By Noah
Rothman
Tuesday,
October 17, 2023
On today’s
episode of The Editors, recorded earlier this morning, I lamented the extent to which Western
media outlets treat the Gaza Health Ministry as though it were a reliable
narrator and credulously regurgitate the narratives it promotes. The
institution is not to be trusted for many reasons, but one that I singled out
was its tendency to promote the narrative that Israel is responsible for all
civilian deaths during periods of conflict in Gaza when many of those civilian
deaths are attributable to rockets launched from inside Gaza that fall short of
their targets. Not hours later, that is precisely what happened – at least,
according to Israeli security services.
On
Tuesday, Western phones received breaking news alerts, attributable to what
the New York Times called the “Palestinian Health
Ministry,” that revealed an Israeli missile strike had targeted a Gaza hospital,
producing hundreds of civilian casualties. The Israeli attack on the Al Ahli
Arab Hospital contributes to what the Gaza Health
Ministry claims are
the already thousands of civilian casualties attributable to indiscriminate
Israeli fire.
The
attribution of the strike to Israel couldn’t be dismissed offhand. After all,
Israeli Defense Forces called for this and other hospitals in north Gaza to be
evacuated last Friday, given Hamas’s documented habit of using civilian
infrastructure, including medical facilities, as staging areas for terrorism.
But even prior to the strike, the details didn’t quite add up. One Hamas source revealed on a Telegram channel
that it was preparing a rocket barrage against Israel from close to the
location. The Israeli Defense Forces soon conducted an investigation into the
event and concluded preliminarily that the event was the responsibility
of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Obviously,
a more thorough investigation into this event will be required before the
sequence of events that led to it can be firmly established. But those who are
leveraging this event to demonize Israel are not waiting for evidence to
justify their prejudices. Already, the streets in the
Middle East are alive with
protesters calling for the blood of Israelis and targeting
their diplomatic facilities with vengeance. Talking heads and media
professionals are
casting scorn on Israel from great moral heights. Squishy
Western governments that
were profoundly discomfited by the moral imperative Hamas’s massacre imposed on
them have returned to familiar form.
If and
when the IDF produces more concrete evidence in support of its preliminary
conclusion, it will already be too late. The narrative that Israel targets
hospitals for the sheer thrill of murdering infirm Gazans will long ago have
settled into a worldview confirming conventional wisdom.
I didn’t
foresee the missile failure and the reaction it would produce because I’m
clairvoyant. It was foreseeable because it had happened before. Anyone who has
followed rounds of conflict in the Middle East prior to this week has witnessed
this series of developments unfold in precisely this way in the past. All that
makes this time different is that Israel is no longer listening.
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