Israel Bombs Hospital(s) Atrocity Excuses Haven't Changed.

On April 26, 1937, German bombers despatched to aid fascist rebels in the Spanish civil war, struck the Basque town of Guernica, laying much of it waste and killing upwards of 400 people. Reports of the attack generated immediate global outrage, prompting the guilty parties quickly to deny any role in the death and destruction. The Germans swore they had not bombed the town at all. The fascist Spanish general who had ordered the attack went on the radio to claim that the destruction had been the work of the local population and “the reds” who had burned and demolished Guernica as part of a “scorched earth policy.” In any case, he said, there could have been no bombing raid on that day due to “bad weather.” The campaign of denial succeeded in muting protest. The London Times, for example, called into question the work of its own correspondent, George Steer, who had first reported the raid.

Over the subsequent eighty five years, while the scale of such atrocities has vastly increased, the lies and cover-ups have changed little or not at all. On October 17, hundreds crowded into the parking lot of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City in the hope of safety from Israeli attack, were killed by a missile strike. The attack was predictable. Israel has repeatedly attacked health facilities and ambulances since it launched its current aerial offensive on Gaza. Indeed, the Al-Ahri hospital itself had already been hit by Israeli rockets three days before, on October 14, wounding four staff members. Yusuf abu Al-Rish, Gaza’s undersecretary of health, has reported that the Israeli defense forces called the hospital director asserting that the strike had been a warning and to evacuate the hospital immediately, which the UN has termed “a death sentence.”

Unsurprisingly, the deadly October 17 strike, killing upwards of 400 people and wounding hundreds more, quickly generated well-tried damage control procedures by Israel and its U.S. ally. While thousands of bombs were raining down on Gaza, this deadly blast had supposedly, claimed the Israelis, been the work of Islamic Jihad, one of whose rockets aimed at Israel had misfired and fallen on the hospital parking lot. Such rockets are of course relatively puny affairs, with warheads insufficient to cause the hospital explosion, an inconvenient fact explained away by Israel military spokemen who pointed to the additional blast from the rocket’s fuel. An instructive interview by Middle East Monitor with U.S. Army combat engineer veteran Dylan Griffiths includes his telling point that this is highly unlikely, as such fuel explosions tend to be spread out, as opposed to the sharp sound of the hospital explosion as recorded in a widely circulated video (and featured in the interview.). Griffiths cited the recorded screeching sound of the descending ordnance as charactaristic of a bomb, very different from any known Palestinian rocket. A video clip of a subsequent bombing of a residential block (next to another hospital) reveals exactly the same sound as in the al-Ahri hospital strike.

But the skilled Israeli damage control machinery had done its work. Within hours “Israeli missile strike” had become “hospital blast”. in western mainstream media reports. Suitably primed, President Biden certified to Netanyahu (the most unpopular man in Israel) that “the other team” was responsible. Meanwhile, Israel insists that it is attacking Hamas, a military target, not the entire Gaza population including its children, as is quite evidently the case.

Throughout the now century-long history of bombing, the figleaf of “military” targeting has been assiduously pasted over bloody realities.