‘Failed To Prove Their Claim’: CNN Reporter Challenges IDF Explanation For Why It Bulldozed Gaza Cemetery

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond was left with “more questions than answers” after trying to verify whether a Hamas tunnel existed beneath a Gaza cemetery that was bulldozed by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Diamond has been reporting on the IDF digging up cemeteries in Gaza, which Israel claims are being used by Hamas for military purposes. After a recent investigation from CNN found at least 16 cemeteries have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the war, the IDF invited Diamond to tour what they claimed was a Hamas tunnel underneath one of those cemeteries in southern Gaza.

Yet, according to Diamond, who discussed his visit on The Lead with Jake Tapper, the IDF refused to show him the entrance to the alleged tunnel, and the evidence subsequently provided “failed to prove their claim.”

Diamond shot video of a three-hour tour of the area, including a descent into a tunnel, but said the IDF wouldn’t allow him to verify whether the tunnel entrance led directly beneath the cemetery. In an article at CNN.com about his investigation, Diamond wrote that “Israeli commanders failed to prove their claim during a three-hour visit to the Bani Suheila cemetery and the surrounding area.”

“Where are we right now? What’s above us?” Diamond was shown in the video clip asking Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfuss, the commander of the IDF’s 98th Division, as they made his way through a dark tunnel.

“We’re in the headquarters of a Hamas commander. Above us is a cemetery that I showed you from the outside,” the general said.

“But there’s no way to verify whether we’re beneath the graveyard,” Diamond continued. “The general takes us back out of the tunnel, but not into the cemetery. Instead, we leave the same way we came in before walking back to the enormous hole where the cemetery once stood. We’re asking the general if we can actually see the shaft to the tunnel. But the answer is ‘No.'”

“The whole thing could collapse,” Goldfuss said. “It’s not something I’m going to take a risk on.”

Diamond reported that when he asked for evidence, the IDF provided drone footage of two tunnel entrances, but neither was actually in the grounds of the cemetery.

The IDF stood by its claims in a press release, but Diamond reported that the release only “poked more holes in their story, the story that General Goldfuss told us when we were in that underground command center.”

“He said that we were just below the cemetery. But the press release, a map that the Israeli military released today, actually places that command center well outside the bounds of that cemetery. More questions than answers,” Diamond said as he wrapped his report.

Watch the clip above via CNN.