President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that the Palestinian Hamas terror group blamed on Israel, and that Israel said was caused by an errant rocket fired by terrorists.
After initial reports, credited to Hamas-controlled government authorities in the Gaza Strip, claimed that an Israeli airstrike had killed hundreds of civilians at the hospital, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted its own investigation and concluded that the explosion was likely caused by a misfired rocket launched by Iranian-controlled Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
However, the narrative was already set in the Arab and Muslim world, and among pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli activists in the West.
Biden responded from Air Force One, where he was en route to Israel to show solidarity with the country’s war against terror:
I am outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, and the terrible loss of life that resulted. Immediately upon hearing this news, I spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and have directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened. The United States stands unequivocally for the protection of civilian life during conflict and we mourn the patients, medical staff and other innocents killed or wounded in this tragedy.
Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority, all of which blamed Israel for the blast, canceled a meeting with Biden that was to have taken place after his Israel visit in Amman, Jordan, to discuss humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
