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john kirby
'We Did the Same Thing,' US Official Says After Israel's Rafah Massacre
One Afghanistan-born journalist said John Kirby's admission "does not excuse what Joe Biden's allies in Israel did in Rafah."
May 29, 2024
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Tuesday defended Israel after its military killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians in attacks on refugee encampments in and near the southern Gaza city of Rafah inside an Israeli-designated "safe zone."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the first of the two attacks—which ignited a fire that burned people, including many women and children, alive inside their tents—a "tragic mistake."
Asked by a reporter what the consequences would be "if there were an American strike on a legitimate terrorist target that ended resulting with 45 civilian deaths and some 200 others injured," Kirby replied, "I can't answer a hypothetical like that."
"But we have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties," he continued. "We did the same thing. We owned up to it. We investigated it. And we tried to make changes... Wae tried to learn from it to make changes so that those set of mistakes wouldn't happen again."
Kirby referred to an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul that occurred during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed an aid worker and nine members of his family including seven children outside their home. A New York Times investigation subsequently revealed that the U.S. military knew that the strike likely killed civilians but initially lied about it, claiming there was "no indication" that noncombatants were harmed in the attack.
"We atoned for it, we learned from it, and we put in place procedures to try and prevent that from happening again," Kirby said of the strike, "and that's what our expectations would be in this case."
According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, more than 432,000 civilians in over half a dozen countries have been killed by all sides during the course of the continuing open-ended U.S.-led War on Terror.
Since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks that left more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals dead and over 240 others taken hostage, Israeli forces have killed at least 36,171 Palestinians—mostly women and children—according to Gazan and international officials. Israel's Gaza onslaught has also wounded at least 81,420 Palestinians; another 11,000 are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings.
During Tuesday's press conference, CBS News reporter Ed O'Keefe asked Kirby how Israel's tent massacre doesn't violate U.S. President Joe Biden's shifting "red line" warning against invading Rafah.
"We don't want to see a major ground operation," Kirby replied. "We haven't seen that at this point."
Reporter: How does this not violate the red line the president laid out
Kirby: We don’t want to see a major operation we haven’t seen one
Reporter: How many more charred corpses does he have to see before he considers a change in policy
Kirby: I take offense at the question pic.twitter.com/9LMKl1BuAr
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) May 28, 2024
O'Keefe followed up by asking, "How many more charred corpses does he have to see before the president considers a change in policy?"
"We don't want to see a single more innocent life taken, and I kind of take a little offense at the question," Kirby retorted. "No civilian casualties is the right number of civilian casualties, and this is not something that we've turned a blind eye to, nor has it been something we've ignored or neglected to raise with our Israeli counterparts."
Kirby's remarks came on the same day that Israeli tank fire on a makeshift refugee encampment in southern Gaza killed at least 21 people, at least a dozen of whom were women and children.
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Putin Warns of 'Serious Consequences' If Ukraine Uses Western Arms in Russia
The Russian president condemned the West's "constant escalation" as NATO members including France, Germany, and Canada back Kyiv's use of long-range missiles to attack targets inside his country.
May 29, 2024
As the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and leaders of NATO member nations joined the United States in advocating Ukrainian use of Western-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that any such attacks could have grave repercussions.
"This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences," Putin told reporters during a visit to Uzbekistan. "If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? It's hard to say—do they want a global conflict?"
Putin's remarks came after French President Emmanuel Macronsaid Ukraine should be allowed to "neutralize" bases inside Russia from which Russian forces are launching missiles at Ukrainian targets.
"We should not allow them to touch other targets in Russia, and obviously civilian capacities," Macron said during a visit to Germany.
🇩🇪 🇺🇦 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said Germany would not prohibit Ukrainian attacks on Russian military targets, saying Ukraine "is allowed to defend itself."
He made the comments in a joint show of policy support with French President Emmanuel Macron in Meseburg. pic.twitter.com/jqJctfeD3T
— euronews (@euronews) May 29, 2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz—who has so far declined to approve the transfer of his country's Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine—said he agreed with Macron, so long as Kyiv adheres to any restrictions imposed by suppliers.
"Ukraine has every possibility under international law for what it is doing. That has to be said explicitly," Scholz said during a joint press conference with Macron. "I find it strange when some people argue that it should not be allowed to defend itself and take measures that are suitable for this."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that he also supports letting Ukrainian forces use Western-supplied arms to attack Russia, which launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
"The time has come to consider whether it will be right to lift some of the restrictions which have been imposed because we see now that especially in the Kharkiv region, the front line and the borderline is more or less the same," he asserted.
The United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, the Czech Republic, and other NATO members also say Ukraine should be permitted to attack targets inside Russia.
In the United States, NATO's most powerful member, there is disagreement within the Biden administration over the policy. While Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reportedly pushing for a change in the administration's stance against the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to attack Russian soil, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that "there's no change to our policy at this point."
"We don't encourage or enable the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia," Kirby said.
Blinken, speaking in Moldova on Wednesday ahead of NATO talks in Prague, Czech Republic, responded to a question about whether the U.S. would support Ukrainian use of Western-supplied arms to attack Russia by saying that "we're always listening, we're always learning, and we're always making determinations about what's necessary to make sure that Ukraine can effectively continue to defend itself."
"At every step along the way we've adapted and adjusted as necessary," he added. "And so that's exactly what we'll do going forward."
Police in Chișinău, Moldova's capital, violently arrested anti-war demonstrators protesting Blinken's visit. Protesters reportedly doused American flags in beetroot juice simulating blood and chanted messages including "Blinken, go home; we don't want war!" and "We don't need NATO."
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White House Spokesman Condemned for 'Absurd' Claim Aid Bombing Wasn't Illegal
"The IDF has an affirmative responsibility to know what it is dropping bombs on," said former Biden official Jeremy Konyndyk. "Kirby confirms they ignored that."
Apr 03, 2024
A former official of the Biden and Obama administrations was among those expressing shock late Tuesday at the Biden administration's comments on Israel's conduct in its continued bombardment of Gaza, in which a U.S.-Canadian citizen is now among the tens of thousands of victims.
John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, spoke to reporters at a press conference less than 24 hours after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed seven workers with World Central Kitchen (WCK), and made clear that the bombing of the U.S. nonprofit's convoy in Gaza was not an event that would push the administration to halt the delivery of military aid to Israel.
Kirby appeared exasperated as Selina Wang of ABC News asked how the U.S. "can continue to send military aid into Israel without any conditions."
"Is there no red line that can be crossed here?" Wang asked.
Kirby repeated the administration's frequent remark that it is pushing Israel to make sure the IDF is "precise" and ensuring that humanitarian aid can reach Gaza, where parts of the population are now living in famine, according to a United Nations-backed analysis.
But the spokesperson said the U.S. will not "hang some sort of condition over [Israel's] neck" to ensure the nation abides by international law and refrains from violating human rights—suggesting Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the U.S. from providing military aid to countries that impede humanitarian aid, does not apply to Israel.
U.S. law "is in fact a condition hanging over your neck, John Kirby," said journalist Krystal Ball.
Kirby also chastised a reporter for asking whether "firing a missile at people delivering food and killing them" is "a violation of international humanitarian law."
"There is no evidence" that the IDF deliberately targeted the WCK convoy, which Israel claimed it struck unintentionally, Kirby said, adding that the State Department has not observed any violations of international law by Israeli since it began attacking Gaza in October.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International who previously served in the Biden and administrations at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), called Kirby's remarks "absurd and risible" and called for him to be taken "off the podium."
"Apart from the clearly marked aid convoy that had been cleared with the IDF in advance?" asked Konyndyk regarding Kirby's claim that there was no evidence of a deliberate bombing.
Al Jazeera's Sanad Verification Agency on Tuesday found that, based on images taken from the bombing sites in the central Gaza Strip, the WCK vehicles' roofs and windshields were clearly marked as belonging to the nonprofit group.
According to WCK, the group had coordinated its movements with the Israeli military before the aid workers left a warehouse in Deir el-Balah, where it has unloaded 100 tons of aid, and headed toward Rashid Street in the city.
Jose Andres, chef and founder of the group, toldReuters the IDF targeted the convoy "systematically, car by car."
The attack was not a "bad luck situation where, 'oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,'" Andres told the outlet. "Even if we were not in coordination with the [Israeli army], no democratic country and no military can be targeting civilians and humanitarians."
Konyndyk added that Kirby's defense of Israel, which the spokesman said did not know it was aiming at aid workers, serves as an admission that Israel violated the internationally recognized laws of war, which requires that parties make a distinction between combatants and civilians.
"The IDF has an affirmative responsibility to know what it is dropping bombs on," said Konyndyk. "Kirby confirms they ignored that."
Zachary Carter, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, added that Kirby's defense of the WCK attack was "embarrassing" considering the readily available evidence of deliberate targeting, and his continued claim that Israel is attempting to avoid civilian casualties.
"Israel has killed more than 200 aid workers in Gaza, at least 95 journalists, and more than 33,000 Palestinians," said Carter. "Israel is in violation of a U.N. cease-fire resolution and Gaza is starving. It is not credible to declare each act of violence an unusual aberration from humane conduct."
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