With his praise, John Kirby seemingly walked back President Biden’s Tuesday comment that the IDF is “indiscriminately bombing” the Gaza Strip.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby praised Israel’s military Wednesday for protecting Gazan civilians more than almost any other army would, including America itself.
Referring to a grid of the Gaza Strip that the IDF issued two weeks ago that divided the enclave into hundreds of mini-combat zones so that it could warn those who live in specific areas to flee before its forces enter to clear them of Hamas terrorists, Kirby told journalists, “They have published online maps of places where people can go or not go. That’s basically telegraphing your punches!”
“There are very few modern militaries in the world that would do that. I don’t know that we would do that.”
Kirby also told the press briefing that, following American advice, Israel has worked to reduce civilian casualties by carrying out fewer airstrikes in the southern part of the Strip now than it had directed at the northern section at the beginning of the war. Even in the north, he noted, the IDF “mov[ed] in on the ground in a smaller way than they had previously planned to do.”
Many of the questions revolved around the civilian casualty count in Gaza, with journalists referring to a comment President Joe Biden had made the previous day at a campaign fundraiser that the Jewish state was “starting to lose support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
They also parroted the Hamas-run health ministry claims that over 18,000 civilians have died at IDF hands since the terror organization set off the war on October 7 by invading over 20 Israeli communities and a dance rave and massacring 1,200, including the elderly and infants.
The ministry’s numbers do not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants, and Israel has countered that some 7,000 of the Palestinian dead are Hamas terrorists, making the ratio of civilian deaths to fighter deaths one of the lowest “collateral damage” ratios in recent wars, if the unsubstantiated numbers are even true.
Israel has also proven that Hamas hides its military infrastructure, including tunnels, rocket launchers and command centers, in civilian areas, which it says Hamas does specifically to drive up the civilian death toll to garner world sympathy.
Kirby evaded the question of whether Biden’s words were a formal assessment of Israel’s military conduct. He said that Biden’s remark “reflected the reality of global opinion, which also matters,” and that the White House was not considering reducing its aid to the Jewish state.
“Our support for Israel is not diminished, but we have had concerns and we have expressed those concerns about the prosecution of this military campaign, even while acknowledging that it is Hamas that started this and that it’s Hamas that is continuing it,” he stated.