Devil’s advocate: US State Dept. spox Vedant Patel as mouthpiece of Zionist regime

By Maryam Qarehgozlou

Since the launch of the Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, the press briefings at the US Department of State have virtually turned into wrestle-mania encounters.

The spokespersons go out of their way to defend the indefensible - the slaughter of children and women and the destruction of schools, hospitals and refugee camps - by the Tel Aviv regime.

Since the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7 last year and the subsequent Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, the US State Department briefings have become all about verbal duets between the department spokespeople and journalists attending these briefings. 

Social media is replete with posts about them offering canned answers to simple questions or simply dodging questions that refer to the horrendous war crimes in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Vedant Patel, who presently serves as the 'principal deputy spokesperson' for the US Department of State, has particularly come under fire for acting as the "mouthpiece" of the Zionist regime.

His briefings have been characterized by the deflection of questions related to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the American complicity in it and the defense of daily massacres against Palestinians.

In a briefing in mid-August, a reporter asked Patel a question about Canadian doctor Ben Thompson who had volunteered in Gaza and witnessed the Israeli genocidal war crimes.

In a video, Thompson narrated the story of a doctor in Gaza who was forced to strip naked and stand for two days by Israeli occupation forces, urinating, and defecating where he stood.  

Patel, in his characteristic dismissive style, dodged the question by saying “if true” the Israeli military “should look into it,” adding that he had “no more information.”

When the same reporter asked about four-day-old Palestinian twins, their mother Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, and Arafa’s mother who were all killed in an Israeli airstrike on August 13, Patel repeated the same answer and cut off the reporter’s questions because he could grill him more.

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During the same briefing, Said Arikat, a Palestinian journalist and the Washington bureau chief for the Al-Quds daily, asked about the growing toll of the devastating war on Gaza, where more than 40,400 people have been killed since October 7, 2023.

“When will enough be enough,” he tossed the question at Patel, who appeared clueless and puzzled.

He mindlessly parroted the same talking points about the situation in Gaza and the importance of reaching a ceasefire without addressing any of the concerns raised by the reporter.

“Said, what we are exactly focusing on is trying to have a resolution that would allow the fighting to stop […] the best thing for parties to do minimize the impact on all including Palestinian civilians is to accept and finalize a ceasefire deal […],” Patel said.

Some users, however, pointed to the spokesperson's contradictory comments saying that as long as the US is providing the occupying regime with weapons, it cannot claim to be pro-ceasefire.

“If only words were as powerful as the weapons they keep sending,” Ghida Fakhry, a broadcast journalist, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“You can’t say you want a resolution while you provide the weapons killing them,” Asal Rad, a US-based pro-Palestine activist who holds a PhD in West Asia history, tweeted.

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The Israeli regime

In another briefing in early August, Arikat pointed to a recent report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz which revealed that Israeli soldiers were using Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza to enter and clear tunnels and buildings they suspect may have been booby-trapped.

“You often condemn Hamas for using Palestinians as human shields. Now, there’s an investigation saying the Israeli army does the same. Do you condemn Israel for this?” he asked.

Patel, again clueless, said the reports were “disturbing,” but they were “just reports at this point.”

“We would encourage Israel to investigate and determine what’s happening,” he said, repeationg the same hackneyed sentence that has become a part of American diplomatic folklore now.

When Nadia Bilbassy, Washington bureau chief for Alarabiya, pressed Patel to condemn Israel for using Palestinians as human shields because the Israelis believe “their lives are superior to Palestinians” the spokesman parried the question by repeating the same answers.

Bilbassy then called out Patel’s hypocrisy and asked “So what make these reports about Hamas using Palestinian human shields as fact on the ground?”

“Hamas has a track record of using civilians as human shields. That's not hyperbole,” Patel replied, parroting the narrative peddled by the Zionist regime and its lobbies in Washington.

“(US) State Department’s policy on Israel’s use of human shields: ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,’” Fakhry wrote

“The US playbook has only one rule: ‘Israel can do no wrong.’ Because why would the US want to muddy the waters with something as inconvenient as a condemnation?” she added.

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In another briefing in mid-August, Tom Bateman asked Patel if the US was satisfied with the credibility of the information provided by the Israeli regime on the al-Tabeen school attack on August 10 in Gaza City where at least 100 civilians were killed in cold blood.

Patel said they have a “robust information-sharing relationship” with Israel, but Bateman insisted that there was “fairly strong evidence” suggesting that many people the Israeli military referred to as "Hamas operatives" were not even killed in the al-Tabeen school attack.

Patel, in another attempt to obfuscate the truth and amplify Zionist claims, said he would let the Israeli military “speak to own operation,” showing he didn't have answers for it.

Following the deadly attack on the al-Tabeen school, Israel claimed that its forces targeted a “Hamas command center” inside the compound and killed at least 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. 

Hamas as well as rights groups later debunked the claims saying those named on the list were either ordinary people who had no ties with resistance groups or had been killed in previous Israeli strikes.

However, Patel brazenly regurgitated bogus Israeli claims that Hamas has a “proven track record of using civilians as a human shield” and “locating themselves amongst civilian infrastructure.”

He further tried to justify the Israeli attacks on civic buildings in Gaza by saying that protected facilities “may lose their status when they are used by combatants.”

But to date, based on numerous reports, Israel has failed to provide any substantiated proof of a Hamas command center under or inside civil infrastructure like schools and hospitals in Gaza.

“This is why it’s a US genocide, too. They know that civilians are being systematically and intentionally targeted, and they don’t care,” wrote one social media user in a comment on X.

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In a briefing in late-July, journalist Matt Lee asked Patel about “Leahy law” which mandates that US military assistance may not be provided to foreign security forces accused of human rights abuses.

“The Leahy process has resulted in what?” asked Lee.

“Matt…we have tools at our disposal for the responsible use of their [Israel’s] security assets, that does not detract from our long-held belief that settlements and outpost activities are inconsistent with international law,” Patel responded, sidestepping the question. 

“I think, Vedant, the problem is—what a lot of people are raising—is that yes, you do have these levers, but you’re not using them,” Lee shot back.

Other users also agreed with Lee.

“This describes precisely the behavior of the [Joe] Biden administration. It has all the levers and buttons but they aren’t being used,” wrote one social media user.

“The state department spokesmen are taught to say certain phases like parrots when they don’t have an answer,” wrote another user.

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In another briefing in mid-July, Palestinian journalist Arikat asked Patel if he believed that the Israeli soldiers who had gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention facility had committed a war crime.

“All these things that happen regularly in Israeli detention camps does that constitute a war crime to you?” Arikat pointedly asked the spokesman.

Patel, repeating the “deeply concerning” mantra, said the US has welcomed the Israeli military investigation into the matter and that they are “letting that process play out.”

When Arikat repeated his question, Patel, humming and hawing, evaded the question saying he was “no legal expert.”

In another exchange between Patel and a reporter in late July about a ceasefire deal and who is blocking a deal, spokesman refused to acknowledge that Israel is the party that is sabotaging the talks.

“You and Matt and other US officials have not hesitated to say when the ball is in Hamas’s court. So I’m just wondering whose court the ball is in now,” the reporter said.

“I’m not going to get into the specifics of the negotiations,” Patel said evasively.

“So who is causing the hang-up now?” the reporter asked again.

“[…] Time and time again, it continued to be Hamas that changed pieces of the deal and changed pieces of the proposal. ... I’m not going to get into the specifics,” Patel said again dodging the question.

“Okay. I mean, you just said Hamas changed the conditions [before] without saying who is changing the conditions now,” the reporter said, adding, “I understand we may not going to get any answers on that.”

Patel got pressed on further by Arikat who repeated the same question of whether Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ever changed his position on the truce deal.

“In the past, you didn’t hesitate to say the ball was in Hamas’s court. Why won’t you say now who is holding up the deal?” He asked.

And Patel once again repeated the same canned responses of “I am not going to get into specifics” and “I won’t discuss details of the negotiations.”

“A deal is not achievable, for the simple reason that Netanyahu will never accept a deal which doesn’t allow him to continue the war and avoid going straight to jail on corruption charges,” wrote one user.

Some users also pointed to the US State Department spoksman “incredible depth of hypocrisy.”

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In April, during a heated exchange over Israel’s violation of the Geneva Conventions in Gaza, Patel refrained from answering, citing uncertainty about their accuracy or verifiability.

“It’s a simple question, do you recognize the Geneva Conventions as applying to Gaza?” indepedent US-based journalist Sam Husseini kept asking.

Patel claimed he had already answered Husseini’s questions in an attempt not to provide any answers.

“[The convention] is applied to everywhere on the planet except for the Palestinians, Isn’t that right?” Husseini concluded.

The videos of the back-and-forth between Patel and reporters, mostly posted on X, racked up hundreds of thousands of views on social media outlets. There are even entire accounts dedicated to scouring the briefings for moments of evasiveness or contradiction.

“These exchanges clearly demonstrate Joe Biden administration’s bias toward Israel and its steady support for the regime, singling out the Zionist entity as a special case, while brazenly touting the norms of international law and applying it to other non-aligned nations,” veteran reporter Ati Mirghara told Press TV website.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir