When Al-Ahly Hospital was struck weeks ago, Israel claimed that Islamic Jihad was responsible and that Israel categorically does not strike hospitals. It’s simply something they don’t do.
Haaretz reported:
"Categorically we do not strike any sensitive facilities—definitely not hospitals. Very much aware of the presence of civilians," IDF International Spokesperson Jonathan Conricus told CNN.
In the weeks after that contested strike, Israel has shelled or bombed at or near other hospitals. But because it had gained immunity from the Al-Ahly strike, viewing audiences (at least here in the States) didn’t believe these other strikes were happening. Some even confused the hospitals with the first—they simply didn’t take the time to tell individual hospitals apart.
In the wake of devastating bombardment at several hospitals this weekend, Israel again claims, just on its word, that the strikes were the fault of misfired rocketry of militant groups.
A spokesperson came out again and said, categorically, that Israel does not strike hospitals.
If you take that as a given, then of course you have to rule Israel out. If it simply doesn’t do such a thing, then automatically it is cleared and automatically someone else must be the culprit.
The state of Israel must have counted on no video existing that could contradict its claims, but that was not to be the case. There is video.
The shelling is sustained. In all likelihood, it is not a rocket gone awry.
Even Andrea Mitchell, reporting on this story, used several caveats and disclaimers when presenting this story:
I think, dramatically, the problem for Israel right now is that they are going after hospitals. And targeting hospitals is a violation of international law. But as Mark Regev said, and said to me earlier, that Hamas has command and control under the Al-Shifa Hospital. They say. Now, I’ve been told by U.S. officials that they have no independent corroboration of that, that they know that there is Hamas activity around Al-Shifa, but they can’t independently corroborate what Israeli intelligence [is] claiming.
Regev was saying to me earlier that there is a codicil in international law that permits targeting anything where there is hostile fire coming at them. But, whatever the law—I’m not an international lawyer—but what I know is that there is grave concern in the administration and elsewhere, among Israel’s friends, including on the Hill, that these hospital hits, ambulances, you know, children [i.e., children’s hospitals]….
She said it, right there, on American television. The emphases were hers, in her own voice.
Israel has been bombing those places with abandon. It has targeted ambulances. It has hit the solar panels of hospitals trying to preserve patients on dialysis machines or in incubators.
But it doesn’t do these things, you see, so categorically such charges must be called into question.
Israel is gaslighting us. It’s gaslighting the whole world. And who bears the brunt of this? The innocent Palestinian civilians who, crowding into the only shelters available to them, are erased from conversation as we in the West squabble over who is to blame.