Hamas boasts of having achieved a “decisive victory” in the narrative of the “bombing” and “massacre” of Al-Ahli Hospital, the oldest in the Gaza Strip. The day after the events in which this tragedy became the focus of global media attention undoubtedly marks a turning point that will most likely change the tactical plans of both parties.
The incident occurred on Tuesday, October 17, at 7:00 p.m. local time. A violent explosion shook the building that was housing around 2,000 Gazans at the time, as in addition to the half a thousand patients, another 1,500 citizens had sought refuge in the hospital to escape the bombings that Israel had already carried out a thousand miles away Aim. It is already a cliché that Hamas typically places its rocket launchers in civilian buildings, including schools and medical centers, which serve as a shield against Israeli attacks.
In the specific case of Al Ahli Baptist Hospital, Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which like other institutions in the Gaza Strip is controlled by Hamas, immediately after the explosion condemned the “massacre” of 500 people by “an Israeli rocket.” “, an information that was immediately picked up by the Qatari network Al Jazeera and all media outlets, which then analyzed the consequences of the event.
As soon as the explosion occurred, Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which like other Gaza Strip institutions is controlled by Hamas, immediately denounced the “massacre.”
The rapid spread of the news, illustrated with images showing only the explosion and subsequent flames, peppered with other images showing the destruction of previous bombings and, above all, with messages and statements based on the “caused massacre” “Insisted Israel” triggered a chain reaction of dozens of rejection demonstrations in many Arab capitals, in addition to the first incidents in several European countries, which led Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Spain to increase and strengthen their levels of preventive security.
It took two hours for Israel’s information and intelligence services to present their first version of events: a video showing how a botched shot from Gaza itself, attributed to Islamic Jihad, would have caused the disaster. Shortly thereafter, new evidence would arrive. The most eloquent is a wiretapped conversation between two Hamas commanders in which they admitted that the projectile was not Israeli and that “it was a mistake.”
By then, the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, who were scheduled to meet with North American President Joe Biden in Amman the next day, had already canceled the meeting, amid pressure and protests on Arab, European and American streets they were widespread.
Israel would expand its analysis by explaining that the missile fired by Islamic Jihad was intercepted by the defense system known as the Iron Dome and that the remains of the missile with its accompanying explosive charge fell on the hospital, causing the gigantic explosion with their effect. . Their interpretation argued that if it had been a missile launched specifically against the hospital, a crater would have been created and surrounding buildings would have been destroyed by the resulting brutal shockwave. On the contrary, no traces of the crater appear to have been found, and most of the destruction consists of about thirty cars that were parked in the hospital parking lot.
There also appears to be no evidence for the high number of victims reported by Hamas, which spoke of “at least 471 dead” the next day.
There also appears to be no evidence of the high number of casualties reported by Hamas, which spoke the next day of “at least 471 dead,” but expanded the casualties recorded throughout the day to include the entire Gaza Strip.
In the various multi-conferences I have attended with different speakers from all sides, apart from the reinforcement of their respective stories, nothing has changed in the content of the events. However, the flood of messages and statements on X, the old Twitter, has created an enormous chaos of misinformation. A large part of the blame must be attributed to the owner of the network, Elon Musk, who decided to open the verification key to other sources, previously reserved exclusively for journalists, fully identifying relevant personalities, allowing the most extremist opinions to multiply exponentially to infinity.
All of this has clearly obscured the origins of the current war: the assault and attack on several Israeli towns and kibbutzim on the Gaza border, with the murder of hundreds of Israeli citizens and the kidnapping of at least 199 people, many of them foreigners. They have not yet been closed returned to their families. The explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital has accentuated the story of the sacrifice of the Palestinian people, kidnapped by Hamas in such a story, with practically no nuance and with a few exceptions, such as this newspaper, which distinguishes the terrorist organization Hamas and the people . The Palestinian who suffers as the finger-pointing and blaming of Israel as the cause of the tragedy becomes more and more common.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Atalayar Media and is published with permission from the author.
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