 Israel's siege of Al-Shifa Hospital has turned into a full-fledged raid. We bring you the latest from this brutal offensive. A Sri Lankan court has held former President Gautabaya Rajapaksa and other officials responsible for the country's devastating economic crisis. What does this unique judgment say? This is the Daily Debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before we go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. Israeli forces have entered Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza and wreaked havoc while details are scarce due to the crackdown, reports mentioned harassment of patients. Thousands of people including hundreds of patients are stranded inside the hospital. Israel is usual claims that it is targeting Hamas but a claim has been called out by journalists and a host of organizations across the world. We go to Abdul for details. The reports have been quite shocking in every sense of the term. So maybe although it's a developing story as we know things might change by the time this recording comes out, but let's first quickly go through what the details are with us right now. Well, as per the latest reports coming from the Gaza, the Israeli troops finally entered the Al-Shifa Hospital, which they were kind of surrounding for some days now and they have been bombing the premises of the hospital for several days, including kind of firing with artillery and other things. So they finally entered the ground troops, finally entered the premises on Wednesday morning, early morning and there are reports, whatever reports are coming because as per the claims made by different people on social media, the journalists have been arrested and there has been complete communication blockade imposed by the Israeli troops. So whatever reports were there and what are reports are coming from the eyewitnesses living in and around the hospital, there are claims that Israeli troops are interrogating people and there are around 600 plus patients mostly wounded in the Israeli bombings. There are around 2,500 other relatives and people who have taken shelter inside. Apart from that, there are more than 200 health workers also. So altogether around 4,000 people are there inside the hospital and there have been, of course, there has been attempts to terrorize them, humiliate them, which has been reported. As Israel has claimed, despite repeated denials and repeated rejections by the Gaza authorities, by the hospital management, that the hospital has been used by the Hamas for carrying out attacks on Israeli targets, so far there has been no report of anything of that sort being confirmed. In fact, Israeli attack was followed after the US basically backed the Israeli claim that the hospital has been used by Hamas. When the journalists ask about evidence, do they have any evidence from their intelligence and other things? The US spokesperson completely, John Kirby, completely tried to evade the question. So it seems the attack, the ground offensive was finally carried out after the US are green signaling it through a public statement. And apart from what is happening in Al-Sifa Hospital, the bombings all across Gaza Strip has also increased. In fact, the South Gaza is under tremendous bombing on the West End Wednesday afternoon. So yeah, that is the basic ground situation as per the reports from Gaza. Like Abdul, you mentioned, of course, the shocking statement by the United States, which kind of continues in its vein of its policies where it has sort of, of course, said that Israel is acting in self-defense and to, at various points, question the death toll itself, although all international organizations accept the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And now we have this, you know, this argument about it being a Hamas operation center and the Israeli army also released a widely controversial video around that. So quite a, you know, there's this tendency of the US actually continuously backing positions while making vague noises. Yeah, it seems that they're basically looking ways to justify their killing of thousands of innocent civilians, particularly Palestinian children in Gaza, in the name of fighting Hamas. That's what the branding has been. In certain media you will see it is not a war on Gaza or war on Palestinians, but war against Hamas. As if the more than 6,000, 7,000 children and women killed in Gaza are all Hamas operatives. And that is attempt basically and US position in particular is strange to say the least because if you see the popular perception and the kind of mobilization which has happened in US, in fact, there is a survey published on Wednesday by Reuters which says more than 60% of all US people, citizens basically are in favor of ceasefire, US calling for the ceasefire. Despite the popular perception, despite the pressure created by the people all in the US and across the world, US is basically completely, you can say, unable to kind of exert any pressure on Israelis to kind of stop their massacre in Gaza. And that basically is a complete, is a sign of complete failure. Of course, whatever diplomatic links they had with Israel, they are not able to kind of stop Israel from committing whatever the crimes they are committing in Palestine. But they are also, and since they are not able to do that, they have to invent newer excuses every day. It sounds very much similar to what happened in 2003 Iraq. You see going to UN and saying that Iran, Iraq has the weapons of mass destruction without providing any evidence. Similar things are happening, but of course the scale is different, the nature of the attacks are different. And of course the overall repercussion is different because that time they were able to create some kind of confusion among some certain section of people. This time there is no confusion, at least in the larger masses across the globe. Right, the stark nature of this genocidal war making things very clear. And the US of course has a different agenda and not wanting to stop Israel also when it comes to its operations as well. So we'll come back to you for another story soon. Thank you so much. Sri Lanka Supreme Court has held former President Gautama Rajapaksa, his brother, former Prime Minister Mahindra Rajapaksa and other officials responsible for causing the devastating economic crisis of 2022, the impact of which continues to haunt people. The ruling was based on a petition filed by various activist groups. Others named include former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, two former central bank governors and two former Treasury secretaries. Interestingly, the court said that they had violated the fundamental rights of people by causing this crisis. We go back to Abdul. Abdul, welcome back. A bit of a unique judgment. You don't see many courts in the country declaring some of the top leaders responsible for an economic crisis. And we know that many countries in the world are actually suffering very similar economic crisis to Sri Lanka. So let's maybe do a bit of context in the sense that what exactly are these very powerful politicians including the former President Gautama Rajapaksa, his brother, who is also a former president. What are they accused of really? Well, some of the groups, you can say transparency international and other people had filed a kind of petition in the Sri Lankan Supreme Court in which they basically accused these people of being responsible for what happened to Sri Lanka. The people in Sri Lanka in 2022 in particular, and they basically claimed they had, of course, a kind of, you can say, a list of acquisitions on which they wanted the Supreme Court to opine and which included how the tax benefits were given to the rich, which were kind of more than 680 billion in Sri Lankan rupees, of course. Then there how it basically pegged irrationally the Sri Lankan rupees with the US dollar at the time, how the government basically failed to approach IMF on time to kind of find a bailout package and how they basically decided to honor a kind of sovereign bond of 500 million dollars at a time when Sri Lankan state coffers had no money to kind of spare. And despite these decisions, these federal decisions were taken by these people, you named, of course, the Rajapaksa family, which was ruling the country at the time. Along with that, the central bank governors, two of them were also kind of accused and Sri Lankan court, of course, did not go beyond admitting that these people managed, mismanaged the economy and violated the fundamental right of the Sri Lankan people and kind of impose certain kind of monetary penalties, but it has the symbolic, the judgment at a symbolic value in a sense that for the first time and it's kind of unique also that the head of the state and the head of the government at the time, the powerful politicians in a country and top economists, you can say financial managers, where are held responsible for what happened to the country and the people. And in that way it is a unique judgment, of course. And I think it may have certain, I don't know what political implications, whether they will be charged further and there will be some cases taken against them. On the basis of this judgment, but it will have political implication and hopefully have an impact on the politicians in Sri Lanka. Right, Abdul also interesting to think of countries ranging from Pakistan to Ghana, you know, where in many countries where leaders might be similarly charged. But also important to note, of course, that none of this is really meant a major change in Sri Lanka's economic policy trajectory. We know that the current president is also basically in power because of the Rajapaksas. Although the Rajapaksas are not officially holding power, they are the power behind the current president and who has also followed exactly the same neoliberal austerity policies and neoliberal policies in that trajectory that the Rajapaksas had followed in the past as well. So it doesn't look like the trial will specifically, this case will specifically have any economic implications, at least in terms of policy frameworks. But like you said, the question really is about the elections that are coming up, so we'll be closely watching it as well. Thank you so much for talking to us. And that's all we have time for in today's episode. Do come back tomorrow for the next episode and in the meanwhile do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on all social media platforms.