Chris Lange, FISM News
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Anti-Israel demonstrations erupted across the U.S. and Europe this week after Hamas claimed that Israel targeted a Gaza hospital in an airstrike on Tuesday. Protests and an uptick in anti-Semitic activity continued even after the U.S. and Israel presented evidence that the blast at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital originated from within Gaza’s borders and appeared to have resulted from an errant projectile launched toward Israel by Islamic jihadists.
The White House said that it determined that Israel was not responsible after conducting its own analysis.
“While we continue to collect information, our 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 yesterday,” White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in an official statement shared to X.
The conclusion supports a report from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that the explosion was caused by a “failed” rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a determination the IDF made based on video and satellite imagery. Israel’s military also released audio of what it said was an intercepted call between Hamas operatives who discussed the blast.
“They are saying [the rocket] belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It’s from us?” one alleged Hamas member asked in the audio, as reported by The Washington Examiner. A second man responded, “It looks like it…It misfired and fell on them,” adding, “God bless, couldn’t it have found another place to explode?”
The Wall Street Journal reported that experts said the amount of damage revealed in satellite imagery was inconsistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s claim made on Wednesday that 471 people were killed, experts said. U.S. officials said that the death toll is most likely between 100 and 300, according to the report.
Drone footage of the explosion’s aftermath also showed no evidence of a large crater that would typically result from “a surface-detonated Israeli bomb or missile,” according to Eric Oehlerich, an ABC News contributor and retired Navy SEAL. Oehlerich also noted that an Israeli air-burst weapon would have left telltale pockmarks on the hospital walls due to fragmentation, yet none were evident in the footage.
IDF ACCUSES HAMAS OF USING CIVILIANS AS ‘HUMAN SHIELDS’
The IDF said that, unlike Hamas, it does not target civilians.
“In order to mitigate harm to noncombatants, the IDF carries out surgical strikes,” the IDF International Cooperation Division said in a report that also offered an explanation as to why military operations in Gaza were being conducted in such close proximity to a civilian hospital.
“Hamas infrastructure is deliberately embedded within civilian areas and in proximity to international assets, using the population as human shields,” the IDF noted in the report, per the Jewish News Syndicate.
This may also explain why, even after Israel Defense Forces dropped thousands of leaflets over northern Gaza urging civilians to evacuate ahead of its anticipated ground invasion, Hamas told residents to stay put, as reported by Reuters.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told the Times of Israel that more than 600,000 residents of Gaza City had evacuated by Sunday, despite “attempts by Hamas to prevent people from leaving.”
Perhaps equally as notable as the alleged propaganda coming from Hamas terrorists is its rapid dissemination by Western media outlets which fanned the flames of Jewish hatred spreading across the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere.
Washington Examiner commentary writer Tiana Lowe Doescher excoriated the liberal media and progressive politicians for conveniently abandoning their own strident “misinformation” standards.
“Since Hamas terrorists began their ethnic cleansing campaign of Jews in Israel nearly two weeks ago, Nazi sympathizers on the Right and Left have called into question whether murdered babies were actually beheaded,” Doescher wrote in an op-ed. “They have questioned why blood-soaked crime scenes were actually bloodied and not painted, and they have questioned whether female hostages in blood-soaked pants were actually rape victims.”
Doescher went on to point out that, immediately after these same terrorists accused Israel of bombing the hospital, “the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, multiple foreign governments, and the entire left-wing congressional ‘Squad’ shared the story uncritically.”