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Israeli army surrounds main Gaza hospital it claims is a Hamas HQ as Biden calls for ‘less intrusive action’
(JTA) — President Joe Biden called on Israel to take “less intrusive action” at hospitals across the Gaza Strip, which have become a focal point in the country’s war against Hamas and have drawn the attention and concern of the international community.
The Israel Defense Forces have surrounded the main hospital in Gaza City, Al-Shifa, which Israeli officials say also acts as a headquarters for Hamas, the terror group that controls Gaza and that invaded Israel on Oct. 7.
Palestinian and international health agencies said Al-Shifa was barely functioning on Monday. The power was out at the hospital and newborns and other patients are dying, the groups said. Israel has said it is making efforts to safeguard and evacuate patients from the hospital even as Hamas has disrupted those efforts.
In its most recent update, on Sunday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 12 of the hospital’s patients died over the weekend, including two premature babies, “compounded by the lack of medical consumables.” The agency said an additional 36 babies in incubators and kidney dialysis patients are “at heightened risk of death.”
The IDF said it endeavored over the weekend to get fuel to Al-Shifa for its generators, but that Hamas stopped the hospital from accepting the fuel. It also said it is helping evacuate babies from Al-Shifa to a safer hospital, and denied that the hospital is under siege. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, said the military is “speaking directly and regularly with the hospital staff.”
Hamas killed some 1,200 people in its invasion, largely civilians, and captured more than 200 hostages. It has also shot thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. Israel has vowed to defeat the terror group and rescue the hostages, and has hit Gaza with airstrikes and a ground invasion in which 44 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 11,000 people have died in the fighting, including thousands of children. Hamas’ figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians and do not denote casualties from misfired Palestinian rockets. Israel says it strives to avoid killing civilians and blames Hamas for embedding within civilian population centers.
Biden has broadly backed Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 massacre and has so far ruled out a ceasefire in the conflict, but has sounded notes of concern about specific Israeli actions. On Monday, speaking to reporters, he called on Israel to use caution in dealing with hospitals.
“Well, as we know, I have not been reluctant expressing my concerns with what’s going on,” he said when a reporter asked about the situation at Al-Shifa. “My hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action relative to hospitals and we remain in contact with the Israelis.”
On Thursday, Israel launched its raid on the area near Al-Shifa, which it calls Hamas’ “military quarter,” involving ground troops, including special forces, that are backed up by air strikes. Al-Shifa is one of several hospitals that Israel has accused Hamas of using to shield its terrorists.
“The military quarter area is the heart of intelligence and operational activities of Hamas and was used, among other things, to plan and prepare Hamas operatives for the murderous attack on October 7th,” the Israeli military said at that point.
Hamas denies that its headquarters are adjacent to Al Shifa and accuses Israel of deliberately targeting hospitals. Hundreds of thousands of people in the northern Gaza Strip have evacuated south at Israel’s behest as it attempts to rout Hamas. At least one other hospital in the city, Al-Quds, has been partially disabled by the fighting, according to reports from Gaza. Israel said last week that Hamas terrorists had barricaded themselves in the hospital.
On Monday, the army released footage it said came from another hospital, Rantisi, showing weapons and signs that hostages had been held in the hospital. Yet another hospital, Al-Ahli, was hit in a blast earlier in the fighting that Hamas blamed on Israel but that a range of assessments — including from the United States, Israel and a series of journalists and analysts — attributed to a misfired Palestinian rocket.
The Biden Administration backs Israel’s aims but has sought to expand access to humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza via pauses in the fighting. Last week, Israel agreed to daily gaps of four hours in the fighting to funnel in aid. It’s not clear how efficient the deliveries have been.
In his meeting with reporters, Biden said the pauses could be useful for leveraging the release of the hostages, noting that U.S. officials are in touch with Qatar, a nation that has acted as an intermediary with Hamas and that houses its political leadership, to bring out the hostages.
“There is an effort to get this pause to deal with the release of prisoners and that’s being negotiated, as well with the Qataris [who] are being engaged,” he said. “So I remain somewhat hopeful — but hospitals must be protected.”
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, on Monday told reporters Israel had two or three weeks before international pressure to cease fire intensified.
“We sense that there is international pressure on Israel,” Axios quoted him as saying. “It is not strong but it is getting stronger”,
Biden is fending off pressure from the left flank of his party, as well as pro-Palestinian activists, to press Israel now for a ceasefire. The latest such call came in an internal memo from some 100 staffers in Biden’s State Department, Axios reported. The memo accuses Israel of committing “war crimes,” and calls on Biden to speak out more forcefully.
A key concern for Biden is that the war does not expand. Exchanges of fire with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran, have intensified. And Israel is stepping up its raids on militant strongholds in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed since Oct. 7. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated communities adjacent to Gaza and Lebanon. The IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said on Monday that there were “defensive and offensive” plans to engage with militants firing on Israel from Lebanon.
“We are preparing the operational plans for the North. Our mission is to bring security,” Halevi said, according to an army release. “The security situation will not remain such that the civilians of the north do not feel safe returning to their homes.”
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UN Data: Nearly 90 Percent of Gaza Aid ‘Intercepted’ Before Reaching Intended Recipients
Palestinians collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients, newly released data from the United Nations shows, fueling growing concerns among Israeli officials and international observers about systemic aid diversion by armed groups in the enclave.
According to figures tracking humanitarian assistance for Gaza from May 19 to Aug. 1 of this year, out of the 2,010 UN trucks (carrying 27,434 tons of aid) collected from any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter, only 260 trucks (4,111 tons) reached their intended destination. That equates to a staggering 87 percent of all trucks and 85 percent of all tonnage of aid being stolen and not getting into the hands of civilians at the intended destination.
The UN’s own data, posted on the website of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) as part of the “UN2720 Monitoring & Tracking Dashboard,” reveals that almost all the aid — 1,753 trucks (23,353 tons) — has been “intercepted, either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors” while being transported inside Gaza over the past few months.
No breakdown is provided of how much aid has been seized by armed groups versus civilians.
The data also shows that much of the UN aid offloaded at any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter has not been collected to enter the war-torn enclave during this period. Out of 40,012 tons of aid (2,134 trucks) being delivered to the crossings, just 27,434 tons (2010 trucks) have been picked up. It’s unclear what exactly led to this discrepancy, with issues such as poor internal coordination and security concerns potentially delaying aid shipments.
The UN2720 mechanism, created earlier this year, was intended to boost transparency by verifying and tracking aid shipments via QR codes at key checkpoints. The system monitors each pallet from offloading to delivery and flags any discrepancies in a centralized database.
Israel has facilitated the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, with Israeli officials condemning the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen by the ruling Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Sunday, Israel announced a halt in military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and new aid corridors as Arab and European countries began airdropping supplies into the enclave.
However, the UN and several Western governments have increased pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, blaming the Jewish state for what they described as a hunger crisis and insufficient amounts of aid reaching civilians.
Israeli officials have said that claims of mass starvation in Gaza are false and being amplified by not only Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, but also international humanitarian organizations and media organizations to manipulate global opinion.
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Dutch Nurse Under Police Investigation for Alleged Threats Against Israeli Patients
Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Photo: Reuters/Romy Arroyo Fernandez
A Muslim nurse in the Netherlands is under police investigation after allegedly threatening to administer lethal injections to Israeli patients — an incident that has sparked public outrage and intensified fears over rising antisemitism and patient safety in Europe’s health-care systems.
The comments were widely circulated by Israeli influencer Max Veifer, who also exposed a recent case in Australia where two nurses were suspended for two years over antisemitic threats and remarks.
In a video shared on social media, Veifer denounced Dutch-Muslim nurse Batisma Chayat Sa’id’s remarks as a serious violation of medical ethics.
“Someone like that should be prosecuted and barred from treating patients. Imagine your grandparents being cared for by someone so hateful,” the Israeli influencer said.
Zorgwekkende dreiging op Instagram: Nederlandse verpleegkundige is bereid om “zionisten een extra spuitje te geven” en bereid “zionisten te laten sterven binnen de gezondheidszorg.” pic.twitter.com/xTnXNi1wH5
— CIDI
(@CIDI_nieuws) July 29, 2025
The incident was sparked when an Israeli-Dutch woman living in the Netherlands commented on a social media post by far-right politician Geert Wilders, who cautioned about what he called the country’s looming radical Islamization by 2050.
A social media account belonging to the Muslim nurse also commented on the post, claiming it would happen by 2027, to which the Israeli woman responded, “Your dream is our nightmare. But people wake up from nightmares. Our Netherlands, our Israel.”
“Nothing belongs to you! My grandparents built the Netherlands. I was born and raised here, and I will do everything in my power to help this country get rid of the Zionist cancer,” the nurse further replied.
“You know what I’m doing with Zionists — giving an extra injection as a nurse specialist. Letting them go to heaven!” Sa’id continued.
When the Israeli woman threatened to report her, Sa’id replied: “Haha, try your best! I don’t have a boss — I’m the boss! All Zionists can die, inside healthcare and beyond, and I’m happy to help with that!”
Shortly after her posts gained widespread attention, Sa’id deleted all her social media accounts, insisting that her identity had been stolen and that she was not responsible for such comments.
On Wednesday, local police detained Sa’id for questioning, but she denied the allegations, asserting that someone had impersonated her online.
“It seems someone is pretending to be me, posting false and defamatory statements,” the nurse said. “I want to make it clear — I hold no hatred toward Jews or any people, race, religion, or identity.”
Even after announcing plans to file an identity theft complaint, she faces skepticism from authorities, who have assigned a digital forensics expert to scrutinize her online accounts.
Last year, an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
Earlier this year, two Australian nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night-shift conversation with Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide.
They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
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French Authorities Halt Gaza Evacuations After Palestinian Student Expelled Over Viral Antisemitic Posts
Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
French authorities have halted evacuations from Gaza after a Palestinian student was expelled from the prestigious Sciences Po Lille and placed under investigation, following the viral circulation of hundreds of antisemitic posts praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and calling for the murder of Jews.
The incident drew widespread condemnation and public outrage, prompting French ministers to demand answers and call for an investigation into how the Gazan student was allowed into the country in the first place.
On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that all further evacuations from Gaza would be suspended pending the completion of the investigation into the student’s background.
After receiving a scholarship, 25-year-old Nour Atalla, a Palestinian from Gaza, arrived in the country in early July to begin her master’s degree in law and communications this fall at the Institute of Political Science in Lille, northern France.
Barrot confirmed that discussions are ongoing about the student’s possible return to Gaza, making clear that she must leave the country pending the investigation’s outcome.
“She has no place at Sciences Po, nor in France,” the top French diplomat said.
On Thursday, local authorities reported that a criminal investigation is underway into Atalla, with the public prosecutor in Lille confirming the case was opened for “apology of terrorism, apology of crimes against humanity using an online public communication service.”
Barrot admitted lapses in the screening process that allowed her entry and has mandated a comprehensive review of everyone evacuated from Gaza to France.
“The security checks, carried out by the French services and Israeli authorities, did not detect the antisemitic content,” the French diplomat said.
Atalla is one of 292 Gazans admitted to the country following a court ruling that opened the door for Gazans to seek refugee status based on their nationality.
She was offered a place at Sciences Po Lille University based on “academic excellence” and following a recommendation by the French consulate in Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, the university announced it had revoked Atalla’s enrollment after hundreds of her past antisemitic and violent social media posts went viral, sparking widespread condemnation from political leaders and members of the local Jewish community.
In several of these posts, she glorified Hitler, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, called for the execution of Israeli hostages and the killing of Jews, and expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
In one post, Atalla shared a video of Hitler giving a speech about Jews, writing, “Kill their young and their old. Show them no mercy … And kill them everywhere.”
In another post shared on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, she wrote, “We must do everything we can to match the bloodshed — as much as possible.”