Hamas and the Israeli government have responded to an interview on Sky News in which a former official in the Biden White House said Israel had “without a doubt” committed war crimes in Gaza.
A statement from Hamas said comments by Matt Miller, who as State Department Spokesman articulated the views of the US government, amounted to a “significant admission that condemns the occupation and exposes its crimes”.
On the Trump 100 podcast, Mr Miller was asked if he agreed with the view that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide.
“I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think, I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” Mr Miller said.
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In a written statement, Hamas said Mr Miller’s words reveal that he was, quote, “not allowed to speak the truth while in office and was forced to adhere to the US government’s official narrative regarding the occupation’s practices”.
“This exposes the deep political complicity of US administrations with the occupation and their criminal cover-up of its brutal violations,” it added.
And the proscribed terror group said his words “reveal attempts by successive US administrations to obscure the truth about this brutal war against innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip”.
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A Hamas spokesperson said: “This admission does not only condemn the occupation but also holds Washington directly responsible as an active partner in the war crimes and genocide committed against our Palestinian people in Gaza, through funding, arming, providing political and diplomatic protection, along with spreading misleading media coverage.”
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Sky News challenged Mr Miller on why he didn’t speak up while in government, to which he said: “When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion.
“You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded [that].”
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Pressed further on why he didn’t offer such views while serving as State Department spokesman, Mr Miller told Trump100: “The State Department did release a report in the spring of last year where, look, there was a bunch of bureaucratic legalese language as the government always [uses] where they did say it’s reasonable to assess that Israel has at times acted in violation of the laws of war, or something similar.”
He continued: “So the State department itself had concluded – they didn’t phrase it in these terms – but I think I did it at the podium, a few times, conclude that it was likely that Israel had committed war crimes, but I do think it’s almost certain that they have.”
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Mr Miller offered a qualifying distinction between state-sanctioned war crimes and individual illegal acts by soldiers.
“There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes: One is if the state has pursued a policy to deliberately commit war crimes or is acting reckless in a way that aids and abets war crimes.
“Is the [Israeli] state committing war crimes? That, I think, is an open question. I think what is almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”
Sky News put Mr Miller’s accusations to Israeli government spokesman David Mencer.
“Of course, when there are claims like that, they need to be fairly investigated, but I can tell you that Israel upholds the highest levels of international law that is key in the strategy of releasing our hostages and destroying this terrorist organisation,” he said.
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But to that, Mr Miller, out of office, now echoes a point repeatedly put to him by journalists while he was in office, at the podium: that Israeli investigations so often go nowhere.
At the podium, he repeated phrases like “…we are asking the Israelis to investigate…”, “…we are concerned by what we have seen…”, “…we are waiting for the results of the Israeli investigation…”.
Now, Mr Miller says: “We do know that Israel has opened investigations, but look, we are many months into those investigations and we’re not seeing Israeli soldiers held accountable.
“We have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable and I think it’s an open question whether they are going to.”
