WASHINGTON — White House spokesman John Kirby defended Israel amid international outrage after an airstrike reportedly killed dozens of civilians in the Gaza Strip — saying the US military “did the same thing.”
“We have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where, tragically, we caused civilian casualties,” he said — adding that the US responded the same way as Israel in the aftermath.
“We owned up to it, we investigated it, and we tried to learn from it to make changes,” Kirby said at Tuesday’s regular White House briefing.
US bombings that killed civilians included “as we pulled out of Afghanistan, where we conducted an airstrike which tragically killed a father and some of his kids,” he said.
“We atoned for it, we learned from it, and we put in place procedures to try to prevent that from happening again, and that’s what our expectations would be in this case.”
Kirby, a former Pentagon and State Department spokesman, broadly defended Israel amid reporting that at least 44 displaced Palestinians died Sunday following an airstrike.
He noted that Israel said it used precision bombs and that the Hamas terrorist group acknowledged that two senior leaders were also killed in the strike — indicating that they were hiding out among the civilians.
Kirby said that preliminary Israeli military findings suggest that an unintended secondary explosion caused the civilian deaths.
“Hamas itself put out a statement celebrating the martyrdom of two of its fighters… So I don’t know how anybody could dispute that they weren’t trying to go after Hamas in a targeted, precise way in this regard,” he said.
“The Israelis have said they used 37-pound bombs, precision guided munitions. A 37-pound bomb is not a big bomb, and it is exactly the kind of munition…
“If, in fact, that’s what they used, it is certainly indicative of an effort to be discrete, targeted and precise,” he said.
“Now, obviously this had tragic results, and obviously that needs to be investigated, and we need to know why even using small-diameter, precision guided munitions this was able to happen, But we’ll have to let the Israelis get to the bottom of that.”
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Kirby also chastised critics of Israel who he said had “forgotten” that Hamas started the war with its Oct. 7 surprise attack on southern Israel.
“Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the seventh of October, but we haven’t — 1,200 innocent Israelis slaughtered, mutilated, tortured. And they’re living right next to that kind of threat, still a viable threat in Rafah,” Kirby bristled.
The terrorists also took hundreds of people hostage — including five Americans still believed to be held in captivity.
“By the way, if you think Hamas is just gone, they’re not gone from Rafah or from Gaza, and if you think they’ve abandoned their intent towards the nation of Israel, think again. They haven’t,” he said.
“So Israel has every right to not want to live next to that kind of threat, and yes, we’re going to continue to provide them the capabilities to go after it.”
President Biden initially took a stridently pro-Israel stance and visited the country days after the conflict started in a show of support, but has been increasingly critical of the Israeli military in recent months — including halting the delivery of some heavy bombs to deter a looming offensive against the final major bastion of Hamas control.