Hamas Pier Update

Exclusive — Sources Say Joe Biden’s Gaza Pier Is Endangering Troops’ Lives for a ‘Photo-Op’

KRISTINA WONG

The Biden administration has publicly praised American troops who are part of the risky mission to deliver aid to Gaza via a temporary pier, but behind the scenes, sources tell Breitbart News that the troops’ safety is being endangered for a “photo-op.”

There are approximately 1,000 troops who are part of the novel operation to attach a floating pier to the coast of Gaza. The pier went operational on May 17, but eight days later on May 25, it broke apart due to heavy seas and had to be dismantled from the coast and repaired. It was reattached just last week.

Despite this, the Biden administration has insisted the pier operation has been a success.

“The operation was going successfully,” Deputy Defense Secretary Sabrina Singh said on May 30.

But sources say behind the scenes, troops’ lives are being put at risk, sometimes for literal photo-ops.

One U.S. source involved in the mission said the pier has been targeted daily. “[There] absolutely has been gunfire and mortars. It’s all day and night nonstop,” the source said.

Indeed, due to the risk of sniper-fire, troops are ordered to wear tactical vests as far as five nautical miles out from the coast, and aid has to be rushed off the boats onto the temporary pier due to the “constant” attempts to attack the pier, according to the source.

Yet, minutes before the first boat filled with aid hit the pier, troops were ordered to roll up plastic covers on the trucks so that the aid could be photographed, the source said.

Troops were also ordered to wash the aid trucks and sweep flour off of them so that they look good in photos. The source said this happened twice — once for the first delivery of the operation, and again recently after the pier was reattached.

The Biden administration has also boasted about the amount of aid moved over the pier — a little more than 2,000 metric tons to date, or approximately 4.6 million pounds. But sources say moving that amount of aid has taken a toll on troops.

Two U.S. sources said commanders are ordering troops to work 12 to 48-hour shifts with very little sleep so that they can move more pallets, which has led to “many accidents,” including one service member being “crushed” by a forklift.

The first U.S. source said it was lack of sleep that led to the service member being run and crushed over by an unlicensed forklift driver during night operations.

Biden administration officials have revealed little about that injury, with Singh only saying that it was a “noncombat injury that happened on a ship that was away from the pier.” They recently acknowledged that the service member is in critical condition, and was recently moved along with his family from a hospital in Israel to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

According to the U.S. source, the service member is “currently brain dead in a coma.”

Breitbart

The operation is so successful the UN’s World Food Programme (sic) has halted distribution from its warehouses due to Hamas rocket attacks over the weekend, so there’s that.

“To date, USCENTCOM has assisted in the delivery of more than 1,573 metric tons (~3.5 million pounds) of humanitarian aid. No U.S. military personnel went ashore in Gaza,” the agency said in a statement. “This ongoing effort in support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza is entirely humanitarian in nature and involves aid commodities donated by several countries and humanitarian organizations.”

But on Sunday, Cindy McCain, WFP’s executive director, said the U.N. program was halting distribution due to safety concerns.

“Right now, we’re paused because I’m concerned about the safety of our people after the incidents yesterday,” she said on CBS News.

McCain said that two warehouses were rocketed on Saturday, “[S]o we’ve stepped back just for the moment to make sure that we’re in – on safe terms and on safe ground before we’ll restart.”

Fox News

Category: Biden, Big Pentagon, Gaza 2023, Israel