The story would look the same no matter who did it.
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.
I’m not sure what your second comment means exactly, can you elaborate?
One, the people who think before speaking will start talking. Two, intelligence will start being released.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the prevailing view is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad accidentally blew up a hospital -- not Hamas, not the IDF.
Week later, still don’t know anything.
https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1715137246431449451?s=2...
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.
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.
You may also enjoy browsing old microfiches.
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.
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.
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-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?
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.
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.
https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospit...
But what I have seen is: Israel bomb UNRWA schools; issue evacuation orders for a bunch of hospitals, including this one in question; provide a number of inconsistent explanations and equivocations in the hours and days since; bomb the southern half of Gaza after demanding everyone evacuate the north. So I’m going with the most obvious explanation that Israel bombed this hospital, and it’s allies in the West plus a bunch of stooges like “the OSINT community” are muddying the waters and desperately trying to do damage control.
[0]https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f...
1. IDF warns hospital director to evacuate hospital.
2. Israel bombs hosptial in question causing major damage and injuring four doctors.
3. IDF calls hospital director asking why hospital still hasn’t been evacuated and demands imminent evacuation. Director says it’s impossible due to patient needing intensive care.
4. Hospital gets bombed. 400+ people die. Hamas-affiliated group did it.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
It doesn't matter to me who hit the hospital because I don't believe it was intentional. That's not to say the deaths don't matter, they do, and we should mourn them. And that's not to say that blame for the overall war doesn't matter, it does, I don't mean to say that we can't know anything and I'm not offering some bland hope for a ceasefire and end of suffering for all sides.
I'm saying that I don't believe figuring out whose errant projectile is responsible for this particular tragedy materially changes how I feel about the war[0].
Can I prove that it wasn't intentional? No, I can't. But I consider it much more likely than the claim that it was intentional. The Israeli claim is that it was an Islamic Jihad mistake, they're not arguing it was intentional. I don't know if Hamas claims Israeli did it intentionally or by accident, but it is entirely against Israel's interest to hit it intentionally and I see no reason they'd kick the ball into their own goal so spectacularly. Mistakes happen. War is terrible. And yes, this war includes a lot of war crimes.
[0] If eventually we find actual evidence that this was an intentional strike by the Israeli military, I will retract my position and express shock and horror at my government. I already express my anger at my more extreme, fundamentalist countrymen for their actions and statements that I consider to be immoral. The fact that they're on my team does not spare them from my wrath, on the contrary, I get more angry at them for the damage they do than I do at the extremists on the other side.
Confounding factor: Hamas puts military bases in civilian areas so they can claim things like this even if the target was military.
I disagree with any assertions that it’s likely an accident, or that Israel would not want to bomb a hospital. Several high profile Israeli officials have stated over and over that they don’t consider Palestinians as human beings. Yoav Gallant has said “we are fighting human animals” and I’m not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he really only meant that to apply to Hamas when in the same statement he talked about cutting off all good, water and electricity to Gaza. And now there’s news that St Porphyrius Church was struck by a “blast”. Am I to also believe this was an accident? Another case where a Hamas rocket somehow caused an order of magnitude more damage than has ever been been recorded when striking Israel?
0. "Human animals" bothers me - I disapprove of the extreme language I'm hearing in public discourse in Israel these days, after the events of Oct 7 there's been a shift in public discourse that normalizes this kind of language. I think it's wrong and harmful. I wish it would stop.
1. If you or anyone close to you is currently in Gaza (or the West Bank, or Israel, for that matter) - I truly hope they will be safe and come out the other end of this war ok, or as ok as is possible given the circumstances. From what I'm hearing on the news here in Israel, sounds like things are going to get worse before they get better. All I can do is hope that we see better days soon.
As you said, regular people can only speak for ourselves, I’d never expect you to answer on behalf of your entire country. I hope you and yours stay safe and we both get to see a just peace someday, hopefully soon.
The commenter you quoted was likely thinking something along the lines of "neither side has a strong motive to intentionally bomb Ahli Arab, so the most likely reason for the bombing is an accidental strike. Assuming that the accident isn't part of a trend of accidents, the unfortunate reality of war is that accidents happen on all sides. Thus, it doesn't really matter if it was an Israeli accident or a Hamas accident."
Should we investigate and determine if the strike really was an accident? Yes, of course. But we can also predict that the result of that investigation will be "it was an accident", and start to make preliminary conclusions predicated on that.
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?
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-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-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.
Plus, if you've seen iron dome interception videos you know that you can visually see the interceptors flying up, which you don't see in this case.
So seems very unlikely to be an iron dome interception.
Do you have a link to their findings?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/al-ahli-arab-h...
Headline" "AP Visual Analysis: Rocket from Gaza appeared to go astray, likely caused deadly hospital explosion"
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-hos...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possi...