Gaza that left hundreds dead.

On Tuesday night Hamas—which rules Gaza—blamed an Israeli airstrike for the disaster at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital, which Gaza health officials said killed 500 people. On Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published evidence that it claimed showed that a failed rocket launch from inside the enclave was to blame, with Biden saying U.S. intelligence led him to believe Israel was not at fault.

“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden said, speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden later said he’d drawn his conclusion based on “the data I was shown by my Defense Department.”

“Like the entire world, I was outraged and saddened by the enormous loss of life yesterday in the hospital in Gaza,” Biden said in a second speech Wednesday, reiterating that the blast “appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, elaborated, writing on X that the assessment was based on “analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information.”

However, Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, slammed Biden for siding with Israel’s version of events.

“Biden cares only about one thing, which is to be re-elected, and that’s why he’s taking the side of Israel,” he told CNN on Wednesday. “He’s believing Israeli lies like the lie of decapitation of children, which was never verified, or the lie of raping women, which was never verified and they continue—now this lie that Palestinians killed themselves.”

Barghouti argued the scale of Tuesday’s blast was far too large for any single rocket possessed by Palestinian militants—meaning the blast had to have come from Israel, he claimed.

“My people are there and they told me the type of airstrike they’ve seen on this hospital was exactly the same airstrike they’ve seen in other places,” he said.

IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed in a statement early Wednesday that Islamic Jihad, the second-biggest militant group in Gaza, “was responsible” for the hospital explosion. He said that at 6:59 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of 10 rockets from a cemetery. Reports of an explosion at the hospital also emerged at the same time, Hagari added.

“According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired—and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” Hagari said. “They went as far as inflating the number of casualties.”

Biden’s Big Middle East Summit Nixed After Hospital MassacreCALLED OFF

Shannon Vavra, Josh Fiallo, Brett Bachman

The statement from Hagari did not clarify what the IDF believed the true number of casualties of the hospital explosion to be. He did, however, say aerial footage showed there was “no direct hit of the hospital itself,” with a parking lot outside the facility being “the only location damaged.” Hagari said if the blast had been caused “by an aerial munition,” it would have caused craters and structural damage to buildings—neither of which had been detected.

Hagari went on to criticize media outlets that “immediately reported the unverified claims by Hamas.” “It is impossible to know what happened as quickly as Hamas claimed they knew,” he added. “That should have been an initial warning sign for many.”

He also explained that the IDF confirmed that “there was no IDF fire—by land, sea or air—that hit the hospital.” At the same time, Hagari said, Israeli radar tracked rockets launched from inside Gaza at the time of the explosion. “The trajectory analysis from the barrage of rockets confirms that the rockets were fired in close proximity to the hospital.”

Hagari said “two independent videos” also showed the failure of the rocket launch and its trajectory toward the ground as it fell in the hospital compound. The IDF also released a recording of a conversation “between terrorists talking about the rocket misfiring.”

“I’m telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this falling,” one voice, attributed to “Hamas Operative #1,” says in the audio, according to the IDF’s translated subtitles. “And so that’s why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” a second operative replies. The second man goes on to add: “They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel.” The first later says: “They shot it coming from the cemetery behind the Al-Ma’amadani Hospital [the name by which the facility is better known], and it misfired and fell on them.”

Hagari added that rockets fired from Gaza toward Israel commonly fall short. “During this war, we have counted approximately 450 rockets that misfired and fell inside Gaza,” he said. “Palestinian civilians pay the price.” The IDF said it is sharing the information with its partners, “first and foremost the United States.”

After Biden’s visit to Israel, he had planned to travel to Jordan to meet with the country’s leaders, as well as those from Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to de-escalate the risk of a wider conflict and establish aid for Gaza. Jordan canceled the planned summit in the wake of the hospital bombing.

The trip still may have proved fruitful with Netanyahu’s office announcing Wednesday that, at Biden’s request, Israel would allow limited quantities of humanitarian aid from Egypt to enter Gaza. The aid, strictly for civilians, will break a 10-day siege in a region that has suffered mightily from depleting supplies and a lack of hospital space.

Aid had been stationed at the Rafah border crossing from Egypt for days, the Associated Press reported, but Israeli airstrikes prevented supplies from entering Gaza.

The Israeli military said the aid would be available in southern Gaza, close to the Egyptian border, at a “humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi. It renewed its calls on Wednesday for residents in the northern Gaza City to move south toward the area.

Meanwhile, protesters took to the street in Gaza City and in capitals throughout the Middle East on Wednesday in anger at the deadly hospital blast and Biden’s arrival in Israel. Multiple posters in Amman, Jordan, labeled Biden and Netanyahu “war criminals,” while thousands rallied with Palestinian flags and rifles in hand in Sana’a, Yemen.

In Beirut, protesters planted a Palestinian flag atop a fence at the U.S. Embassy, the Washington Post reported. Protesters reportedly banged on, and tried to tear down, the embassy’s wall, dispersing only after water cannons and tear gas were used. As the sun set, a building next to the embassy was set ablaze.

In Istanbul, protesters burned Israeli flags outside a consulate. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country had recently restored relations with Israel, released a lengthy statement Wednesday that called the UN Security Council “completely ineffective” and accused Israel of committing war crimes.

“I strongly condemn the perpetrators of this attack, which amounts to a crime against humanity and amounts to genocide against the people of Gaza,” he wrote in Arabic.