This is another Iraqi WMD moment.
JVL Introduction
Jonathan Cook discusses the media narrative about the bombing of the Al-Alhi Baptist hospital in Gaza.
Soon after it took place the Israeli prime minister’s social media advisor was celebrating the bombing as the work of the Israeli Air Force.
Now it is denied and Hamas is blamed.
Jonathan Cook shows how implausible this new narrative is. His argument is powerful. So certain is he that he describes it as another Iraqi WMD moment.
It is followed by a series of related Twitter posts by Andy McDonald MP
RK
This article was originally published by Jonathan Cook's blog on Wed 18 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We're being gaslit
It’s not just unlikely that a Palestinian rocket hit the Gaza hospital. It’s impossible. The media know this, they just don’t dare say it
Let’s say it again: The BIGGEST fake news comes from the establishment media. When the stakes are high, it barely bothers to hide its role as mouthpiece for Western propaganda.
This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We are being gaslit. Believe your eyes and ears, and the laws of physics, not the lies being peddled by our leaders and media about last night’s missile strike on the Baptist hospital in Gaza:
1. No Palestinian group has a rocket that can hit a hospital, killing hundreds. What they have are glorified fireworks that can cause minor damage and the occasional death or two. If Hamas or Islamic Jihad could cause the kind of damage that happened last night, you would hear about it happening in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon too. You don’t because they can’t.
2. Israel’s apologists (and there are lots of them) are sharing all sorts of videos unrelated to the hospital strike. But the video of the strike itself shows that an incredibly large and powerful weapon is used. Listen to the noise the missile makes just before the hit – that whooshing noise is caused by its phenomenal velocity as it cuts through the air. That is *not* the noise of a falling Palestinian rocket.
If you watch videos being shared of Palestinian rockets being fired, notice how slowly they travel. Almost at a snail’s pace. If they fail, they drop at free fall speed, not the near-supersonic speed of the missile that hit the hospital. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the laws of physics.
3. Israel’s apologists are trying to further muddy the waters by suggesting that either a Palestinian rocket fell, or was intercepted, and the rocket or fragments of it hit a very large ammo dump in the hospital. Let’s just accept the racist premise that hundreds of families were quite happy to seek safety next to a huge stash of explosives in the middle of a relentless Israeli bombing campaign. Let’s also accept the fantastical idea that a falling glorified firework or fragment of it could penetrate the hospital’s strong walls and set off such an explosion. If all this was true, you would still see a series of secondary explosions as the arms were detonated by the initial explosion. You don’t because there is only one explosion – from an enormous missile.
4. It’s a desperate psyop, so Israel has now released a recording of two Hamas militants conveniently having a chat after the missile strike, discussing whether they or Islamic Jihad did it. This is the same Israel that did not detect months of planning by Hamas that was needed to organise its breakout 10 days ago. But Israel got lucky this time, it seems, and just happened to be listening in when Huey and Louie decided to self-incriminate.
Remember Israel has a whole unit of ‘mistaravim’, Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians. Israel produced a highly popular TV series about such people in Gaza called Fauda. You have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t, and wouldn’t, rig up a call like this to fool us, just as it regularly fools Palestinians in Gaza.
Most of the people spreading these lies know they are lies, including the media, and most especially the Middle East and defence correspondents. At least a few, like the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison, are trying cautiously to suggest it’s unlikely a Hamas rocket could cause damage on the scale seen at the Gaza hospital. But it’s not unlikely. It’s impossible, and they know it. They just don’t dare say it.
Here is a series of related Twitter posts by Andy McDonald MP
In fact, the Israeli prime minister's social media advisor was celebrating the bombing as the work of the Israeli Air Force.
And just a day before, the Israeli army ordered staff in Gazan hospitals to abandon their patients, "or face the consequences". 2/5 pic.twitter.com/2ks8pMHtLJ
— Andy McDonald MP (@AndyMcDonaldMP) October 18, 2023
The Israeli army has since denied this to be the case.
However, their spokesperson yesterday admitted that they have released false and misleading statements in the past. 3/5 https://t.co/VgsdSfmYgU
— Andy McDonald MP (@AndyMcDonaldMP) October 18, 2023
Most infamously, the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in May 2022.
The Israeli army denied responsibility, only for the US government to confirm months later that "gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible". 4/5 https://t.co/Ygm5oLJ2du
— Andy McDonald MP (@AndyMcDonaldMP) October 18, 2023
“Death is a master from Israel…”
Am re-posting something from Lowkey on this;
“The Evangelical church in Jerusalem has announced that it received 3 phone warnings from the Israeli Occupation Forces that they would strike the Baptist Hospital before they did it.
Stop lying about killing people.”
Creepy Jim Crow Joe (Biden) is also trying to make out that the above attack can’t be verified, but was just days ago going along with the “mass rape/40 beheaded babies” narrative. Apparently one of the cnn reporters spreading this was also spreading stories about Gaddafi loyalists being on viagra, or something like that, in the build up to the bombing of Libya.
I heard some sort of defence specialist – the sort of person who crawls around devastated war sites – being interviewed on BBC News tonight. In contrast to everyone else who seem to be relying on video film, he refused even to engage in probabilities, guesstimates etc etc as to cause. Instead, he was unequivocal: he said it was IMPOSSIBLE to know for certain who was responsible for destroying the hospital without getting access to the site and being able to examine both the nature of the damage and the kind of debris left behind.
Jonathan Cook, we are deeply indebted to you. Your journalism shines a light where others fear to venture.
This is helpful. The BBC Wednesday am had the following:
“Today BBC Radio 4 18th October 2023
7.40.06
Doctor Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian National Initiative ….
Q – A: Of course, and let me tell you, please, that I urge you to really to remember that Israeli military, and Netanyahu in particular, lied to the world so many times and on so many occasions that changing their story when they are embarrassed They did that in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh who was an American / Palestinian journalist who was shot to death by Israelis.
Now they change the story twice but unfortunately the world media does not report that. The first Israeli reaction to the bombardment in the Baptist hospital was that Israel made a strike on the hospital because there were Hamas militants hiding there. And then they thought this is not a good lie and they changed the lie and said that it was a Jihad rocket; that’s not true. And it wasn’t Hamas that said it was Israeli did the air strike; it was the people in the hospital who know everything, who watched everything, who lived through this atrocity which took the lives of five hundred innocent Palestinians, including children and women.
That is unacceptable. And, by the way, Israel has already give ultimatum to twenty two hospitals that including the Baptist hospital that they should evacuate and if they don’t they will air strike them. And they already did another smaller air strike last Saturday on the same hospital. Fifty Seven health facilities, according to the World Health Organisation in Gaza, have already been bombarded by Israeli air strikes in Gaza; including twenty three ambulances: including twenty of our health workers who were killed by air strikes.
Israel committed another war crime and this should not be tolerated at all. ”
But since neither they nor other British media appear to have mentioned this.
This article is good. The overall responsibility for the masses of civilian killings within Gaza is ever so clearly with the extremist Israeli government.
A very relevant point made within the article is that Israel maintains intense covert surveillance over Gaza, which includes sophisticated listening in, I recall, yet was apparently unaware of the well planned Hamas incursion. Who dares to suggest that the extremist Israeli government knew of it in advance but chose to allow it to happen? It is an outrageous suggestion.
The crater is consistent with an Israeli missile fired from a drone
Israel always lies, when have they ever subsequently been found innocent
The same hospital was hit at the weekend
The recording of operatives released by Israel has been condemned as a joke by experts, so poor its comical
Best advice ever
Watch Gerald Kaufmans speech on ‘The Not the Andrew Marr show’
There is nothing new on this earth, better people than you or me have been there before and got the T shirt
Never forget
I have a lot of regard for Jonathan Cook, but this piece is both inaccurate and grossly insensitive, and I think it’s a pity you published it.
To describe Hamas missiles as “glorified fireworks that can cause ….. the occasional death or two” shows a shocking disregard for those Israeli families that have actually suffered bereavement from missile attacks.
On the evidence, we may never know what caused the hospital explosion, but numerous independent sources have pointed out that both the small size of the crater and the fact that buildings are still standing so close to the epicenter rules out the kind of Israeli air-launched missiles that have caused such devastation in other areas of Gaza.
At the same time, the strength of the immediately resulting fire rules out the detonating power of an accidental Hamas rocket hit, so it does remain a mystery.
However, the fact that Israeli defense spokespersons have frequently lied in the past shouldn’t be used as an excuse for Jonathan Cook (or JVL) to also spread disinformation.
Tim Rossiter
Occam’s Razor
Or my preference
John Cleese of Monty Python fame
‘You dont need a first class honours degree in the bleedin obvious ‘ to work out Israel has no regard for innocent lives and that includes their own hostages
@Tim Rossiter – perhaps Cook could have found a different, less insensitive way of describing Hamas’ military capabilities. Its not that their rockets don’t harm anyone, its that they’re probably rudimentary, so might not be as likely to cause as many deaths in one hit compared to Israeli weapons. Apparently where the IDF is claiming the rocket was fired from doesn’t match up with the footage of it, that appears to be coming from a different direction. There’s also other things to consider, like the phone call warnings apparently made days before, and tweets that are since deleted from fairly official Israelis that were celebrating the bombing in a way that was like them proudly claiming it, as well the on going very open calls to “exterminate” Gazans and people believing the general population are all deserving of Israel’s wrath.