The Israeli Defense Forces have proven their claims through videos about Hamas using hospitals in Gaza to shield their operations, but the denialism is growing because there is an "information war" being staged, retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt said Thursday on Newsmax.
"It's a propaganda campaign," Holt, a Newsmax contributor, said on "Wake Up America." "You can't be sticking up for Hamas and be pro-Palestinian. The Palestinians have been under their thumb forever, but they're just going to look at all these videos and they're going to go, 'Well, this is just propaganda.'"
The IDF revealed a video this week with evidence showing that Hamas terrorists had been using Gaza's Rantisi Hospital for Children as a terror base.
"What is interesting to me is that not only has the IDF proved their case right here about this hospital and others like it [but] that Hamas is using these people as human shields," said Holt. "This is what we call site-sensitive information.
"So what you're getting to see is probably just a 30-second [clip] of what the Israelis just learned about Hamas, Iran, and all the others helping them, and now they've got the intelligence they need to drive on."
Meanwhile, Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser to President Donald Trump, said she doesn't understand why the hostages that were seized in October are not getting more attention.
The Biden administration is pushing Israel to start humanitarian pauses to allow the flow of aid into Gaza, Coates said, but that shouldn't have started without first getting the hostages freed.
"Now Hamas has leverage," she said. "Now they can demand hundreds of their own prisoners to be released. This was done completely backward. We should have insisted on getting our guys out first."
Holt also on Thursday discussed Wednesday's visit between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying he doesn't trust that anything that was promised, including resumed military communications and a curb on the production of fentanyl.
"They came in here with a pair of twos and we treated them like they had a royal flush," said Holt. "The deal about fentanyl that they'll never keep, anyway, was in exchange for restrictions being lifted on their forensics institutes. That's what The Guardian and Bloomberg are reporting. How about just the fentanyl stops?"
China also had "no negotiable leverage," said Holt, who noted its "vaporized economy" and the opposition to Xi.
He also noted that Xi's welcome to San Francisco also raises eyebrows, as there was "not one American flag when his motorcade passed."
"It's as if he was in China," said Holt. "You had [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom kissing his butt on arrival. It was just a horrible missed opportunity on our part diplomatically. We should have had a very good outing and we did not."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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