GAZA: A MONSTER RUNS AMOK

Israel has launched a disinformation campaign that claims it was not responsible for the attack on Al-Ahli Anglican Episcopal Hospital.

IN HER immediate response to Israel's horrific attack on the Al-Ahli Anglican Episcopal Hospital, Abby Martin captured the anger that many of us are feeling. The director of the documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom, posted on X: 'We live in hell and are ruled by monsters.'

But even these monsters, who have been waging a genocidal campaign against Gaza's civilian population, realised that maybe they had gone too far this time. They understood that the missile attack on the hospital and the deaths of hundreds of innocent people would not play well in the world's media. A post on X by Hananya Naftali, a digital aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was abruptly deleted. It read: 'Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza.'

Since the attack Israel has been engaged in a disinformation campaign designed to absolve it of any responsibility for what occurred. But its narrative has shifted. At first Israel claimed that a rogue Hamas rocked fired toward Israel had gone off course (making a 180 degree turn in the process) and hit the hospital. Israel then altered its narrative, claiming the hospital had been hit by a barrage of rockets fired  by Islamic Jihad. The racist subtext of this claim is that Palestinians are, in the word of the Israeli Defence Minister, 'Human Animals' and prepared to kill their own to further the cause. Israel has been consistent in its efforts to dehumanise the Palestinian people. 

Islamic Jihad has denied the charge. It has also been pointed out by observers that the group simply does not have the military capacity to wreak such carnage. Indeed, no Palestinian group has the military ability to flatten a hospital. But Israel does. As journalist Paul Cook of Middle East Eye has pointed out:

'...the video of the strike itself shows that an incredibly large and powerful weapon is used. Listen to the noise the missile makes just before the hit – that whooshing noise is caused by its phenomenal velocity as it cuts through the air. That is not the noise of a falling Palestinian rocket....If you watch videos being shared of Palestinian rockets being fired, notice how slowly they travel. Almost at a snail's pace. If they fail, they drop at free fall speed, not the near-supersonic speed of the missile that hit the hospital. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the laws of physics.'

Nevertheless, an increasingly befuddled US President Joe Biden has backed Israel's claim that it did not attack the hospital. This is the same Joe Biden who believed Israel when it said that Hamas had beheaded forty babies. That claim, the White House later admitted, was untrue.

Israel's lies have also been largely swallowed by a mainstream media heavily biased in favour of Israel. This is the same mainstream media that has attacked Russia for its alleged attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine but has only looked for ways to justify Israel's carnage in Gaza. When CNN's Jake Tapper described Vladimir Putin as 'a monster' for attacking civilian targets in Ukraine and declared that 'he must be stopped', his only response to the attack on Al-Ahli Hospital was to declare that 'there are no easy answers'.  

Al Jazeera though is the honourable exception. While outlets like CNN and the BBC have allowed themselves to be conduits for Israel's falsehoods, the Qatar-based news network has consistently reported that Israel bears the responsibility for the attack.

All the while Israel continues to say that it does not target the civilian population of Gaza. It continues to claim that it only targets Hamas strongholds and weapons depots. But since the attack on Al-Ahli Hospital, the World Health Organisation has said that there have been over fifty Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since the start of the conflict on October 7.