On the Saturday edition of NBC’s Today reporter Erin McLaughlin ran down the list of evidence Israel has provided that Hamas has used the Al-Shifa Hospital for military purposes only to dismisses it as “nothing definitive.” Meanwhile, on CBS Saturday Morning, Imtiaz Tyab did the same thing, labeling the provided as evidence as “frankly underwhelming.”
McLaughlin reported that:
for days now, the Israeli military has surrounded the hospital. Yesterday I spoke to the director of the hospital’s burns unit, and he described just this desperate situation. He said that patients were dying due to a lack of essentials, including oxygen. This as the Israeli military continues to search the hospital complex looking for any signs of what it alleges is a Hamas terror cell that it says was operating deep beneath the complex itself, so far presenting evidence of a tunnel, as well as weapons that it says it found on hospital grounds, but nothing definitive so far.
The IDF also found computers and the bodies of two dead hostages, but those findings plus the weapons and a tunnel are still not definitive?
Over on CBS, Tyab was even worse, “Now, we were taken by Israeli commandos to the Al-Shifa complex in the early hours of Friday morning and they showed us what they said was that evidence that Hamas did have a command center.”
Still, Tyab dismissed the tunnel as something that “appeared to be a sand-filled opening of some kind” and the weapons as “a small collection of old rifles.”
Tyab also recalled, “when we asked about the criticisms that the evidence so far provided has been frankly underwhelming, we were told that more information would be shared soon.”
What more does Tyab need? Any additional evidence just makes the Israeli case even stronger, it has already debunked Hamas claims it did not use the hospital for military purposes.
As for the facility itself, “Now, it must be said that hospitals are considered protected spaces during times of war under international law. If Hamas is using the facility it would then lose that protected status. Now, Israel’s allegations that Hamas has embedded itself within civilian areas and at hospitals has been central to its justifications for the massive and devastating military campaign it launched after the deadly October 7th attacks that killed around 1,200 people in Israel, and saw 240 or so taken hostage.”
“If”? What do rifles and grenades, indicate if not the use of the facility for military reasons?
Here are transcripts for the November 18 shows:
NBC Today
11/18/2023
8:07 AM ET
ERIN MCLAUGHLIN: Now, for days now, the Israeli military has surrounded the hospital. Yesterday I spoke to the director of the hospital’s burns unit, and he described just this desperate situation. He said that patients were dying due to a lack of essentials, including oxygen. This as the Israeli military continues to search the hospital complex looking for any signs of what it alleges is a Hamas terror cell that it says was operating deep beneath the complex itself, so far presenting evidence of a tunnel, as well as weapons that it says it found on hospital grounds, but nothing definitive so far.
***
CBS Saturday Morning
11/18/2023
8:06 AM ET
IMTIAZ TYAB: Now, we were taken by Israeli commandos to the Al-Shifa complex in the early hours of Friday morning and they showed us what they said was that evidence that Hamas did have a command center. Now, we what saw was what appeared to be a sand-filled opening of some kind and a small collection of old rifles. And when we asked about the criticisms that the evidence so far provided has been frankly underwhelming, we were told that more information would be shared soon.
Now, it must be said that hospitals are considered protected spaces during times of war under international law. If Hamas is using the facility it would then lose that protected status. Now, Israel’s allegations that Hamas has embedded itself within civilian areas and at hospitals has been central to its justifications for the massive and devastating military campaign it launched after the deadly October 7th attacks that killed around 1,200 people in Israel, and saw 240 or so taken hostage.