The IDF’s case has been found “groundless,” and debunks some of Israel’s own self-justifications

by Martin Odoni

I will give the Israel Defence Force this; the case they made for arguing that the explosion at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City was a misfired rocket launched by Palestinian militants was very well articulated, and did give pause for thought. The pictures presented, including TV footage from, somewhat ironically, Al Jazeera, did suggest at first glance that there was a real possibility that what the IDF were claiming was true.

However, Al Jazeera itself has assessed the claims and found that the pictures actually showed a somewhat different chain of events, and the interpretation of Israel apologists that two events shown on-screen were directly connected is not accurate. One of the problems the Israel advocates missed was that the Al Jazeera live feed was lagging by well over thirty seconds behind real time, and therefore what we were seeing had happened at 6:58pm and not 6:59pm local time.

My position is unchanged

For my own part, I remain profoundly skeptical of the Israeli claim of a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile. The nearest possibility to that from Al Jazeera’s investigation would be that the rocket might have been intercepted by Israel’s “Iron Dome” defences, and maybe fragments of it landed on Al-Ahli.

But the incredible degree of coincidence (Israel had repeatedly called for the hospital to be evacuated ahead of the attack – according to some reports three times on the day), plus the increasingly clear fact that the IDF were misleading us (euphemism) that there were no Israeli operations in that area of Gaza around the time of the hospital being hit, means objectively, Israel is still by far the likeliest suspect; the video shows that Israeli rockets were being fired into the area in the vicinity of the hospital around the time of the blast.

Add to that severe inconsistencies in IDF claims about the trajectory of and distance covered by the missile they claim was launched from Gaza (they claimed it travelled from both west-north-west and from west-south-west, which is an extraordinary blunder for a press briefing) and one can almost convict Israel on grounds of insulting the intelligence of the rest of humanity. At the absolute minimum, it is clear the IDF are hiding something. As they usually do.

Jonathan Cook does a pretty good job of listing off other reasons to doubt Israel’s story, so I shall not bother listing them myself (although admittedly his point about flattening a hospital seems somewhat immaterial as it turns out that the hospital was not flattened).

Channel 4 News tears Israel's lies about the hospital bombing to shreds in less than 60 seconds pic.twitter.com/A1ccwOSkiw

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) October 18, 2023

Israel tells the world that the missile was launched from two different sites at once. Interesting. A little like the notion of a man committing suicide by shooting himself in the head…twice.

And I still say, as I did in my previous post, that it is absurd to suggest a Christian-run hospital – controlled by the Baptist Church in Jerusalem – would allow its premises to be used by an Islamic Jihadist group, and especially not for storing munitions.

Confession in the blame-shift

In a strange way, who was behind the al-Ahli attack is neither here nor there. In the unlikely event that Israel was not behind it, it is pretty blatant that they would have attacked the hospital eventually, probably on the same night. And some of the atrocities the Israeli Military have definitely committed since then are quite appalling enough to declare them guilty on broad principle. Clear them of al-Ahli, and it is four hospitals they have struck in three days, instead of five in three days.

What I noticed with a kind of grim amusement was that Israeli attempts to give credibility to the “PIJ-misfire” idea completely undermined many of their broader attempts to justify their Apartheid and persecution of the Palestinians. In particular, they admitted out loud one of the points many of us have been making for years, which is that Palestinian arms and missiles are essentially pretty useless. The ones Hamas used on 7th October were clearly far more advanced than their standard fare, raising questions about where they got them from and how they smuggled them into Gaza (while also making it all-the-more implausible that the Israeli Intelligence Services were somehow unaware that the attack was imminent). But what they usually launch into Israel are basically oversized, home-made fireworks with a metal shell and no guidance systems.

The IDF cheerfully admitted this when they stated that approximately one rocket in every five launched from Gaza since 7th October has misfired so badly that it has landed in Gaza.

You said the quiet bit out loud agaaaaaaiiin.

Yes, Israel, you are absolutely right. Even the Palestinian rockets that do manage to get past the boundary wall more often than not land in empty desert, and the handful that actually reach real targets mainly cause a loud bang and trigger a small fire that is usually put out within minutes, leaving a large pothole in the road that is fixed with a thick blob of tarmac within twenty-four hours.

This is because the ‘warheads’ in most of the rockets are cans of petrol, and the rarity of a guidance system means it is a small miracle when any Palestinian ordnance manages to land in the right spiral arm of the galaxy.

And that lack of serious military punch is why the Palestinians do not come anywhere near to constituting a threat equal to the Apartheid measures Israel uses to contain them. And that is why there is no justification for Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, comparing Hamas to the Nazis, or for the incredible overcrowding and misery inflicted on the Palestinians.

In short, Israel has just killed its own propaganda of seventy years and more.