Palestinian Terrorists Bombed Their Own Hospital, and Blamed Israel

Another chapter in a long and bloody Middle Eastern nightmare

Much like the larger war that is on the verge of consuming the Middle East right now, the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City that was bombed on Tuesday night was the product of Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists who launched a rocket from a cemetery near that hospital which inadvertently hit it, killing 471 people sheltering there. This is perhaps inconvenient for those who are desperate to blame Israel for the current roiling crisis, and so Palestinian responsibility is either ignored or obfuscated in favor of lies and misdirection, but the truth remains.

Likewise, Hamas’s murderous attack on Israel is being justified in some quarters as being a legitimate response to Palestinian oppression, rather than the genocidal war crime that it was. This is madness.

Somehow, it seems Palestinians are entirely absolved no matter what horror these terrorists author, and Israelis are blamed instead. While these militant groups do not represent all Palestinians, obviously, they’re certainly acting in their name, and are being given political cover by those who should know better in the West. 

This is certainly true in the boiling Arab capitals erupting over Israel’s ongoing airstrikes and its imminent invasion of Gaza, and in much of the American progressive left, which sees Israel as an illegitimate colonizer and oppressor of the Palestinian people. Sadly, unsound Israeli policy in the region from an increasingly right-wing government, and a long history of mutual violence and terror has fueled this thinking. But the irony that openly genocidal Islamist militants, murderous fanatics who just gleefully slaughtered 1400 Israeli men, women, and children are being lauded by doves who profess to believe in human rights, democracy, and peace is glaringly obvious. 

Exhibit A might be the Harvard student groups that posted an open letter siding with Hamas right after the attacks on October 7th, holding Israel “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Backlash to that embarrassment has been swift, and apparently resulted in the doxxing of some of the students involved in writing it. 

These activists seem to be quite oblivious about the nature of their political allies. They’re boosting vicious terrorists who believe in oppressing women, who kill and kidnap civilians at will, and who enforce Sharia law over a terrified Palestinian populace with violence, and not a speck of democracy. Israel, flawed though it might be, is a Western-style democracy, and one surrounded on all sides by enemies dedicated to wiping it off the face of the earth. Hamas’s recent attack amply demonstrates the level of blind hatred they’re dealing with in Israel.

Nevertheless, the ideological paradigm of seeing everything through the lens of oppressed versus oppressor and colonized versus colonizer leaves little room for seeing things as they actually are. Honestly, it shouldn’t be this difficult to condemn the killing of innocent women and children, or to assign blame when incontrovertible evidence is presented for war crimes.

Facts & fallacies

Indeed, Israel has presented abundant evidence confirming that the strike on the hospital was from a misfired PIJ rocket, a view concurred with by the United States. They’ve released audio recordings of Hamas operatives discussing the blast and admitting it was from their side, and together with U.S. infrared satellite, and other strands of intelligence, it seems quite clear that the strike was the result of an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket or missile, rather than an Israeli airstrike. 

Still, Hamas immediately declared that Israel was responsible for the bombed hospital. Cities in Lebanon, Bahrain, Turkey, Oman, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere in the Arab world have erupted in violent protests decrying the strike as in Israeli war crime, despite all evidence to the contrary, much of it released by Israel publicly today, and confirmed by President Biden.

Among the most glaring things is the lack of any kind of crater at the blast site, which would be expected of even the smallest 500 pound JDAM, used in an Israeli airstrike. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) said the “intelligence is definitive that this was not an Israeli operation.” President Joe Biden, visiting Israel today during a worsening Middle Eastern crisis with the potential to drag the U.S. into another regional war, also said that Israel was not responsible for the blast. 

PIJ is a nasty little Islamist terrorist organization that operates in Gaza and the West Bank, playing second fiddle to the larger Hamas, though often operating and fighting alongside the group, and sharing similar goals of wiping Israel off the map from the “River to the Sea” as they say. Of course, this is shorthand for the extermination of Israeli Jews and Israel as a state, though it remains the chant of choice for many pro-Palestinian protesters in the democratic West, seen in Washington, D.C., New York, and other American cities in recent days.

However, these protesters either don’t care or don’t believe that Palestinian militants accidentally destroyed their own hospital only to blame Israel, despite what is now voluminous evidence underscoring exactly that. Likewise, the Arab world blames Israel for the war that is now escalating out of control, despite the murderous attack on Israeli civilians carried out on October 7th in Israel by Hamas, much of it recorded in grisly videos by the terrorists themselves, and proudly posted on social media for the world to see. 

Perhaps they approve of such methods, or are simply indifferent.

Women were raped, children and the elderly burned alive, and hundreds of young people slaughtered at a music festival. 199 people were kidnapped, Americans among them, and taken into Gaza to be used as human shields. The atrocities undertaken by Hamas were grotesque and genocidal, part of a sophisticated attack that took many months to plan. It was the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, and like the Holocaust, the world could care less. Many pro-Palestinian protesters even seem ready to blame Jews for their own murder, a perennial feature of real antisemitism. 

Thus, the state of Israel exists to care about the lives of Jews. Certainly, events in recent days prove that no one else will. More than 1400 Israelis were killed, and many more maimed, traumatized, and shattered by the sudden explosion of violence into their lives, when Hamas burst into homes and slaughtered entire families. Israel has both a right and a duty to protect the lives of its citizens, and to dismantle Hamas root and branch. 

This is clear. What would America do if Islamic terrorists burst into Texas and slaughtered more than a thousand of its citizens? Would would any country do?

The fact that the Palestinian people are suffering matters greatly. They deserve to be free from oppression, to have security, prosperity, and stability, and a chance at self-governance. But Hamas provides none of these things; worse, they actively prevent them, funneling humanitarian resources meant for civilians into weapons and terror. They are preventing peace; in Hamas’s own charter, along with the same virulent antisemitism that motivates white supremacists, they call for the destruction and erasure of Israel. They don’t hide these abhorrent views. They celebrate them.

And clearly, they mean exactly what they say. 

After the massacre of October 7th, it’s unclear to me exactly what else needs to be done to convince the world of Hamas’s evil. They’re a bloodthirsty organization that hates Jews, Israel, and the United States, and they’ve proved, along with their allies in the PIJ and their Iranian patrons, that they would like nothing more than for a war to embroil the entire Middle East, and perhaps change the currently disadvantageous geopolitical dynamic for themselves. They might get their wish.

As this war heats up, it should be utterly clear to all who started it, and why it rages. The idea that “Israel is entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” is as ludicrous and untrue as when those naive Harvard student groups first wrote it, the bodies of more than a thousand Israeli civilians still warm, blood soaking the kibbutzim where they lived, their lives torn apart by Hamas gunmen. 

I personally disagree with much Israeli policy, and Bibi Netanyahu’s abandonment of the two-state solution, his right-ward lurch, settlements, and much else. But that changes nothing about the fact that Israel can and should defend itself from Hamas, along with the spurious allegations and smears of Palestinian terrorists who are bombing their own hospitals and massacring Israeli civilians, only to blame Israelis for their own destruction.