The Guardian knows better, but like so many other media organizations, it has quietly given Israel a pass – on a war crime.
by Kathryn Shihadah
The video below from The Guardian Sunday does an excellent job of illustrating the truly shocking destruction Israel’s military wreaked on the hospitals in Gaza during the last fifteen months.
Four hospitals that have almost become household names – Kamal Adwan, al-Shifa, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals – have been ravaged by Israeli airstrikes and tank shells, destroying millions of dollars worth of life-saving equipment.
The Israeli military has killed over 1,000 health workers, according to Doctors Without Borders.
The Guardian accurately points out that, according to the World Health Organization, 80% of Gaza’s healthcare system has been destroyed. 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially operational; the other 20 are completely closed.
The video adds, “The UN has accused Israel of deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities. Israel has rejected the allegations and says that militants have operated from the hospitals.”
What the Guardian video does not say is that in 15 months of systematically demolishing medical centers, Israel has found little or even no evidence of Hamas or other military presence– as the Associated Press reported:
The AP spent months gathering accounts of the raids on al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses and medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.
It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific events.
Mainstream media have failed to push back, and at times deflected attention from or downplayed Israel’s atrocities. (The Guardian itself has done some excellent reporting on Gaza, but at times fallen short.)
The Guardian knows better than to let Israel off the hook.
The news organization itself reported in November 2023 that the findings Israel’s military had presented “falls well short” of proving a Hamas command center below the al-Shifa hospital. Since then, the website has not presented any game-changing new evidence – only a repetition of the allegations.
In November 2023, Israel attacked the al-Shifa hospital, claiming that an elaborate Hamas command center existed beneath the hospital grounds. Its findings were meager.
In “IDF evidence so far falls well short of al-Shifa hospital being Hamas HQ,” the Guardian’s senior international correspondent Julian Borger reminded readers that the Geneva conventions
forbid military operations against hospitals unless “they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy.”
This exception, spelled out in article 19 of the fourth Geneva convention, states specifically: “… the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants and not yet handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.”
Borger quoted Mai El-Sadany, a human rights expert: “Israel has failed to provide anywhere even close to the level of evidence required to justify the narrow exception under which hospitals can be targeted under the laws of war.”
The Guardian is fully aware of international law on the targeting of hospitals, as well as Israel’s house-of-cards “proof” of Hamas’ presence in or under hospitals.
A few days after Borger’s article, following the release of additional “evidence,” Associated Press, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Sky News all reached the same conclusion: that Israel had failed to prove the presence of a Hamas command center.
A United Nations commission of inquiry declared that Israel has been carrying out a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system” – amounting to a war crime and the crime against humanity of “extermination.” Julian Borger reported on this allegation for the Guardian.
In spite of all of this, in an otherwise valuable video, the Guardian has failed to fully inform its readers. By omitting the critical fact that Israel has failed for 15 months to prove its allegations, the Guardian allowed Israel to have the last word – a false claim of innocence.
While it has done some excellent reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza, this time the Guardian has fallen well short.
Kathryn Shihadah is an editor and staff writer for If Americans Knew.
FURTHER READING ON MEDIA BIAS IN THE WAR ON GAZA
- The Israeli strike on Al Ahli Hospital days BEFORE the famous blast
- Fox News’ Trey Yingst misinforms Fox viewers about Palestinian prisoners
- NYTimes rejects Quaker ad for calling Israel’s actions “genocide”
- How Sunday Morning News Shows Promote an Anti-Palestinian Agenda
- The BBC can’t be trusted to report on the war in Gaza
- A year late, the Guardian finally permits us to use the term ‘genocide’
- More than 100 BBC staff accuse broadcaster of Israel bias in Gaza coverage
- U.S. Media’s Doublespeak: Israelis Live in “Densely Populated Areas,” Palestinians Are “Human Shields”
- ‘Words like Slaughter:’ A comparative study of The New York Times reporting in Ukraine and Gaza
