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I’m still not sure what to believe on that story. It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on a

I’m still not sure what to believe on that story. It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident. It’s not unlike Hamas to blow up anything (intentionally or otherwise) and Israel and the US would both probably say they did it whether they did or did not. The story would look the same no matter who did it.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> still not sure what to believe on that story Do this. A lesson from air crash investigations: wait a week. Until then, discount everything. > story would look the same no matter who did it This is not true. Too many countries with disparate motivations had eyes on the area. We haven’t had time for intelligence to be scrubbed for public release. Again, give it a week. In the meantime, observe the meta story; who concludes what with high confidence.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  I’m not sure what will change in a few more days but I do already discount everything. I’m not sure what your second comment means exactly, can you elaborate?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > not sure what will change in a few more days One, the people who think before speaking will start talking. Two, intelligence will start being released.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Anyone who claims to see through the fog of war without evidence and even sometimes with should be suspect; they have already determined what they want to see and found it. The hardest part is that we are all that way, and we naturally love to see things that confirm our knowledge, biases, suspicions, etc; and hate to be challenged.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      >One, the people who think before speaking will start talking. Two, intelligence will start being released. I mean, I agree with you. But from 10,000ft, it's going to be mostly the same voices, going one way or the other. Conflicting views will remain prominent. The information war is crazy.
      - mattmaroon 3y ago
        Right. I mean obviously both Israel and Hamas likely know if they accidentally blew up a hospital parking lot. One of them is lying and will still be doing so in a week. U.S. (and other third party nations) intelligence services may or may not have legitimate knowledge and may or may not be truthful about it and that’s unlikely to change in a week. What usually happens in these situations is a week later the stories are the same and we still don’t really know what happened.
        PawgerZ 3y ago
        > Right. I mean obviously both Israel and Hamas likely know if they accidentally blew up a hospital parking lot. One of them is lying and will still be doing so in a week. But the prevailing view is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad accidentally blew up a hospital -- not Hamas, not the IDF.
        mattmaroon 3y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hospital-israel-hamas-video.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos... Week later, still don’t know anything.
    - mattmaroon 3y ago
      I’m not sure I’ll trust the intelligence any more in a week than I do now. I think that if Israel accidentally blew up the hospital, they and the US will still say otherwise. I don’t imagine any other country in that region telling me the opposite would be very persuasive. I suppose if there’s an admission against interest I’d be more inclined to believe it, such as if Jordan says Hamas did it. But I don’t imagine they’d do that. If the runup to our invasion of Iraq taught me anything, it’s that intelligence can be incorrect or misrepresented to the public for quite some time.
- abigail95 3y ago
  Sure, ignore everything for a week. Unless you want to make money in prediction markets - then help out humanity by reading as much information as possible and moving the price so that people who don't have time to do that can have better information. A week is a long time in a fast moving conflict, and the ambiguity favours the defenders if it slows down any attack. An explosion at a hospital doesn't need a golden rule of 100% discount rate for 1 week. That's insane. Anyone telling you 100% of anything is incorrect because the world doesn't work like that.
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    It's good advice if you don't know what to believe. Presumably people in your proposed situation have an idea on what's believable haha. I think it's pretty clear where the smart money is on who is lying at every stage here lol.
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    Former news junkie here. The GP is correct. Unless you are making concrete decisions based on those conflicts on a day to day basis, there is little to gain following it on a day by day basis. He says wait a week. I actually used to wait a month - at the beginning of the month I would catch up on all the news. Compared to when I would follow things on a daily basis, I got more accuracy, and less haze. When you go through your RSS feed all at once for a month, you'll see how crazy often things are inaccurate in the first few days - something I didn't notice until I looked at it from on high. The truth of some things may never get clear. Those are in the minority. For most events, it does by a large margin.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > When you go through your RSS feed all at once for a month, you'll see how crazy often things are inaccurate in the first few days You may also enjoy browsing old microfiches.
      - BeetleB 3y ago
        Not sure if that was sarcasm, but the thought does tickle me! Thankfully, I've rid myself of the "must follow news" curse. But yeah, looking at decades old newspapers it's fun to see the stuff there.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  > wait a week. Until then, discount everything Your advice is really easy to give when you have no dog in the race, as a commenter said. I'm confident that once you have a problem with something and you felt you are not being heard, you're going to be caught with your pants down, rooting for the narrative that gives your grievance some space. Let me share a story when I didn't wait. This is meant to be a stylized comment. Months ago, a programmer got murdered in San Francisco, by what most people jumped to conclude was a homeless guy. My best friend, personally, made national news by being murdered by a homeless person. So in light of the facts shortly after the murder and my personal experience, I wrote the city supervisor and asked, what has to happen? Can you do something about "this?" It turns out that this programmer was murdered by a person known to him. Why? The news suggests something about the victim's relationship with the perpetrator's sister, which people don't get murdered over all the time, instead of the far more idiosyncratic and too-many-coincidences fact that the victim developed a huge pump and dump cryptocurrency called MOB that affected a lot of powerful people, that funny enough I was also a victim of. That's another tale though. I jumped to conclusions because I had a legitimate grievance. My government officials are much more responsive to social-media-viral outrage, perhaps rationally so because of its impact on voting, than something scientific, secular or wonky. While I disagree with their primary grievance, I sympathize with social media users who read the hospital violence story and reacted to it aligned with their primary grievance. We are replaying the circumstances behind Obama's comments here, which I found very striking: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-movements-like-black-lives-matter-cant-just-keep-on-yelling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-movements-l... > [Obama:] "The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room..." When some activists at that meeting said they felt that their voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, “You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States.” The people you're telling to "wait a week" haven't had their meeting with the president yet. It's the same energy as complaining about people blocking highways. My dude, they fucking get in the news, it works! So what do you want? How do people with legitimate grievances but are simply not numerous enough to matter politically in their communities, how do they get at the table exactly?
- seo-speedwagon 3y ago
  Turns out the US does not think an international investigation (i.e. not done by us or Israel) would be “appropriate” at this time. https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1715137246431449451?s=20 https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1715137246431449451?s=2...
Pxtl 3y ago
The evidence from reputable OSINT orgs like Bellingcat is pretty-much showing evidence that this was an accident on the part of Palistinian fighters. There are multiple videos showing a volley of rockets were launched from within Gaza (not from Bellingcat, but other OSINT groups -- Bellingcat not ready to make a final conclusion here). One of the rockets appeared to fail while it was rising - it swerved wildly and then went dark. Then the explosion happened very nearby. Of course, there's a chance the videos are fake in some way, but that's what we've seen so far. edit: Al Jazeera believes that the rocket did not fail, but was destroyed by Iron Dome defenses, and still believes that the explosion is an Israeli airstrike. They haven't really provided any evidence of the latter, only the former. Personally I'm thinking it's possible that the explosion in the courtyard was still caused by this event even if AJ is correct that Iron Dome shot the missile down. No other major news source seems to be following up on the "iron dome" angle. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hospital-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hosp... Bellingcat has photos of the impact crater - it's small, much too small for Israeli airstrike weapons. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possible-crater-from-gaza-hospital-blast/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possi... So what it sounds like is that there was an encampment of Palestinians who were taking refuge in the parking-lot/courtyard of this hospital, the rocket failed, and some or all of its explosives and fuel fell into this courtyard and killed a large number of people. And yes, this is fundamentally the expected outcome of waging a war in an area the size of Montreal or Pittsburgh with even higher population density. Especially since the nearest major targets are north of Gaza, and Gaza's densest area is the northern-half of the strip. These are weapons maintained and often built in the blockaded open-air prison of Gaza, they're not exactly Raytheon products -- a certain number of failures is to be expected and failures with offensive rockets are going to be incredibly dangerous to bystanders. I wouldn't be surprised if those rockets have killed more of their own people than Israelis. I oppose the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, but the facts are the facts. edit2: My opinion is that this was almost certainly an accident. Either a Palistinian rocket failed, or possibly if AJ is telling the truth the Iron Dome accidentally caused the explosion (either directly or indirectly) when attempting to shoot down the rocket volley.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
justrealist 3y ago
> It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident. Well, the notable part, which the press has not really admitted goofing, is that the hospital didn't blow up. Something explosive landed on the parking lot outside the hospital and burned a bunch of cars and civilians without leaving a crater!
rasz 3y ago
> blow up a hospital How about the fact this very hospital is still standing with walls intact? Does that change anything in your view? How do we know its still there and we arent being fed lies? Hamas, the so called "other side" uploaded videos after the fact showing this undamaged hospital building and burned cars in parking lot around small crater consistent with other Hamas rocket strike sites. Same story with two day old news headlines about "collapsed Church", its also still standing. https://nitter.net/Osinttechnical/status/1715367751135441031 https://nitter.net/Osinttechnical/status/1715367751135441031
- lazystar 3y ago
  Seems like we're witnessing a bubble collapse in mainstream news.
selimthegrim 3y ago
One hospital in Beit Hanoun might beg to differ.
names_are_hard 3y ago
As soon as the story broke, it was clear to me that whoever did it, it was an accident. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter. It's an unfortunate casualty of war, in which innocent people suffer even when it's not intended. One thing that I respect about the initial Israeli response was that they weren't quick to assign blame. In a press conference soon after the event, the military spokesperson said that they are aware something happened and are looking into it and will update when they know. To me, that's a more honest approach than just assigning blame. There's fog of war, a lot of things happening simultaneously, and it takes time to gather information. I trust people more when they acknowledge that they don't know everything and sometimes make mistakes than when they immediately have all the answers. > The story would look the same no matter who did it. Maybe, but I think the US government would distance themselves from the story if it was an Israeli attack. Biden told a reporter that his conclusion that it was not Israeli is based on data from his Defense Department. Is he trustworthy? I guess this is subjective, to me he's more credible than Hamas but I'm biased.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  > One thing that I respect about the initial Israeli response was that they weren't quick to assign That's not very respectable if you are guilty. > Maybe, but I think the US government would distance themselves from the story if it was an Israeli attack. Do you really think that anything can change US support to Israel? If you realize nothing would stop it, it makes more sense that the US doesn't care that it was Israel. They joined the lie. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: they both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy — completely annihilate it,” Biden claimed. How does Israel invading Gaza is the same as Ukraine getting invaded by Russia?
- seo-speedwagon 3y ago
  > As soon as the story broke, it was clear to me that whoever did it, it was an accident. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter. It's an unfortunate casualty of war, in which innocent people suffer even when it's not intended. What’s this based on? Vibes? People are upset about this because it, in fact, does matter. Intentionally destroying a hospital is an atrocity; in the context of a war, it’s a war crime. This kind of false, lofty even-handedness doesn’t really work when the matter in dispute is human rights violations.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yieldcrv 3y ago
Sort of, I agree that the blame game doesn't really matter, like to what end? Its like “we didn't target the public utility full of civilians this time” okay. Apply this to any party in this conflict. There is still no appeals process even during times of peace. Countries we respect have that feature because we don't actually trust them. But here we are supposed to take sides and everything at face value based on…… the most profound meme we saw on our timeline? most of us just don’t want to catch the ire of our employer in finance/entertainment/tech/education and I’m extremely relieved that its less suffocating to voice nuanced perceptions now than over the last two decades. its validating that everyone was watching the whole time and just keeping mum so they could stay employable but were never comfortable with the consensus reality. people are trying to get others to have simplistic conclusions and its failing, I love that for the us. People are trying to say that any crack in agreement is advocacy for rounding up their entire ethnic group, what a leap of logic and nobody’s buying it! but would any resolution of that massacre resolve anything? are people just going to retreat from the unrest at US embassies like “oh okay, actually you guys are alright” noooope. this disaster just has people expressing what they already felt and doing what they already wanted to do. and there will be more massacres in this conflict.
ankit219 3y ago
I am with you on that one. You don't have to have an opinion so close to an event unfolding. Ideally, we should be able to wait, let the authorities investigate, and then finally get the findings to be able to make an opinion. But today's news cycles are not that long. In this case though, it's not about what to believe about the story. But, it's about how much caution or verification NYT should have done before publishing anything. They used the wrong image for the hospital, they changed the headline multiple times without telling anyone, they still haven't admitted they got the first draft wrong. You see an opinion piece from them talking about both sides as if anyone could have made those mistakes. I personally think they should have exercised caution or atleast acknowledged how things change with flux. If you read something on twitter, you are likely to gravitate towards posts which share your opinion, you would rarely change your mind. With NYT and the credibility/influence they have, they have the power to change and shape opinions. That should carry somewhat extra caution. Probably better if they are late but can verify whatever they are publishing.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  Likely they made no mistake. They reported on a Hamas presser in a way that was designed to generate clicks by capitalizing on anti-Isreali sentiment to trigger outrage. Nothing they said was factually incorrect, and the changing narrative could just be blamed on "changing news"; as if the objective truth of a matter is unknowable or worse, based on what you choose to believe at any given moment. Mission accomplished.
foolswisdom 3y ago
Perhaps, but plenty of OSINT accounts on Twitter posted multiple videos and pictures they sourced, and they pretty much came to the same conclusion.
baryphonic 3y ago
The visual evidence is what makes me think Palestinian militants (accidentally) caused the explosion. First, live footage from Al Jazeera at the time showed rockets firing from a location in Gaza toward Israel. One rocket appeared to malfunction in mid-air and within a few seconds, an explosion happened on the ground approximately where the hospital is. The lean-too shape of the hospital roof can even be seen in the light from the explosion. Second, daytime footage after the explosion showed that the hospital was still standing, with burned out cars in the parking lot. Several palm trees nearby were standing and unscathed (it was hard to tell if there were even scorch marks). The parking lot had a small crater maybe a meter in diameter with very little penetration into the ground. Israel's weapons have much stronger explosives, which would likely have completely destroyed the parking lot and wreaked havoc on adjacent buildings. IMO, those two pieces of evidence strongly indicate to me that the Palestinians fired this rocket and it accidentally caused an explosion in the hospital parking lot. One confusing aspect of the story to me is the death toll given in a matter of minutes after the explosion. It seems extremely improbable to me that anyone could confidently say 500 people died so quickly unless they were spreading propaganda.
- lawgimenez 3y ago
  You forgot the leaked intercepted call from a Hamas terrorist claiming that one of the rockets fell on the hospital.
  - baryphonic 3y ago
    That came from the IDF, so I'm discounting it. EDIT: To be clear, I think the leaked call was authentic, but I don't think it's persuasive evidence because of its provenance. I fully think PIJ did this in support of Hamas, and then immediately blamed Israel to an enchanted Western press who can't see past an oppressor-oppressed narrative structure. But all of this is my opinion and not verifiable fact.
- seo-speedwagon 3y ago
  And here’s an analysis disputing many of those claims https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospital-blast-visual-investigation https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospit...
throwaway421967 3y ago
[flagged]
PawgerZ 3y ago
> It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians They bombed this same hospital on October 14th, three days before the more fatal bombing occurred. According to the WHO, they have documented 48 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since October 7. Take that with a grain of salt, but I don't see how it's "not like Israel" to bomb hospitals.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> still not sure what to believe on that story Do this. A lesson from air crash investigations: wait a week. Until then, discount everything. > story would look the same no matter who did it This is not true. Too many countries with disparate motivations had eyes on the area. We haven’t had time for intelligence to be scrubbed for public release. Again, give it a week. In the meantime, observe the meta story; who concludes what with high confidence.

mattmaroon 3y ago
I’m not sure what will change in a few more days but I do already discount everything. I’m not sure what your second comment means exactly, can you elaborate?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > not sure what will change in a few more days One, the people who think before speaking will start talking. Two, intelligence will start being released.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Anyone who claims to see through the fog of war without evidence and even sometimes with should be suspect; they have already determined what they want to see and found it. The hardest part is that we are all that way, and we naturally love to see things that confirm our knowledge, biases, suspicions, etc; and hate to be challenged.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >One, the people who think before speaking will start talking. Two, intelligence will start being released. I mean, I agree with you. But from 10,000ft, it's going to be mostly the same voices, going one way or the other. Conflicting views will remain prominent. The information war is crazy.
    - mattmaroon 3y ago
      Right. I mean obviously both Israel and Hamas likely know if they accidentally blew up a hospital parking lot. One of them is lying and will still be doing so in a week. U.S. (and other third party nations) intelligence services may or may not have legitimate knowledge and may or may not be truthful about it and that’s unlikely to change in a week. What usually happens in these situations is a week later the stories are the same and we still don’t really know what happened.
      - PawgerZ 3y ago
        > Right. I mean obviously both Israel and Hamas likely know if they accidentally blew up a hospital parking lot. One of them is lying and will still be doing so in a week. But the prevailing view is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad accidentally blew up a hospital -- not Hamas, not the IDF.
        mattmaroon 3y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hospital-israel-hamas-video.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos... Week later, still don’t know anything.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    I’m not sure I’ll trust the intelligence any more in a week than I do now. I think that if Israel accidentally blew up the hospital, they and the US will still say otherwise. I don’t imagine any other country in that region telling me the opposite would be very persuasive. I suppose if there’s an admission against interest I’d be more inclined to believe it, such as if Jordan says Hamas did it. But I don’t imagine they’d do that. If the runup to our invasion of Iraq taught me anything, it’s that intelligence can be incorrect or misrepresented to the public for quite some time.
abigail95 3y ago
Sure, ignore everything for a week. Unless you want to make money in prediction markets - then help out humanity by reading as much information as possible and moving the price so that people who don't have time to do that can have better information. A week is a long time in a fast moving conflict, and the ambiguity favours the defenders if it slows down any attack. An explosion at a hospital doesn't need a golden rule of 100% discount rate for 1 week. That's insane. Anyone telling you 100% of anything is incorrect because the world doesn't work like that.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  It's good advice if you don't know what to believe. Presumably people in your proposed situation have an idea on what's believable haha. I think it's pretty clear where the smart money is on who is lying at every stage here lol.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  Former news junkie here. The GP is correct. Unless you are making concrete decisions based on those conflicts on a day to day basis, there is little to gain following it on a day by day basis. He says wait a week. I actually used to wait a month - at the beginning of the month I would catch up on all the news. Compared to when I would follow things on a daily basis, I got more accuracy, and less haze. When you go through your RSS feed all at once for a month, you'll see how crazy often things are inaccurate in the first few days - something I didn't notice until I looked at it from on high. The truth of some things may never get clear. Those are in the minority. For most events, it does by a large margin.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > When you go through your RSS feed all at once for a month, you'll see how crazy often things are inaccurate in the first few days You may also enjoy browsing old microfiches.
    - BeetleB 3y ago
      Not sure if that was sarcasm, but the thought does tickle me! Thankfully, I've rid myself of the "must follow news" curse. But yeah, looking at decades old newspapers it's fun to see the stuff there.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> wait a week. Until then, discount everything Your advice is really easy to give when you have no dog in the race, as a commenter said. I'm confident that once you have a problem with something and you felt you are not being heard, you're going to be caught with your pants down, rooting for the narrative that gives your grievance some space. Let me share a story when I didn't wait. This is meant to be a stylized comment. Months ago, a programmer got murdered in San Francisco, by what most people jumped to conclude was a homeless guy. My best friend, personally, made national news by being murdered by a homeless person. So in light of the facts shortly after the murder and my personal experience, I wrote the city supervisor and asked, what has to happen? Can you do something about "this?" It turns out that this programmer was murdered by a person known to him. Why? The news suggests something about the victim's relationship with the perpetrator's sister, which people don't get murdered over all the time, instead of the far more idiosyncratic and too-many-coincidences fact that the victim developed a huge pump and dump cryptocurrency called MOB that affected a lot of powerful people, that funny enough I was also a victim of. That's another tale though. I jumped to conclusions because I had a legitimate grievance. My government officials are much more responsive to social-media-viral outrage, perhaps rationally so because of its impact on voting, than something scientific, secular or wonky. While I disagree with their primary grievance, I sympathize with social media users who read the hospital violence story and reacted to it aligned with their primary grievance. We are replaying the circumstances behind Obama's comments here, which I found very striking: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-movements-like-black-lives-matter-cant-just-keep-on-yelling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-movements-l... > [Obama:] "The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room..." When some activists at that meeting said they felt that their voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, “You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States.” The people you're telling to "wait a week" haven't had their meeting with the president yet. It's the same energy as complaining about people blocking highways. My dude, they fucking get in the news, it works! So what do you want? How do people with legitimate grievances but are simply not numerous enough to matter politically in their communities, how do they get at the table exactly?
seo-speedwagon 3y ago
Turns out the US does not think an international investigation (i.e. not done by us or Israel) would be “appropriate” at this time. https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1715137246431449451?s=20 https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1715137246431449451?s=2...

Pxtl 3y ago

The evidence from reputable OSINT orgs like Bellingcat is pretty-much showing evidence that this was an accident on the part of Palistinian fighters. There are multiple videos showing a volley of rockets were launched from within Gaza (not from Bellingcat, but other OSINT groups -- Bellingcat not ready to make a final conclusion here). One of the rockets appeared to fail while it was rising - it swerved wildly and then went dark. Then the explosion happened very nearby. Of course, there's a chance the videos are fake in some way, but that's what we've seen so far. edit: Al Jazeera believes that the rocket did not fail, but was destroyed by Iron Dome defenses, and still believes that the explosion is an Israeli airstrike. They haven't really provided any evidence of the latter, only the former. Personally I'm thinking it's possible that the explosion in the courtyard was still caused by this event even if AJ is correct that Iron Dome shot the missile down. No other major news source seems to be following up on the "iron dome" angle. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hospital-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hosp... Bellingcat has photos of the impact crater - it's small, much too small for Israeli airstrike weapons. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possible-crater-from-gaza-hospital-blast/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possi... So what it sounds like is that there was an encampment of Palestinians who were taking refuge in the parking-lot/courtyard of this hospital, the rocket failed, and some or all of its explosives and fuel fell into this courtyard and killed a large number of people. And yes, this is fundamentally the expected outcome of waging a war in an area the size of Montreal or Pittsburgh with even higher population density. Especially since the nearest major targets are north of Gaza, and Gaza's densest area is the northern-half of the strip. These are weapons maintained and often built in the blockaded open-air prison of Gaza, they're not exactly Raytheon products -- a certain number of failures is to be expected and failures with offensive rockets are going to be incredibly dangerous to bystanders. I wouldn't be surprised if those rockets have killed more of their own people than Israelis. I oppose the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, but the facts are the facts. edit2: My opinion is that this was almost certainly an accident. Either a Palistinian rocket failed, or possibly if AJ is telling the truth the Iron Dome accidentally caused the explosion (either directly or indirectly) when attempting to shoot down the rocket volley.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

justrealist 3y ago

> It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident. Well, the notable part, which the press has not really admitted goofing, is that the hospital didn't blow up. Something explosive landed on the parking lot outside the hospital and burned a bunch of cars and civilians without leaving a crater!

rasz 3y ago

> blow up a hospital How about the fact this very hospital is still standing with walls intact? Does that change anything in your view? How do we know its still there and we arent being fed lies? Hamas, the so called "other side" uploaded videos after the fact showing this undamaged hospital building and burned cars in parking lot around small crater consistent with other Hamas rocket strike sites. Same story with two day old news headlines about "collapsed Church", its also still standing. https://nitter.net/Osinttechnical/status/1715367751135441031 https://nitter.net/Osinttechnical/status/1715367751135441031

lazystar 3y ago
Seems like we're witnessing a bubble collapse in mainstream news.

selimthegrim 3y ago

One hospital in Beit Hanoun might beg to differ.

names_are_hard 3y ago

As soon as the story broke, it was clear to me that whoever did it, it was an accident. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter. It's an unfortunate casualty of war, in which innocent people suffer even when it's not intended. One thing that I respect about the initial Israeli response was that they weren't quick to assign blame. In a press conference soon after the event, the military spokesperson said that they are aware something happened and are looking into it and will update when they know. To me, that's a more honest approach than just assigning blame. There's fog of war, a lot of things happening simultaneously, and it takes time to gather information. I trust people more when they acknowledge that they don't know everything and sometimes make mistakes than when they immediately have all the answers. > The story would look the same no matter who did it. Maybe, but I think the US government would distance themselves from the story if it was an Israeli attack. Biden told a reporter that his conclusion that it was not Israeli is based on data from his Defense Department. Is he trustworthy? I guess this is subjective, to me he's more credible than Hamas but I'm biased.

meiraleal 3y ago
> One thing that I respect about the initial Israeli response was that they weren't quick to assign That's not very respectable if you are guilty. > Maybe, but I think the US government would distance themselves from the story if it was an Israeli attack. Do you really think that anything can change US support to Israel? If you realize nothing would stop it, it makes more sense that the US doesn't care that it was Israel. They joined the lie. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: they both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy — completely annihilate it,” Biden claimed. How does Israel invading Gaza is the same as Ukraine getting invaded by Russia?
seo-speedwagon 3y ago
> As soon as the story broke, it was clear to me that whoever did it, it was an accident. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter. It's an unfortunate casualty of war, in which innocent people suffer even when it's not intended. What’s this based on? Vibes? People are upset about this because it, in fact, does matter. Intentionally destroying a hospital is an atrocity; in the context of a war, it’s a war crime. This kind of false, lofty even-handedness doesn’t really work when the matter in dispute is human rights violations.

deleted 3y ago

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yieldcrv 3y ago

Sort of, I agree that the blame game doesn't really matter, like to what end? Its like “we didn't target the public utility full of civilians this time” okay. Apply this to any party in this conflict. There is still no appeals process even during times of peace. Countries we respect have that feature because we don't actually trust them. But here we are supposed to take sides and everything at face value based on…… the most profound meme we saw on our timeline? most of us just don’t want to catch the ire of our employer in finance/entertainment/tech/education and I’m extremely relieved that its less suffocating to voice nuanced perceptions now than over the last two decades. its validating that everyone was watching the whole time and just keeping mum so they could stay employable but were never comfortable with the consensus reality. people are trying to get others to have simplistic conclusions and its failing, I love that for the us. People are trying to say that any crack in agreement is advocacy for rounding up their entire ethnic group, what a leap of logic and nobody’s buying it! but would any resolution of that massacre resolve anything? are people just going to retreat from the unrest at US embassies like “oh okay, actually you guys are alright” noooope. this disaster just has people expressing what they already felt and doing what they already wanted to do. and there will be more massacres in this conflict.

ankit219 3y ago

I am with you on that one. You don't have to have an opinion so close to an event unfolding. Ideally, we should be able to wait, let the authorities investigate, and then finally get the findings to be able to make an opinion. But today's news cycles are not that long. In this case though, it's not about what to believe about the story. But, it's about how much caution or verification NYT should have done before publishing anything. They used the wrong image for the hospital, they changed the headline multiple times without telling anyone, they still haven't admitted they got the first draft wrong. You see an opinion piece from them talking about both sides as if anyone could have made those mistakes. I personally think they should have exercised caution or atleast acknowledged how things change with flux. If you read something on twitter, you are likely to gravitate towards posts which share your opinion, you would rarely change your mind. With NYT and the credibility/influence they have, they have the power to change and shape opinions. That should carry somewhat extra caution. Probably better if they are late but can verify whatever they are publishing.

Rapzid 3y ago
Likely they made no mistake. They reported on a Hamas presser in a way that was designed to generate clicks by capitalizing on anti-Isreali sentiment to trigger outrage. Nothing they said was factually incorrect, and the changing narrative could just be blamed on "changing news"; as if the objective truth of a matter is unknowable or worse, based on what you choose to believe at any given moment. Mission accomplished.

foolswisdom 3y ago

Perhaps, but plenty of OSINT accounts on Twitter posted multiple videos and pictures they sourced, and they pretty much came to the same conclusion.

baryphonic 3y ago

The visual evidence is what makes me think Palestinian militants (accidentally) caused the explosion. First, live footage from Al Jazeera at the time showed rockets firing from a location in Gaza toward Israel. One rocket appeared to malfunction in mid-air and within a few seconds, an explosion happened on the ground approximately where the hospital is. The lean-too shape of the hospital roof can even be seen in the light from the explosion. Second, daytime footage after the explosion showed that the hospital was still standing, with burned out cars in the parking lot. Several palm trees nearby were standing and unscathed (it was hard to tell if there were even scorch marks). The parking lot had a small crater maybe a meter in diameter with very little penetration into the ground. Israel's weapons have much stronger explosives, which would likely have completely destroyed the parking lot and wreaked havoc on adjacent buildings. IMO, those two pieces of evidence strongly indicate to me that the Palestinians fired this rocket and it accidentally caused an explosion in the hospital parking lot. One confusing aspect of the story to me is the death toll given in a matter of minutes after the explosion. It seems extremely improbable to me that anyone could confidently say 500 people died so quickly unless they were spreading propaganda.

lawgimenez 3y ago
You forgot the leaked intercepted call from a Hamas terrorist claiming that one of the rockets fell on the hospital.
- baryphonic 3y ago
  That came from the IDF, so I'm discounting it. EDIT: To be clear, I think the leaked call was authentic, but I don't think it's persuasive evidence because of its provenance. I fully think PIJ did this in support of Hamas, and then immediately blamed Israel to an enchanted Western press who can't see past an oppressor-oppressed narrative structure. But all of this is my opinion and not verifiable fact.
seo-speedwagon 3y ago
And here’s an analysis disputing many of those claims https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospital-blast-visual-investigation https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospit...

throwaway421967 3y ago

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PawgerZ 3y ago

> It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians They bombed this same hospital on October 14th, three days before the more fatal bombing occurred. According to the WHO, they have documented 48 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since October 7. Take that with a grain of salt, but I don't see how it's "not like Israel" to bomb hospitals.