The West s Israel-haters are playing with fire – spiked
There is really only one thing we can say with certainty about the explosion at al-Ahli hospital that it was a tragedy of almost unimaginable proportions. Hundreds of Palestinians were reportedly killed in or around the hospital after a missile of some kind fell on the car park and started a raging fire. This is a dark day for Palestinians, and for humanity. The sooner we bring the war in Gaza to an end which is to say the sooner Hamas returns the 199 civilians it kidnapped from Israel and declares a complete ceasefire the better.
Much else about the horror at the hospital remains unclear, shrouded in claim and counterclaim. The Pavlovian response of the MSM, and of that army of preening Israel-haters on social media, was to say that Israel did it. And that it was an act of genocide. Further bloody proof, they cried, of Israel s determination not only to neuter Hamas but also to erase an entire people. Biden, Biden, you can t hide! We charge you with genocide! , chanted protesters outside the White House last night, furious that their president backs a nation that would do something as unconscionable as bomb a hospital.
In the hours since the tragedy, however, a different picture has emerged. There now appear to be grounds for scepticism about the media s swift indictment of Israel. The Israel Defence Forces have released video footage which they say shows the hospital being hit by a misfired missile from Palestinian Islamic Jihad inside Gaza. It has released an audio clip of what is reportedly an intercepted phone call between two Hamas operatives, in which one says the missile belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad . It s from us? , says the other. It looks like it , comes the reply. Evidence-wise, that feels devastating.
Photographs taken this morning of the area outside the hospital that was hit by the missile also raise questions about who did this. Some observers note that the burnt-out zone lacks the kind of crater that Israeli ordnance tends to leave. Others are pointing to the lack of serious damage to the hospital building itself. Shashank Joshi, the cool-headed defence editor of The Economist, says the evidence of this morning, though not conclusive, points more towards a failed rocket launch than an Israeli strike .
My first thought was that the hospital explosion was either a Hamas provocation or an accident of some kind. It didn’t occur to me it was the Israelis.