The Hamas lie blaming Israel for the blast at the parking lot of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was quickly demolished by the visual and aural evidence the IDF presented. It proved conclusively that the blast was the result not of an airstrike by Israel, but rather, resulted from a misfired rocket launched at Israel from Gaza by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that instead of hitting Israel, broke up in the sky over Gaza, and landed in the parking lot, where it caused a large explosion. The same conclusion was reached by American investigators. On October 23, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reported the findings of the UK intelligence services to Parliament. More on his report to the House of Commons can be found here: “Don’t ‘Rush to Judgement’: British PM Tells Parliament Errant Palestinian Missile, Not Israeli Air Strike, Responsible for Gaza Hospital,” Blast,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, October 23, 2023:
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak revealed on Monday that his country’s intelligence services had concluded that the explosion last week near the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City was caused by an errant missile fired by terrorists, and not an Israeli air strike.
“The UK government judges that the explosion was likely caused by a missile or part of one that was launched from within Gaza towards Israel,” Sunak told a session of the House of Commons.
The assessment concurs with similar conclusions drawn by Israel and the US that an air strike was not the cause of the blast.
Israeli airstrikes leave craters; this explosion left a much smaller depression in the ground. Furthermore, there was no damage to the hospital building as an airstrike would have caused.
“In the initial rush to judgement, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza falsely claimed that a direct Israeli strike on the hospital had killed more than 500 sheltering Palestinians. The fabrication even resulted in Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas canceling his meeting last week with visiting US President Joe Biden, as furious protests erupted across the Arab world.
Sunak underlined that the false reporting of the incident had worsened the situation on the ground and had negative domestic repercussions in the UK, where, as a result of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, antisemitic incidents have risen by over 1,000 percent compared with the same period last year….
Those in the Western media who rushed to publish or broadcast Hamas’ false version of the incident were not merely sloppy journalists. They also contributed to Muslim rage that had direct and dangerous consequences for Jews. The rage and demonstrations all over the Arab and Muslim lands, as well as demonstrations by pro-Palestinian groups in the West, in London, Paris, and New York, were not merely anti-Israel, but also antisemitic in their chants and signs. And there was a huge spike in antisemitic incidents in the UK, where antisemitic incidents rose by more than 1,000 percent — that is, ten times the number reported during the same period last year.
Sunak insisted that “no scenario” was feasible that involved Hamas remaining in “control of Gaza or any part of the Palestinian territories.”
Sunak agrees with Israel’s war aims: not only must Hamas be demolished as a military force, but it must be deprived of any political role, either in Gaza or in the West Bank.
At the same time, he urged the international community “to invest more deeply in regional stability and in the two-state solution” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He confirmed that the UK had agreed to release an extra $25 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza, describing its Palestinian residents as “victims of Hamas.”
The Palestinians are not really to be distinguished, as Western leaders are wont to do, from Hamas itself. In the main, they support Hamas, and applaud its feats of mass murder. In the latest opinion poll, 58% of Palestinians said they wanted the leader of Hamas’ political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, to become the head of a Palestinian state. It’s comforting to believe that there are all these blameless, Hamas-hating Palestinians, just waiting to be liberated, and to make peace with Israel — but it’s not true.
In his speech to the House of Commons, Sunak still appears to cling to the notion of a “two-state solution.” As far as most Israelis are concerned, that “two-state solution” was blown up on October 7. There is no longer any possibility, in that majority view, of Israel allowing a Palestinian state to be created on the West Bank. The Israelis saw what happened when they pulled out of Gaza, resulting in the creation of a Hamastan, engaged in terror attacks. Those attacks ultimately forced the IDF to conduct four campaigns to suppress Hamas terrorism. The Israelis will no longer consider pulling out of the West Bank, because allowing a Palestinian state to be created there would be far more of a threat to the Jewish state’s security than Hamas in Gaza has ever been.
The debate also heard from Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, who noted that the “brutal attack in Israel was the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust,” citing two weeks of “grief” and “torture.”
“We stand with Israel and its right to defend itself, for international law, and humanitarian support for the Palestinians because we stand for a political path to a two-state solution and a better future,” Starmer added.
Starmer’s remark about a “two-state solution” — just like Rishi Sunak’s similar invocation — was meant to show that the Palestinians will not be totally overlooked in the context of a strongly pro-Israel stand. Western politicians, even those greatly sympathetic to Israel, still do not realize that there is no “two-state solution” to be had. Most Israelis have now realized that the hatred of Israel among Palestinians is so deep and immutable that peace with them can be assured only through deterrence, not in surrender of more territory deemed vital to Israel’s defense. Hamas proved to be such a danger to Israel, but how much more dangerous would a Palestinian state in the West Bank become; its existence on land handed over by Israel, squeezing Israel back within the 1949 armistice lines, leaving it with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, would greatly weaken the Jewish state’s deterrence, and hence increase the likelihood of major war between Israel and the Arabs. No more territorial concessions should be made by Israel to the Palestinians after the trauma of October 7.
The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 have disabused most Israelis — especially those on the left — of their dreamy belief that a “two-state solution” could be possible; they now realize a Palestinian state in the West Bank would be a threat far greater to the Jewish state than Hamas has been in Gaza. It will take a while for Israel’s position to be understood in, and accepted by, the Western world. And most important Israel has to explain to its friends in the West that the jihad being waged against it is a permanent duty incumbent upon all Muslims, and what’s more, that jihad is worldwide in scope. Israel happens, for the moment, to be the main target, but the tens of millions of Muslims who now live in western Europe are cognizant of the need to conduct jihad where they now find themselves — through demography, terrorism, or outright war — so that Islam will be everywhere dominant, and Muslims rule, everywhere.
Bexarkat says
Okay, France and the UK confirm…I wonder if THAT will satisfy Tlaib? Or perhaps she wants the “independent” investigation done by the PA?
James Lincoln says
Bexarka,
Nothing will convince Tlaib.
Nothing.
Biggles says
Someone from Bellingcat says new evidence now shows that it’s the remains of an Iron Dome rocket fired from Israel. He too concludes: no Israeli attack. That plus the fact that estimates of casualties are down to some 50, instead of 500, changes the story dramatically.