Day: October 18, 2023

The United States is standing by Israel, pushing back against accusations by Hamas and other Palestinian officials that Israel is to blame for an explosion at a hospital that has left hundreds of people dead.

Video of the explosion late Tuesday at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza quickly circulated on television and social media, sparking outrage and protests in countries across the region.

But U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking during a visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, said U.S. intelligence indicates Israel is not to blame.

“Based on the information we’ve seen to date; it appears as a result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza,” Biden said.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials Wednesday declined to elaborate on the president’s assessment, but said it draws on multiple sources.

The evaluation is “based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information,” said U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, adding that all currently available intelligence points to the same conclusion.

“Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” she said.

Israel itself also has shared evidence that it says exonerates its forces, including what it says is an intercepted audio recording of two Hamas operatives talking about the explosion shortly after it happened.

“They are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” one of the operatives says in the recording, according to a translation provided by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF. 

“Is it from us?” asks the second alleged Hamas operative.

The first operative responds, “It looks like it.” 

 

The IDF also released drone video taken of the Ahli Arab Hospital and its surroundings before and after the explosion, showing where a fire ravaged part of the hospital’s parking lot and damage from shrapnel. But the IDF said there is no evidence of a significant crater, which would have been created had the blast been caused by Israeli ordinance.

 

Some videos and images posted Wednesday on social media, however, do show what might be an impact crater.

“The ground surrounding one side of the crater shows a cone of scarring and pitting, consistent with the explosion of a munition at this site,” according to an initial analysis published by Bellingcat, a fact-checking and open-source intelligence group based in the Netherlands. 

“Objects within this cone appear to have suffered extensive damage, including a fence which was largely destroyed by the explosion,” the Bellingcat analysis added.  

But Bellingcat also said, “the impact point does not appear to be consistent with the 500, 1,000 or 2,000-pound bombs used in [Israeli] Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs.”

Hamas, which decried the explosion Tuesday as a “crime of genocide that once again reveals the ugly face of this criminal enemy and its fascist and terrorist government,” leveled more criticism at Israel and the U.S. Wednesday.

“The U.S. adoption of the Israeli narrative makes it involved in the Gaza massacres,” the militant group said in a statement, in English, on its Telegram channel Wednesday.

“The U.S. administration’s continued adoption of the Zionist narrative, which is based on lies and false claims, confirms that Washington is blindly biased toward the Israeli occupation,” it said. “This policy also means that the U.S. is a direct partner with the occupation leaders in the massacres committed every minute in the already blockaded Gaza Strip.”

The U.S. had also been bolstering its intelligence gathering capabilities in the region in the days before the explosion at the hospital in Gaza City.

A senior U.S. defense official said last week that the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group was sent to the eastern Mediterranean, in part, because of its ability to carry out intelligence collection. 

It’s not clear why Jim Jordan went through with this morning’s second round vote for Speaker of the House, knowing he didn’t have the votes. Perhaps he was afraid that if he postponed, it would mean the end of his candidacy. In any case he ended up losing the second round by even more votes than the first round. Now his third round hopes just went into the gutter.

House Republicans just announced that the third round of voting will not take place today, and has instead been kicked to (supposedly) tomorrow. This means that Jordan currently isn’t even close to having the votes.

Now Jim Jordan will spend the evening trying to convince various House Republicans – who clearly hate him – to vote for him tomorrow. But his prospects are clearly getting worse as this goes on. If Jordan thought he could wear the dissenters down simply by holding a bunch of consecutive rounds of voting, that’s what we’d be seeing playing out this afternoon, instead of Jordan pulling back to lick his wounds.

The post Jim Jordan’s third round hopes just went into the gutter appeared first on Palmer Report.

How poorly is Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial going for him? The testimony from one government witness was so devastating, Trump ended up running his mouth in frustration while the witness was still testifying. The judge’s response was what a lot of us wish we could do: he told Trump to shut up.

The judge warned Trump that his griping under his breath was audible to the entire courtroom, and he warned Trump to stop talking and keep it down.

This is a remarkable development in the sense that Trump has no choice but to comply. If he keeps running his mouth in the courtroom, the judge can kick him out, fine him, or even have him hauled away for contempt of court if that’s what it takes. Trump tends to cower in these situations, so he’ll probably meekly comply. But it’ll be fun to see what happens if he doesn’t.

The post Judge tells a babbling Donald Trump to shut up during civil fraud trial appeared first on Palmer Report.

India’s expanding economy was expected to bring more women into the workforce, but in the world’s most populous nation, their low participation continues to pose a challenge. While demographers hope that the country’s huge working-age population will propel economic development, they say women need to be included to reap the benefits of growth. Anjana Pasricha has a report.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that a deadly blast at a Gaza Strip hospital appeared to be from “an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group,” and he pledged support to Israelis and humanitarian assistance to suffering Palestinians.

Biden traveled to Tel Aviv on a rapid visit to offer staunch U.S. support in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli villages and military bases by Gaza-based Palestinian Hamas gunmen who killed 1,400 people and took about 200 hostages.

His trip was upended by a deadly explosion at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital on Tuesday evening. Palestinian officials blamed it on an Israeli air strike. Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.

“Based on the information we’ve seen to date, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group from Gaza,” Biden said.

“The United States unequivocally stands for the protection of civilian life during conflict and I grieve … for the families who were killed or wounded by this tragedy.”

Biden said the U.S. would provide $100 million in new funding for humanitarian aid in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The United States has urged Israel to allow humanitarian aid in to help Palestinians.

The president said he would ask Congress this week for unprecedented aid to boost Israel in its fight with Hamas, aid that is expected to be folded into a massive $100 billion package in Congress.

But he also warned Israelis they should not give into their “rage” after the attack and follow the law of war.

“You are a Jewish state, but you’re also a democracy,” Biden said after meeting Israeli leaders. “Like the United States, you don’t live by the rules of terrorists. You live by the rule of law… You can’t give up what makes you who you are.”

Biden stressed that the vast majority of Palestinians were not affiliated with Hamas.

“Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well,” Biden said. Retaliatory Israeli strikes after the Hamas attacks have killed more than 3,000 Palestinians, Palestinian authorities say.

About the same time on Wednesday, the U.S. vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have called for humanitarian pauses in the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants to allow humanitarian aid access to the Gaza Strip.

The president made reference to the Nazi Holocaust of World War Two when saying that Israel had the backing of its friends.

“We will not stand by and do nothing again. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever,” he said.

Earlier he said he had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tough questions during a meeting where they also discussed humanitarian needs, security assistance and information on unaccounted Americans.

“I asked tough questions as a friend of Israel. We will continue to deter any actor wanting to widen this conflict.” Biden said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Russia’s parliament moved swiftly to fulfil the wish of President Vladimir Putin by completing the passage of a bill that shifts Moscow’s legal stance on nuclear testing at a time of acute tension with the West.

The lower house, the State Duma, on Wednesday passed the second and third readings of a bill that revokes Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Both were passed unanimously by 415 votes to zero.

Putin urged the Duma on Oct. 5 to make the change in order to “mirror” the position of the United States, which has signed but never ratified the 1996 treaty.

Russia says it will not resume nuclear testing unless Washington does, but arms control experts are concerned it may be inching towards a test that the West would perceive as a threatening escalation in the context of the Ukraine war.

Ukraine said Russia was stepping up “nuclear blackmail”.

In a statement, its foreign ministry said: “Ukraine condemns Russia’s steps to withdraw ratification of the treaty and calls on the international community to respond accordingly to Moscow’s provocations aimed at harming the object and purpose of the CTBT.”

Since he invaded Ukraine last year, Putin has repeatedly reminded the West of Russia’s nuclear might. On Wednesday state TV showed rare footage of him during a visit to Beijing being accompanied by naval officers carrying the so-called nuclear briefcase that can be used to order a nuclear strike.

Russian parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the treaty move was a justified response to Washington’s “cheating and cynicism” and its longstanding failure to ratify the pact.

“We understand our responsibility to our citizens, we are protecting our country. What is happening in the world today is the exclusive fault of the United States,” he said.

Russia originally ratified the CTBT in 2000. While it is revoking that step, it has so far said it will remain a signatory to the treaty and keep supplying data to the global monitoring system which alerts the world to any nuclear test.

But in introducing the bill on Tuesday, Volodin raised the possibility Moscow might withdraw altogether, and said it would keep Washington guessing about its intentions.

“And what we will do next – whether we remain a party to the treaty or not, we will not tell them,” he said.

The law will now go to the upper house, and to Putin for signing.

Putin said earlier this month he was aware of calls for Russia to resume nuclear testing but was not ready to say whether Moscow should do so or not.

Back in February, he said Russia must “make everything ready” to conduct a test in case Washington did so. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Russia’s testing ground in the remote northern archipelago of Novaya Zemlya in August.

CNN published satellite images last month showing Russia, the United States and China have all built new facilities at their nuclear test sites in recent years.

Russia’s shift on the CTBT follows its suspension earlier this year of New START, the last remaining bilateral nuclear treaty with the United States, which limits the number of strategic warheads each side can deploy.

Experts at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said both steps may be intended by Putin “to generate alarm and uncertainty among states supporting Ukraine in its defence against Russia’s illegal invasion”.

They said the CTBT move “weakens international stability and diminishes humanity’s prospects of avoiding a new nuclear arms race”.

But they added: “In this instance, it is difficult for the United States to go far in criticizing Putin’s announcement and Russia’s potential withdrawal from the CTBT since the USA has itself failed to ratify the treaty and become a party to it in the 27 years since first signing.”

Post-Soviet Russia has never carried out a nuclear test. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990 and the United States in 1992.

Arms control experts are concerned that a test by either Russia or the United States could prompt the other to do the same, and China, India and Pakistan might then follow, triggering a new global arms race. All are currently observing test moratoriums, and only North Korea has conducted a test involving a nuclear explosion this century.