An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos found that the deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital Tuesday was likely caused by a rocket fired from inside Palestinian territory that veered off course and broke up in the air before crashing back to the ground.
Shortly before 7 p.m. Tuesday, a volley of rockets lit up the darkened sky over Gaza. Videos analyzed by The Associated Press show one veering off course, breaking up in the air before crashing to the ground.
Seconds later, the videos show a large explosion in the same area – the site of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
Who is to blame for the fiery explosion has set off intense debate and finger pointing between the Israeli government and Palestinian militants, further escalating tensions in their two week-long war.
There are also scientists who have reviewed the data and are certain that anthropogenic global warming isn't real. How much weight should we give their views?
All OSINT analysis has shown two things:
The damage was NOT caused by Israeli air dropped munition.
The damage was MOST LIKELY caused by an errant rocket landing in the parking lot, having it's propellent burn off, and ignite the fuel in the neabry cars.
My personal view is that Israel is DEFINITELY capable and willing to bomb a hospital if there was a high value target, so I'm not influenced by inability to recognize the war crimes Israel has, is, and will continue to commit. But this isn't one of them.
I also think it's a mistake to continue pretending that it was Israel, because it distracts from very real war crimes they are actively engaging during this conflict, such as collective punishment and bombing civilian buildings and infrastructure, all while Hamas is mostly safe and secure in their tunnel network.
Individual pieces have been analyzed by 3rd parties like the fake phone call/audio recording. But overall no, we're getting different parties takes on the evidence we've been presented but we're not getting any additional evidence because it's not safe on the ground to investigate.
Al Jazeera doesn't contradict it. They say Israel's story is bullshit, but they argue the evidence is consistent with a rocket fired from Gaza being intercepted by the iron dome.
Their analysis agrees that the explosion was caused by a missile fired from within Gaza failing -- they just argue that the reason is interception by Israel's missile defense system, and not an inherent flaw in the rocket.
From what I saw, Al Jazeera shows multiple explosions from Israeli air strikes "targeting the area near the hospital" around the time before the explosion, rockets being fired from Gaza and then intercepted by the Iron Dome, and then concludes their footage shows the rocket in question being intercepted (due to similarities with the other captured interceptions) and "complete destroyed" based on their analysis and video.
They conclude there is no evidence that the explosion of said rocket is tied to the explosion at the hospital, and in fact, they seem to say that rocket was "completely destroyed" when intercepted.
The only thing I'm seeing from the AP here to contradict that conclusion is one person basically saying "uh typically rockets aren't intercepted above Gaza" but noting it's technically not impossible. Otherwise, AP is saying the rocket in question and the explosion are tied.
I guess it depends on whether Al Jazeera actually captured those rockets being intercepted. I'm not sure what else it would be unless now there's an argument that all those rockets on their video feed also malfunctioned or are something else.
The news media always engages in a race to be first, never a race to be right.
So when there's some horriffic event, just assume a lot of the first reporting is wrong. It's not done out of outright malice (in MOST cases), it's carelessness.
Or just pay attention to who the news is using as a source. When they write "Hamas says X" and "IDF says Y" they are not reporting wrong, they are just passing along who is saying what. You shouldn't think the news is picking sides u less it is obvious that they are leaving out a ton of context, like how western media is so focused on who fired the missile and not the other thousands of deaths around that one event.
But here’s the daily dose of skepticism warranted by the sheer amount of misinformation- both intentional propaganda and kneejerk reactionaries:
That the IDF might not normally use rockets or similar weapons…. Doesn’t mean they don’t have them (from captured stockpiles, for example,)
If asked, my answer is always going to be prefaced with… the only people who really knows for sure are the guys that launched it; and any one who says with certainty “it was XYZ!” Are probably best given an eyebrow raise.
Which. Does it really matter who did it, at this point? This attack barely moves the needle on civilian deaths caused by the Israeli bombardment… or Hamas or any other armed group.
IMO Any one who is not calling for a cease fire, or at least talks… is not on the right side here- and both the IDF and Hamas are on the wrong side.
The evidence available makes it pretty clear that the hospital was not /targeted/. That makes the incident a tragic accident, not a deliberate overt act -- regardless of who is ultimately responsible.
At the time of this event Israel had bombed 4 other hospitals. That doesn’t prove Israel did this, but it does address the ‘they would never do this’ argument.
Nah it never does. People still think that Jesus existed. Just subscribe to whatever preconceived notions you want and gather evidence to support it. Only outrage is real.
The AP reached its conclusion by reviewing more than a dozen videos from news broadcasts, security cameras and social media posts, and matching the locations to satellite imagery and photos from before the explosion.
The camera is on a building in Netiv Ha’asara, an Israeli community footsteps from the border wall, and faces southwest, confirming that the rocket launches and explosion were in the direction of Gaza City.
A third video by Israeli news station Channel 12 — taken from a camera on the upper floor of its building in Netivot, a town about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of the hospital in Gaza City — also captured the barrage of rockets fired at 6:59 p.m.
Israel’s assessment, backed by U.S. intelligence and President Joe Biden, also cited the lack of both a large crater and extensive structural damage that would be consistent with a bomb dropped by Israeli aircraft.
Andrea Richardson, an expert in analyzing open-source intelligence who is a consultant with the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said specific landmarks visible in the videos show where the rockets were launched.
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital’s operators posted on its website that the facility’s cancer center was struck by Israel three days before the deadly blast, leaving a hole in an exterior wall and an unexploded artillery shell next to an ultrasound machine.
The original article contains 2,222 words, the summary contains 229 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Shouldn't we stop arguing about this, considering Israel immediately claimed credit for said bombing, before deleting their tweets and changing their tone about it?
I posted the Al Jazeera video analysis yesterday. The conclusions of both videos don't seem entirely contradictory. I find AP's analysis as credible as Al Jazeera's, although it did look like Al Jazeera was correct when they showed that the missile in question was hit by an Iron Dome missile. Regardless, if that was the case, I wouldn't fault the IDF for shooting down a missile over Gaza that was destined for Israeli territory. Also possible the missile just exploded by itself. Either way, seems so unlikely the warhead survived either incident and very unlucky the warhead fell where it did.
The iron dome doesn't target missiles when they are fired, but later on in their ballistic trajectory. It's unlikely an iron dome missile hit a rocket so soon after launch.
For a parking lot that was directly hit by a rocket, the cars barely moved and stayed intact more than United 93, the buildings right next to said parking lot stood stronger than the World Trade Center, and I’ve seen potholes bigger than the crater they found.
It looks like the warhead went off during flight. The explosion/fireball was most likely from unspent fuel from the the rocket. It definitely wasn't a high energy explosion, it was more like the "atomize and set fire to gasoline" explosion fx you see in movies.