Bombing a Baptist Hospital in Gaza
Israel, the U.S. government and independent security experts, reports the WSJ, said the preliminary evidence for a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital compound pointed to a local militant group, casting doubt on Palestinian claims that an Israeli airstrike was responsible.
After the bombing to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza, media outlets took Hamas at its word, fallaciously proclaiming, 500 dead from an Israeli strike.
The Media Takes Hamas at Its Word
According to NPR:
Hamas blames an Israeli airstrike for the blast, a charge the Israeli Defense Forces have vigorously denied. Israel says that a Palestinian rocket, launched by a Palestinian militant group called Islamic Jihad, exploded in mid-air and fell on the hospital grounds. The U.S. believes Israel is not to blame, based on analysis of “overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information,” a National Security Council spokesperson said Wednesday.
Furthermore, “the lack of both shrapnel damage and structural damage to the hospital is inconsistent with all types of commonly used Israeli bombs and artillery shells.”
The BBC’s Fake News
Israelis “said they are investigating, but it is hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike, or several airstrikes.”
Quickly Changing Headlines:
Headlines have since changed, “the world received the story essentially as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) put it on Twitter: “Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that. (Tlaib) also blamed Mr. Biden for not coercing Israel into a cease-fire, as Hamas would no doubt like to see.”
It Wasn’t Israel
WSJ editors say they are ”confident” that the initial story (above) is false.:
A White House National Security Council spokesman confirms that its “current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza.” Israeli drone footage and an intercept of a call between Hamas members add to the evidence.
“I am telling you this is the first time we see a missile like this falling, and so that’s why we are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” one Hamas member began.
“It’s from us?” the other answered.
“It looks like it. They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel.”
