The Pentagon rejected an Iranian report Saturday that claimed 5,000 American military forces were taking part in the Israeli-led ground operation in Gaza. 

Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, citing unnamed sources, said these troops took part in action on Friday night, which was some of the most intense fighting up until that point. The partial invasion included three divisions and several brigades, the Iranian report said.

“That report is false,” the Pentagon told The Trends Journal in an email. “No U.S. military forces are engaged in Israel’s ground operations in Gaza.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an evening briefing on Saturday that Israel is beginning the second stage of the war and the goal is to “destroy the military and political capabilities of Hamas and to bring our kidnapped citizens back.”

As of the reporting of this article, Hamas is believed to have about 230 hostages and has released four. These hostages are not in one location and are believed to be spread out across Gaza.

Netanyahu told his country that the war has only just begun and will be “tough and long.”

“We are prepared for it. This is our second War of Independence. This is our mission, our purpose in life, and together we will prevail,” he said, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

The U.S. has said it is focused on “supporting Israel’s defense needs” no matter the cost. This blind support has driven a wedge between the U.S. and traditional allies like Jordan and Saudi Arabia who are unhappy with Israel’s brutal crackdown on the Gazans. 

“Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones,” Jordan’s King Abdullah II said. “Our lives matter less than other lives. The application of international law is optional. And human rights have boundaries—they stop at borders, they stop at races, and they stop at religions.”

TRENDPOST: It is worth noting that the U.S. can no longer hide its blatant hypocrisy on world affairs. The Trends Journal has reported since the start of the Ukraine War on how the Western media only cared about dead innocent Ukrainians. Before the October 7 Israel War, barely a mention of Palestinians killed inside their homes during Israeli raids, or beaten to death inside their mosques. People in the U.S. have been posting photographs of hostages that were taken by Hamas, but nothing on the 1,000+ Palestinians who are rotting inside Israeli jails without being charged.

Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs research institution, told Al Jazeera that “the level of double standards and hypocrisy coming out of the West is hitting home at a more fundamental level than before.”

“There has always been a double standard when it came to Israel, but in the last two years, it has become a lot starker in light of the Ukraine conflict. That contrast has been particularly obvious over the past two weeks,” he told the outlet. (See “LAVROV CALLS OUT WEST’S HYPOCRISY, CITING ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION OF GOLAN HEIGHTS” 26 Sep 2023, “DUH-MOCK-RACY: ISRAEL HOLDING OVER 1,200 DETAINEES—MAINLY PALESTINIANS—WHO HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED” 8 Aug 2023, “ISRAEL’S APARTHEID STATE NOT AN APARTHEID DECLARES WASHINGTON” 1 Aug 2023, “IT’S PAST TIME TO BE HONEST ABOUT ISRAEL” 25 Jul 2023, and “UN: OK FOR ISRAEL TO KILL PALESTINIAN CHILDREN, BUT SHAMES RUSSIA FOR KILLING CHILDREN IN UKRAINE” 27 Jun 2023.)

Josh Paul, a former senior official at the Department of State who quit his post last week in protest at the strategy, told Al Jazeera that the U.S. is “increasingly pushing behind the scenes for better Israeli decision-making, but it’s also providing weapons to Israel carte blanche.”

“Washington is giving unambiguous and unquestioned military support to Israel despite what many in the region see as a deep injustice. We have tried to frame ourselves as an honest broker, but we’re removing what little credibility we had left in that role,” he said.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Israel’s action against Hamas in Gaza is illegal.

“While we condemn terrorism, we categorically disagree that you can respond to terrorism by violating the norms of international humanitarian law, including indiscriminately using force against targets where civilians are known to be present, including hostages that have been taken,” he told Belarus’s state news agency Belta. “If Gaza is destroyed and two million inhabitants are expelled, as some politicians in Israel and abroad propose, this will create a catastrophe for many decades, if not centuries.”