No. of Recommendations: 0
Dang inability to edit: there was supposed to be a question mark at the end of the subject line!
No. of Recommendations: 0
And while people were still collecting dead bodies after Israel killed Palestinians -- - Jewish groups all over college campuses were holding "Go Israel!' rallies.
From France to NYC.....
Get what you deserve.
No. of Recommendations: 8
I read through most of the full piece on Substack. His (lengthy) writeup makes sense, but a question occured to me.
The analysis first points out the alternatives for the source seem to be:
1) A broken Qassam (Hamas) or al-Quds (PIJ) rocket accidentally hitting al-Ahli.
2) An errant Tamir Interceptor (IDF) accidentally hitting the hospital.
3) An intentionally fired Israeli artillery shell (IDF) hitting the hospital.
Option 1 would be a war crime by Hamas, 2 would be an unintentional mistake by the IDF and 3 would be a war crime by the IDF.
Option 1 was eventually ruled out based on video and remnants at the hospital scene by both Israeli and Palestinian experts. While the ultimate, final summary doesn't explicitly choose the Tamir missile or the RPG as the cause, Abramson's detailed analysis leans towards an intentional act by the IDF. One factor he cites is a reference in a New York Times story that the hospital was in fact hit by an IDF shell three days earlier, indicating the hospital may have been in the IDF's sights earlier. When you click through to that NYT article and read the details, the "shell" that hit the hospital was an illumination shell, not an explosive shell per se. Abramson states that hit was followed by calls to the hospital as a warning to vacate staff because the hospital was going to be targeted.
That's a pretty consequential chain of implications to draw from those facts.
There's NO POWER in Gaza except for emergency generators running on a dwindling supply of fuel (no new fuel has been delivered). It's dark so if the IDF wants to conduct damage assessments at night or spot Hamas forces on the move above ground, firing an "illumination shell" might be common. A quick search indicates a typical illumination shell "lights" for about 60 seconds with about 1 million candlepower of light energy and some also create infrared light as well. I cannot find any indication of what ELSE might be in the shell for explosive purposes (intentional or incidental). When fired, an outer explosive ignites the illumination round which then floats down under a mini-parachute to extend its flight time while illuminating whatever's beneath it.
Was the hospital "hit" three days prior with an illumunition shell? Multiple sources seem to confirm such shells were lighting up the sky on October 14 but it SEEMS like this type of physical "hit" of a spent illumuniation shell is not the same as a "hit" of an explosive shell. It also seems that incoming phone calls to the hospital for three days after might not have been tied to THAT specific illumination round dropping in the area and hitting the hospital. Those calls could have simply reflected the IDF realizing OTHER targets were present in the blocks around the hospital and a goal of encouraging evacuation of any patients that might be mobile in case of future accidents.
From reading Abramson's analysis, fault in the more damaging hospital hit is still not crystal clear but he concludes the hit originated from Israeli territory by the IDF. He does identify several signs of obfuscation on the part of IDF press liasons and videos released by the IDF that in hindsight were not temporally related to the actual hit on the hospital. However, everyone is operating under similar pressures to get their side of the story out without fully understanding the timestamps and provenance of each piece of information.
If it was an errant Tamir interceptor missile, fault in that scenario would not be clear either unless multiple parties have hours of radar evidence showing quiet skies and no projectiles leaving Gaza for hours then one incoming missile from Israeli territory from that Iron Dome installation. If projectiles were flying OUT of Gaza, it is likely Israel is going to use the Iron Dome and that some times, those Iron Dome interceptors will miss a target or the target will prematurely fail and disappear. At that point, what goes up has to come down and it isn't clear how an interceptor will steer itself if its previously locked-on target vanishes.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 2
My understanding is that it turned out that it wasn't the hospital itself that was actually hit, but the parking lot. And that the area of contact wasn't the deep crater that would result from an errant missile but appeared to be from fuel igniting.
