The Folly of Jumping to Conclusions

It would certainly be helpful to the cause of clarity if people, both at home and abroad, and especially in our media, would refrain from jumping to conclusions about events in the current war in Gaza based on what seems to be the expectation that the Israeli military and government are a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters and instead wait until the evidence is in.

If they would've done that this past week they would've spared themselves considerable embarrassment.

Twice in recent days Hamas claimed that the Israelis deliberately targeted civilians for death. The first instance was on a highway where civilians were fleeing south away from Israeli artillery and air bombardment. Just "by coincidence" someone in the traffic caught an explosion in a car ahead of them on the highway and the occupants of the car were killed.

Many were quick to condemn Israel for attacking civilians, but subsequent analysis of the video showed that the explosion originated from inside the vehicle.

The second instance was an allegation of an Israeli missile attack on a hospital in Gaza in which an indeterminate number of people were killed (Hamas put the number of dead at almost 500 but it appears that this was clearly an exagerration). The Arab world went into a frenzy as the news spread around the globe. Massive protests against Israel erupted even in Western cities and on American campuses.

But as the forensic evidence accumulated it became clear to objective observers, if not to those for whom facts don't matter, that the hospital explosion was due to the failure of a rocket launched by Hamas' ally Islamic Jihad. The rocket, intended for Israel, crashed into the hospital parking lot which should've raised some questions in the minds of fair-minded folks everywhere, even in our media.

For example, if the blast had been caused by an Israeli weapon, does anyone think that the Israeli government would deliberately target a hospital? What on earth would they stand to gain from doing so? And if they did target a hospital does anyone think they would've missed? And if it was indeed an errant Israeli munition why was there no crater or damage done to surrounding buildings?

There's still more reason for doubting Hamas' account that it was an Israeli attack, aside from the fact that Hamas is a very unreliable source of information about anything having to do with Israel. There's audio of Hamas operatives discussing the blast and saying that it was one of their rockets that malfunctioned, and there's also video of rockets being fired in Gaza toward Israel and one of them blowing up in the sky and plummeting to earth in the vicinity of the hospital.

Finally, there's no record of any Israeli military activity in the area that could've caused the explosion, but none of this matters to those whose hatred for Israel and the Jews is so virulent that, as one young woman declared in a spasm of outrage, whatever Hamas did to the Jews on October 7th was justified.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Independent analysts poring over publicly available images of Tuesday’s explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza and its aftermath say the blast site doesn’t bear the hallmarks of a strike with a bomb or missile of the types usually used by Israel.

The amount of damage also appears inconsistent with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry’s assertion that 471 people were killed, experts said.

“We have none of the indicators of an airstrike—none,” said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an expert on military and security issues. The U.S. has collected “high confidence” signals intelligence, which includes electronic surveillance, indicating that the blast at the hospital in Gaza was caused by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, U.S. officials said, buttressing Israel’s contention that it wasn’t responsible for the blast.

Washington’s assessment that Israel wasn’t behind the blast at the hospital drew, in part, on communications intercepts and other intelligence gathered by the U.S., defense officials said. Independent analysts poring over publicly available images of Tuesday’s explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza and its aftermath say the blast site doesn’t bear the hallmarks of a strike with a bomb or missile of the types usually used by Israel.

The amount of damage also appears inconsistent with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry’s assertion that 471 people were killed, experts said.

“Our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, adding that the U.S. continues to collect information on the incident.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said they had been briefed on the intelligence related to the blast, and concluded it wasn’t the result of an Israeli military action.

The small size of the open area where the explosion occurred, coupled with limited shock-wave damage, was inconsistent with the death toll claimed by the Palestinian Health Ministry, several open-source intelligence analysts said.

Those, like many in our media, who don't hold off their judgments of blame until the evidence is in are either very unwise or very iniquitous, or both.