Russia Attacks Hospitals in Ukraine. Israel Does the Same in Gaza. The U.S. Response Couldn’t Be More Different.

During a United Nations Security Council meeting this week, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield launched a full-throated condemnation of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital on Monday. The attack was a part of a Russian bombing campaign that killed more than 30 Ukrainian civilians.

“We’re here today because Russia … attacked a children’s hospital,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “Even uttering that phrase sends a chill down my spine.”

Thomas-Greenfield went on to list a string of Russian attacks on other Ukrainian hospitals throughout the war. She described Russia’s aggression as a “campaign of terror” and labeled its attacks on civilian infrastructure as violations of international law. Representatives of other countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, echoed Thomas-Greenfield’s denunciations. (Russia’s ambassador denied responsibility for the Monday bombing.)

The moral clarity of her comments was striking to observers and experts of international law, who contrasted it to U.S. rhetoric and actions concerning Israel. The U.S. has stood by Israel militarily and diplomatically as it has consistently attacked civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, in Gaza since October 7, in a brutal campaign that the International Court of Justice has deemed a plausible genocide. 

“I’m very glad the U.S. is coming out and so vocally condemning all of those actions,” said Jessica Peake, an international law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, referring to Thomas-Greenfield’s comments toward Russia. “But at the same time, we don’t get any language anywhere near as strong as that when we’re talking about Palestinian hospitals, or Palestinian schools, or Palestinian children.”

A Very Stark Difference

The U.N. Security Council’s near-unanimous criticism of Russia this week mirrored another moment from earlier this year, with one stark difference: the U.S. response. 

The council met on April 5, just days after Israel bombed a convoy of aid workers with World Central Kitchen, and following the end of Israel’s siege of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, during which the Israeli military killed 400 Palestinians. Council members took turns condemning the attacks, urged Israel to do a better job at protecting aid workers and civilian infrastructure, and called the attacks “clear violations of international humanitarian law.” 

The U.S. joined the calls for protections of aid workers. But it also withheld any criticism of the Al-Shifa Hospital attack, and instead shifted the blame to Hamas. “We must not ignore how Hamas’s actions have put humanitarian personnel at risk,” said U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood. “Tunneling under and storing weapons in hospitals is a violation of the laws of war, and we condemn it.”

The differing and uneven responses from the U.S. toward the wars in Ukraine and Gaza has long been a point of criticism from those pushing for peace in both contexts.

Nate Evans, a spokesperson for Thomas-Greenfield, told The Intercept that the ambassador “has condemned loss of Palestinian civilian lives many, many times in the Security Council,” while adding that the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine are “two very different wars.” Evans noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked,” while Israel launched its assault in response to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Monday similarly contrasted the two wars, asserting that the Ukrainian military isn’t “headquartering itself in hospitals, under hospitals, in other civilian sites, in apartment buildings,” but accused Hamas of doing so. The U.S. has consistently repeated Israel’s refrain that Hamas is using hospitals for military operations, a claim for which neither party has provided credible evidence. Israel’s war has decimated Gaza’s medical sector and killed more than 200 medical and humanitarian workers, the most ever recorded for a conflict in a single year, according to the U.N.

There are indeed significant differences between the circumstances surrounding the wars, including, significantly, that Russia is a longtime U.S. adversary while Israel is one of its closest allies and a recipient of billions of dollars in military aid each year. 

But there are also clear parallels in human rights abuses and violations of international law in each respective war, said Peake, who called the U.S. government’s handling of the conflicts “hypocritical.” 

“What we see from the U.S. is a very stark difference in how they are choosing to handle its involvement in pushing for an end to those conflicts,” said Peake, who is also assistant director of UCLA’s Promise Institute for Human Rights.

“On the one hand, you have the U.S., in Russia and Ukraine, playing a very central role within international efforts for seeking an end to the conflict and also accountability,” she said. “And in the case of Gaza, it’s vetoing resolutions, it’s watering down statements that are put out by U.N. bodies. The U.S. is acting to have those statements be softer to make Israel appear a more reasonable party.”

Hiding Behind Diplomacy

Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the U.S. has vetoed three separate U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have called for a humanitarian pause or immediate ceasefire. In contrast, the U.S. has backed similar peace resolutions for Ukraine, many of which were in turn vetoed by Russia.

In March, the Security Council managed to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. But the U.S. abstained from the vote because “certain key edits were ignored,” such as a request to add condemnation of Hamas, Thomas-Greenfield said at the time. 

U.S. officials have said they opposed ceasefire resolutions because they failed to stand by Israel’s apparent right to defend itself and argued diplomatic approaches would be more effective than public censures. And the U.S. continues to point to its leading role in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as proof that it is serious about ending the conflict in Gaza. 

But even as negotiations continue, Israel is ramping up its bombardment in Gaza, focusing most recently on Gaza City, where Israeli forces on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of Palestinian civilians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that the war must continue until Hamas is destroyed, an implausible condition. 

This week, Israeli strikes have killed dozens, including a school near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where at least 27 people were killed, mostly women and children, according to reports citing Palestinian medics. And over the weekend, separate Israeli strikes at other schools in Gaza City and a U.N.-run school in Nuseirat, killed 20 others. Strikes also hit a home in Deir al-Balah, which was inside Israel’s “humanitarian safe zone” where Palestinians have been told to flee, the Associated Press reported. 

The U.S. has yet to condemn the recent spate of attacks. On Wednesday, however, the Biden administration agreed to send hundreds of 500-pound bombs to Israel, the AP reported. The U.S. previously withheld the munitions in May as Israel readied for an assault on Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were sheltering.

“It’s really just not enough to say ‘We’re pursuing diplomacy’ when we’re talking about any level of civilian casualties, but particularly when we’re talking about almost 10 percent of the population of Gaza,” Peake said, referencing a recent report from The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, which issued a “conservative estimate” that the Gaza death toll is 186,000.

“If Biden picked up the phone to Netanyahu this afternoon and said, ‘We’re cutting off your weapon supply,’ that would bring it to a close,” Peake said. “If the U.S. said, ‘We’re cutting off funding to Israel until there’s a ceasefire,’ that would end this conflict.”