Report: Biden bends knee, secretly apologizes to 'prominent Muslims' for telling truth about Hamas' claims: 'I will do better'



President Joe Biden reportedly apologized to "prominent Muslims" last month for doubting the civilian death toll in Gaza.

Last month, Biden told reporters that he has "no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth" about civilian casualties in Gaza.

"I'm sure innocents have been killed, and it's the price of waging a war," Biden explained. "But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using."

The day after Biden made those comments — which drew outrage from the Council on American-Islamic Relations — the president met with Muslims and apologized for his remarks, according to the Washington Post.

The Post set the scene:

Biden met with five prominent Muslim Americans, who protested what they saw as his insensitivity to the civilians who were dying. All spoke of people they knew who had been affected by the suffering in Gaza, including a woman who had lost 100 members of her family. Biden appeared to be affected by their account.

"I'm sorry. I'm disappointed in myself," Biden told the group in a meeting that lasted more than an hour. "I will do better."

Whether Biden was truly contrite or if he was saving face is not clear. But what is clear is that his comments about civilian casualties in Gaza, though blunt, were not haphazard.

That is because the Gaza Ministry of Health, which provides the casualty figures, is controlled by Hamas, and the terrorist group has no incentive to tell the truth. In fact, inflating the civilian death toll falsely helps Hamas' propaganda war against Israel. Moreover, the casualty figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and there is no way to verify Hamas' claims.

Importantly, the civilian casualty toll is certainly higher than it ought to be because Hamas uses civilians as human shields.

Biden, according to the Post, is struggling to balance his support for Israel — America's No. 1 ally in the Middle East — with administration officials who believe the U.S. needs to tamp down its support. Progressives, of course, have spent weeks screaming about a ceasefire without offering any concrete long-term solutions to the Israel-Palestine issue.

Perhaps the first domino fell on Sunday when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did not rule out placing conditions on future U.S. aid to Israel.

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Lawmaker calls out ABC News on its own airwaves for broadcasting 'factually wrong' data given to the outlet by Hamas



Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) called out ABC News during a live interview on the network Sunday for citing Hamas data as truth.

On ABC News' "This Week," host Jonathan Karl told Lawler the Biden administration is growing increasingly frustrated with Israel "in terms of protecting civilians in Gaza and humanitarian pauses" before asking the Republican lawmaker, who just visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, if the Israeli leader still feels supported by the U.S.

Lawler answered affirmatively, and then he addressed the elephant in the room.

As Lawler was speaking, ABC News producers placed a chyron at the bottom of the screen disseminating Hamas propaganda about casualties in Gaza. The chyron read, "Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry: 11,000+ killed, 27,400+ injured."

"The bottom line here is, yes, we need to provide humanitarian relief and we want to avoid civilian casualties," Lawler said. "But this 11,000 civilian number that keeps getting repeated by the press is factually wrong. Within that number, thousands of Hamas terrorists have been killed. And, obviously, Hamas is using these civilians as human shields.

"So the oppressor here — the people that are responsible for the deaths in Gaza — is Hamas," Lawler clarified.

Moskowitz and Lawler Join ABC's This Week from Tel Aviv to Discuss Ongoing Israel-Hamas War www.youtube.com

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, meanwhile, confirmed once again that the U.S. government does not believe Hamas' claims regarding civilian casualties.

"We don't have fidelity on the numbers of casualties, fatalities in Gaza. We don't know how many are fighters and how many are innocent civilians," he said on Sunday.

Aside from the fact that Hamas does not distinguish between civilian deaths and those of their terrorist fighters — thus inflating the casualty figures the media continue to cite — there is absolutely no way for independent organizations or outside governments to confirm Hamas' figures.

Adding doubt to their validity is the fact that Hamas' numbers are never revised; they only increase. On the other hand, Israel's estimate of deaths from Oct. 7 was revised last week to remove Hamas terrorists initially counted among the Israeli dead. That figure is still subject to change because not every deceased person has been — or can be — identified.

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Tomas Ragina/Getty Images

Not all Palestinians are Hamas, but Hamas does represent the Palestinians

Biden’s wrong that the group is an outlier. That’s why any revival of two-state solution diplomacy will only lead to more bloodshed.

Drone strike ordered by Biden's Pentagon mistakenly targeted innocent aid worker, killing 10 Afghan civilians, including 7 children: report



A United States military airstrike against a suspected terrorist in Afghanistan may have actually killed an innocent man who worked for a U.S. aid group in Kabul and his family, a new report claimed.

The U.S. launched an airstrike on Aug. 29, one day before the final American evacuation flights out of Kabul.

"U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to [Hamid] Karzai International airport," Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said on the day of the bombing.

"We are confident we successfully hit the target," Urban asserted. "Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material."

"We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time," he concluded. "We remain vigilant for potential future threats."

On Aug. 30, Major General William Taylor told reporters, "U.S. military forces conducted an unmanned over-the-horizon air strike on a vehicle known to be an imminent ISIS-K threat. This self-defense strike successfully hit the target near Kabul airport. Significant secondary explosions from the targeted vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material."

On Sept. 1, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "We had very good intelligence that ISIS-K was preparing a specific-type vehicle at a specific-type location. We monitored that through various means, and all of the engagement criteria were being met. We went through the same level of rigor that we've done for years."

"I don't want to influence the outcome of an investigation — but at this point we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike," Milley stated.

During an Aug. 31 speech marking the end of nearly 20 years of U.S. military action in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden boasted of the Kabul airstrike and the drone attack in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan.

"We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our servicemembers and dozens of innocent Afghans. And to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet," Biden stated in the White House State Dining Room.

However, a New York Times article disputed the Biden administration's account of what actually happened during the Kabul airstrike, and contended that the airstrike killed an innocent family and not ISIS terrorists.

According to the report, drone operators began tracking a car belonging to Zemari Ahmadi, a white Toyota Corolla, which is reportedly the same type of vehicle that ISIS militants used to escape after launching rockets at the Kabul airport.

Newly released security camera footage shows Ahmadi filling containers with water at his employer's office and loading them into his car. He was transporting colleagues to and from work, and they were seen carrying laptop computers.

"According to his relatives, as Mr. Ahmadi pulled into his courtyard, several of his children and his brothers' children came out, excited to see him, and sat in the car as he backed it inside," the Times reported.

The U.S. military launched a Hellfire missile fired from a Reaper drone at the vehicle, believing that it was being packed with explosives for an attack on the airport.

"At first I thought it was the Taliban," Samia Ahmadi, Ahmadi's daughter who was inside the family's home when the missile attack occurred, told the New York Times. "But the Americans themselves did it."

"I saw the whole scene," Samia Ahmadi said. "There were burnt pieces of flesh everywhere."

Zemari Ahmadi and nine members of his family, including seven children, were killed by the drone strike, according to his brother, Romal Ahmadi. The drone strike allegedly killed Ahmadi, three of his children, three of his brother's children, two 3-year-old girls, and one of his cousins.

Samia's fiancé, Ahmad Naser, a former army officer and contractor with the U.S. military, was allegedly among the 10 people killed in the drone strike.

The Pentagon claimed there were secondary explosions from the airstrike when explosive materials in the car burst into flames. However, the New York Times disputes that assertion.

"But an examination of the scene of the strike, conducted by the Times visual investigations team and a Times reporter the morning afterward, and followed up with a second visit four days later, found no evidence of a second, more powerful explosion," the report declared.

Three weapons experts told the NYT that the small crater underneath the car was consistent with a Hellfire missile.

Weapons experts who reviewed photos and videos from the scene could not find evidence of the multiple, large-scale… https://t.co/cHb8QdZsJd
— Christoph Koettl (@ckoettl) 1631306971.0

Zemari Ahmadi, who is believed to be the target of the drone strike, worked for 14 years as a technical engineer in Afghanistan for the California-based non-governmental charity organization Nutrition and Education International, which helps feed hungry Afghans.

Steven Kwon, the president of NEI, said Ahmadi "was well respected by his colleagues and compassionate towards the poor and needy," and that he had recently "prepared and delivered soy-based meals to hungry women and children at local refugee camps in Kabul."

The charity reportedly applied for him to move to the U.S. as a refugee.

Ahmadi was a 14-year employee of Nutrition & Education International, a U.S. NGO that fights malnutrition. He helpe… https://t.co/nF4MV9uYMk
— Evan Hill (@evanhill) 1631305180.0

The drone strike in Kabul happened three days after the suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and 169 Afghans.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby doubled down the assertion that the airstrike eliminated an "imminent threat."

"U.S. Central Command continues to assess the results of the airstrike in Kabul on Aug. 29. We won't get ahead of that assessment," Kirby said. "However, as we have said, no other military works harder than we do to prevent civilian casualties."

"Additionally, as Chairman Milley said, the strike was based on good intelligence, and we still believe that it prevented an imminent threat to the airport and to our men and women that were still serving at the airport," he added.