Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) called some of his colleagues’ quickness to blame Israel for the hospital blast in Gaza “disturbing” in a statement Wednesday.
“It’s truly disturbing that Members of Congress rushed to blame Israel for the hospital tragedy in Gaza,” Fetterman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Who would take the word of a group that just massacred innocent Israeli civilians over our key ally?” he added.
Anyone who knows the history of our ‘key ally’.
Well, that’s like taking the word of al-Qaeda at face value because you know the history of the United States.
More that I wouldn’t regard our ‘key ally’ as particularly trustworthy. If Pakistan and the Taliban contradict each other, I’m not likely to take the word of either as gospel.
No reason to take Israel or the IDF at their word, though.
Here is the evidence that’s currently publicly available: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206795861/heres-the-available-evidence-of-what-happened-at-al-ahli-arab-hospital-in-gaza
Yeah, I lean towards a Hamas-aligned misfire at this point, but I don’t regard skepticism of the Israeli claim as inherently unreasonable.
Of course it’s not unreasonable. Just as criticism of the United States after 9/11 wasn’t unreasonable.
What I find troubling are people who immediately jump to conclusions without the slightest bit of evidence, because they’ve already decided that one team is always right and the other team is always wrong.
I’ve decided that both sides lie and I don’t believe a word either says.
Kind of like djt and ksa denying involvement with dismemberment and murder of Kashoggi.
this. its like I don’t trust either group so lets see if there is any actual evidence which I think is what fetterman is actually saying. I love that guy.
Which you, obviously, do not.
You’re right, Israel would never knowingly harm innocent Palestinians, thank you for the correction.
And it looks more and more like Fetterman is right. That video showing the rocket launch from Gaza arcing back towards the hospital is pretty damning.
Israel should still be held to account for its oppression and subjugation of Palestine, but it’s important not to forget that Hamas is a brutal terrorist regime that murders and “disappears” Palestinians who speak up against them. Hamas is not Palestine, and the Palestinians deserve better.
Yeah frankly I’m tired of this rhetoric that you have to either be 100% pro Isreal or 100% pro hamas. It’s possible to condemn Hamas while also condemning the treatment of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel
They’ve been killing off any members who supported peace with Israel for decades…
A neutral third party should come in an subjegate both equally! /s
Anybody who has been through a war knows the term “fog of war” is absolutely accurate. The first story is rarely true. But, it’s the first story, and it will be believed, due to bias confirmationm, even after it has been disproved.
“A lie can get round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
But the truth is that these two sides have been killing each other since before my parents were born and I’m too sick of all of it to give a damn. Nothing will stop either of them so maybe if they kill each other entirely we will finally have peace in The Holiest Place on Earth.
Oh wait, no, Christians will still get into fights there.
I mean, if you want to forget about specific nations, they’ve been keeping this grudge sharp …since what? Late bronze age to early iron?
Sure the State of Israel has only existed for 75 or so years, but they have a much, much longer history than that- and both Palestinians and Israelites have a very old claim to the land- and both are more less equally valid.
Islam wasn’t founded until 610 CE, which was almost 200 years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Definitely not the Bronze Age and at best the late Iron Age.
Also, between then and now, Europe was a far more dangerous place to be a Jew than the Middle East. Pogroms were common in the Middle Ages, while cities like Jerusalem and Baghdad were multicultural and tolerant. After the siege of Jerusalem during the first Crusade, Christians massacred the Jews living there along with the Muslims.
This conflict specifically started with the Sikes-Picot Agreement in which the western powers reneged on their deal to establish an Arab homeland. But the real conflict didn’t start until the UN’s Partition Plan, which gave most of the land to the Jewish minority.
So, no, I don’t think this goes back thousands of years. More like hundreds, with worst of the actual fighting in the last 76 years.
oh man. thank you very much for the sikes picot link. that is super interesting.
You have to consider the Tanzimat reforms in the waning Ottoman Empire, specifically the Land Code of 1857 and the Nationality Law of 1869. The Land Code misappropriated much of the tribal land in current day Israel/Palestine to Ottoman administrators, which was later brought under the control of Britain after WWI. Particularly after the Nationality Law, which granted citizenship rights irrespective of religion, the Jewish National Fund was able to purchase and settle that land. Under British rule, the settlement accelerated. It’s worth noting that there was massive migration to the Holy Land of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. During the late Ottoman period, 1850 to 1915, the Muslim population doubled (+300k), and the Jewish & Christian populations tripled (+26k and +54k respectively). By the British Mandatory period, the majority of the population in the Holy Land were immigrants.
But anyway, you’re right. Although there was always tension between Muslims and Dhimmis, the specifics of the contemporary conflict can’t be traced back much further than the late 1800s. Perhaps if the original negotiated Arab homeland consisting of the Arabian Peninsula, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon had been honored, the entire region would be much more stable today. Hard to say what would have happened to the Jews during WWII, though.
And, ah, who were the Palistinians before Islam?
Gaza was one of the Philistine city-states… you know. Early on, Canaanites- The people that Israelites tried genocide to “come into the promised land”… and who Solomon and David were at war.
The area has a very long, very ancient history… and that history is part of how we got to the partition plan and the Nakba and all that.
I don’t have any real answers for solving the violence. I truly wish I did.
Archaeology links the Philistines to the Mycenaean civilization due to similarities in their crafting. There’s a possibility the Philistines were of the Sea Peoples - Southern European invaders of Egypt, Canaan and Turkey - in the late Bronze Age.
Both of you respond by showing your own bias. Bomb damage assessments happen all the time. There is really nothing to indicate that an Israeli bomb was used. There is all sorts of evidence that point to a rocket failure. You can leave it at that without blaming one party or another for problems. But, denial of reality is the problem.
This bomb was Hamas. Other bombs are Israel. Both sides have killed children over lines in the sand. Fuck that.
This bomb was purportedly Islamic Jihad, not Hamas, but otherwise I don’t disagree with what you said.
Actually it was probably a Islamic Jihad missile. They are another gang in Gaza. Let’s put it this way…if you were disturbed when you thought Israel was to blame, yet you shrug off when Islamic Jihad is proven to have done it…they you just might need bias confirmation.
What if I think both sides are fucking assholes?
Then you almost join my club, however, there are two other certainties. 1. Terrorism is always wrong and the brutality of Hamas on Israel was way way over the line. 2. Since that is true, there is absolutely no way a war would not result and there is no way that ideological rhetoric is going to stop it.
Terry Pratchett?
Glad somebody recognized it :)
What’s sad is all these media companies race each other to be the first one out there. In the digital realm it is simple to offer contractions and edits so they have no reason to wait until all the facts.
Just pump out anything that will generate engagement, who cares if most don’t see the retraction. They got their clicks so they don’t care
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/02/trump-campaign-bad-america-good-cbs
Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? This is pretty amazing… Who would have thought that this circus would come to town?
But, you know–it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.
So what can I say? It’s–you know, the money’s rolling in, and this is fun.
- CBS CEO
Yes its a real leap to link the people carpet bombing the area with a hospital being bombed.
They’re being very indiscriminate and almost certainly committing a copious amount of war crimes, but what they are doing is not carpet bombing. If it was, there would be nothing left of Gaza by now, and one particular building being bombed would not be noteworthy.
They had actually stopped their air raids before this happened. I am not saying they aren’t going to bomb more but I am pointing out that people jumped to point the finger suspiciously fast.
Maybe I’m crazy, but the series of events seems incredibly obvious from the videos linked in that article. A rocket is fired from a position far away from the hospital that seems typical of the ones used by Hamas. Israel intercepted it above the hospital and it broke apart. The explodey bit fell out of the sky and landed near the hospital, making a big boom and killing people.
This is what happens when you hurl deadly explosives at each other over densely populated areas. Everyone sucks here.
I think it’s the missile failing and breaking apart, I don’t think interceptor missiles would be able to meet them so soon after launch
The group defending themselves from missile attacks assumes no blame here. That’s straight up victim blaming.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to blame anyone. I’m saying it seems pretty clear that neither side intended to hit the hospital.
Russia did not intend to blow a civilian plane out of the sky when they first invaded Ukraine either.
I don’t think Hamas did this intentional but they certainly tried to blame it on Israel.
Everyone sucks here.
???
Yes, both sides are waging a war in an area densely populated with civilians, and innocent people are dying. Everyone sucks here, as is often the case in war.
The people who did not start the war are not to blame for the war.
This is like saying Ukraine should be trading land for peace talks
If blood libel was true, would it have justified the shoa?
Fucking for real. They’ve done shit like this before. Before this current war. Maybe the thing people should be disturbed about, is that Israel is so well known for these types of war crimes, that they’re the first one everyone thinks of when it happens.
Ok. You know that is a complete lie when you say carpet bombing. But I suppose that is ok to lie. Are you a republican in that your fine with their lies?
What we know
- Israel had shelled the hospital 2 times before the attack on Oct 17
- Israeli military had demanded the hospital evacuate multiple times before the attack on Oct 17
- Israeli military has been hitting hospitals and civilian areas since Oct 17
- The majority of the Palestinian rockets do not have the payload to do so much damage
- Israeli government has consistently lied about these types of things in the past
- IDF Digital Spokesman posted a tweet admitting responsibility for the attack, only to quickly delete it
- The sound and damage is consistent with weapons Israel has, for example the MK84
So if we are just to do some basic considerations. Occam’s Razor.
If Israel did not hit the hospital then
a) out of all the rockets to misfire, of which we haven’t heard of any significant misfires up until now, it had to be the rare and few powerful ones that Palestinians have. This is a low probability event. Much more likely that in a barrage of rockets, the small ones misfire because the overwhelmingly majority is small
b) out of all the places to land, it lands precisely on top of a hospital in precisely a way that kills as many people as possible. Another low probability event. Realistically, the vast majority of failed rockets would land in areas that are not strategically relevant or are not a humanitarian area.
c) this rocket just happens to land on the same exact hospital that Israel had attacked multiple times previously and had demanded evacuation of. another low probability event.
d) israel has been known on multiple occasions to outright lie about something when it looks like they are committing war crimes. during the killing of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh the playbook went like this…
- Deny something happened
- OK, something did happen but it was the Palestinians who did it. Here’s a video that proves it
- OK, it wasn’t the Palestinians. We don’t know who did it
- OK, we did it but it was an accident because Palestinians were shooting at us. USA does an “investigation with Israeli data” and finds that it was totally accidental and not deliberate.
Independent investigation show that the killing was likely deliberate and nobody was shooting at the Israelis at the time of her death. She was shot in cold blood, in what some people believe is a targeted killing. But at this point, both the US and Israel refuse any criminal investigation.
This playbook, coincidentally, looks very similar to the US’s response to their airstrike on a hospital in Afghanistan. Deny, blame the Afghanis, eventually concede it was them and claim it was an accident. No criminal investigations.
Turns out countries that openly preach about their “humanitarian values” have a lot of incentive to lie when events like this get mass media coverage. So, is this a low probability event or a high probability? I don’t know.
e) the digital spokesman for the israelis openly admitted to the bombing and then quickly deleted the tweet. is it because he was mistaken or because he was told to delete the tweet? high probability or low probability? I don’t know.
Let’s do a little formula. LPE = low probability event, UPE = unknown probability event
LPE x LPE x LPE x UPE x UPE
Let’s try some different values to get a broad estimate.
LPE = 20% UPE = 50% 0.2 * 0.2 * 0.2 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.002 = 0.2%
LPE = 50% UPE = 80% 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.08 = 8%
LPE = 80% UPE = 90% 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.9 * 0.9 = .41 = 41%
So depending on how likely you believe the above events, you can estimate a different probability. For example, if you think that the chances of the Palestinians having their rocket misfire over virtually the worst possible spot it could have is 80%, you may reach a different conclusion than if you believe the chances are actually let’s say 20%
The point of the exercise is to show that there’s a lot of reason to believe Israel did it and there’s a lot of reason to believe Israel is lying (including making up videos, like they’ve done in the past), and there’s a lot of reason to believe the US is blindly backing up their lies (like they’ve done in the past)
Please don’t mistake this for some sort of serious scientific attempt at proving the Israelis wrong. It’s just a thought exercise to illustrate the point that for this to have been the Palestinians, there would have had to be a lot of little coincidences. Which CAN happen. Unlikely events happen all the time. But in situations like this, I think we have to be realistic and look at the simplest answer. I personally think it’s very likely Israel did it. I don’t know, and I don’t think we’ll ever know.
But maybe in some time we’ll have an independent investigation and Israel will ultimately own up to it. Only time will tell.
I was fully ready to believe Israel was responsible for it because it fits their MO, but the evidence is compelling that it was indeed a misfired rocket. The small crater we’ve seen in photos combined with the large fireball on video is consistent with a small warhead and a hefty charge of leftover propellant. Yes, the probability of such an accident occurring is low, but not zero.
Yes, the probability of such an accident occurring is low, but not zero.
I’m actually surprised these sorts of accidents don’t happen more often, considering the primitive rocket technology they’re using.
I’m amazed they’re able to build functioning rockets at all. Once you get beyond the small ones that are basically extra-dangerous fireworks, it’s literally rocket science.
(small) rocket science is much less hard now that it’s pretty well documented on the internet afaik
deleted by creator
A small crater doesn’t mean Israel didn’t bomb it. There are ways to blow up bombs that doesn’t leave much of a crater. For example, check out this video I just uploaded on imgur. It’s a proximity blast - once it gets to a certain elevation above the ground it blows up. This does damage but doesn’t leave a crater.
Also, I uploaded another video which was a sound comparison between the typical Hamas rocket as compared to bombs equipped with the US’s JDAM system. JDAM is just a way to turn “dumb bombs” into “smart bombs”. read more here. Listen to the sound difference here.
This doesn’t prove anything conclusively, but there is a lot of discussion on the OSINT communities on twitter going on right now and yesterday about this attack on the hospital. There are a lot of smart people arguing for both sides, and I’m not smart nor an expert. In lieu of an independent investigation, I’m going to default to probably Israel just based on my above comment.
This type of blast would murder the building. Three of your dots at least are not things we know or we know the opposite.
it fits their MO
Israel consistently does whatever it can to minimize civilian casualties, up to and including assuming more risk for their own soldiers and civilians
OK that’s just as plainly false as any lies coming from Hamas, even if I have been convinced that Israel didn’t hit this hospital this time.
Except it provably isn’t. Calling for evacuations before military strikes is an easy and obvious example.
Allowing Hamas to bombard them with thousands of rockets for years is another really obvious one that no one ever seems to recognize.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-area-bombed-after-warning-to-move
Calling for evacuations before military strikes is an easy and obvious example.
Man, I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with you. Hamas has blood on their hands. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend Israel doesn’t.
I’m in my 50’s; this is at least the third or fourth time I can remember having the reaction of “Wow, Israel gives no shits who they hurt” during an event like this.
How about those illegal settlements which are a 24/7/365 provocation?
Hamas isn’t innocent, but Israel damn sure isn’t either.
This is not a rebuttal to anything I’ve said.
Read what I quoted from your comment, and tell me which of the links I posted supports it.
The rest is just because I had my dander up at the continuous implication from some that we’re supposed to support Israel uncritically.
Delusions or lies?
The reality.
This is a LOT of mental gymnastics (and made up bullshit) when there is tons of actual, real-world evidence that a terrorist’s misfired rocket damaged the hospital, and that the terrorists lied about the casualty numbers.
This is Q-cult level nonsense just to avoid reality man
Dude, they did MATHS, that’s science™.
Please show me where I made something up. I believe with near 100% certainty that I made mistakes in that comment. If you see one, please tell me.
I already called out your most offensive lie in another post.
For further clarity, this is also deliberately misleading, and is obviously intentional if you’re truly as knowledgeable as you claim
Israeli military had demanded the hospital evacuate multiple times before the attack on Oct 17
Israeli military has been hitting hospitals and civilian areas since Oct 17
Your description of the Afghanistan hospital bombing is similarly misleading.
Frankly, most of your post is falsehood and conjecture based on falsehood.
Israeli military had demanded the hospital evacuate multiple times before the attack on Oct 17
The Kuwaiti specialized hospital in Rafah city, in the south of Gaza, said on Oct. 16 it had it had received two Israeli warnings to evacuate but its director said its staff would not leave.
Israeli military has been hitting hospitals and civilian areas since Oct 17
Here I made a mistake. It was meant to be Oct 7, the start of the conflict. Here’s a map of all hospitals hit by the IDF from the 7th to the 17th. Just look it up though, they’ve hit universities, hospitals, mosques, etc. They hit a mosque yesterday and killed at least a dozen people - link
keep 'em coming. again i reiterate i welcome the challenges to what i’m saying and the discussion this can generate. if i am wrong i am wrong, but i’m making a good faith effort here at the truth
You’re not refuting anything, and there’s no reason to continue to engage. I’ve said my piece. I don’t think you’re being intellectually honest, while pretending you are, and that seems intentionally misleading.
most of your post is falsehood and conjecture based on falsehood.
While yours is just “nuh-uh”…
Google is right there
Well either you made a mistake, or the vastly more unlikely event happened, because all signs point to a failed rocket.
Math only provides accurate conclusions if the starting assumptions are correct. If you put bullshit in, you get bullshit out.
That explains the bullshit
b) out of all the places to land, it lands precisely on top of a hospital in precisely a way that kills as many people as possible.
didn’t it land in a parking lot? in the pics of the npr article it was at least a building-length away from the hospital
here’s a map of the area showing a rough radius of what the explosion damaged
we can see the center is somewhere around the parking lot. however, there is damage to the southern roofs of the buildings 45m away. so while perhaps the center radius of the explosion was on top of the parking lot, the reach of the bomb certainly touched the hospital
however, the reason it killed so many people (i think 500 is probably exaggerated for propaganda, real number probably closer to ~200) is because a lot of people were sheltering outside this hospital around that parking lot. for example west of the parking lot there were many people sleeping on blankets and such. people on the second story of the hospital also got killed.
it’s really hard to get an objective view of the situation right now because the propaganda wings of both sides are out in full force.
here’s a video by aljazeera- https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1714984258358391057
coincidentally the only news outlet that caught the whole thing live
it’s really hard to get an objective view of the situation right now because the propaganda wings of both sides are out in full force.
Yeah and that’s made significantly more challenging when you begin from a position of “blame Israel” and outright lie about multiple “facts”
There is no way you are both closely following the situation (as you imply) and also believe this to be true
b) out of all the places to land, it lands precisely on top of a hospital in precisely a way that kills as many people as possible.
Truth comes more readily when you stop lying to confirm your own biases
Are you denying that the blast hit the hospital? Here’s a high resolution image the morning after the blast. The marks are mine. There’s visible damage to the windows (you can see also here taken the night of the blast) and part of the outside structure of the hospital. Purple X is origin point of explosion. There was also damage to the roof of a building less than 30m away. Here’s another image that shows shrapnel damage to the roof of the hospital.
Even ignoring that, let’s pretend all of the damage was strictly limited to the parking lot and the area around the parking lot (even though that’s not true). When hundreds of people are using the grassy field next to the hospital parking lot as a temporary shelter and a bomb kills them, is it wrong to say the bomb “hit the hospital”?
Going further, is it wrong to say the probability of a misfiring rocket landing precisely the point where hundreds of people happening to be sheltering, right next to a hospital, is low?
Again, if we assume rocket failures are random then if we pick random points on a city to drop a rocket, the chances of it killing hundreds of people are very slim. What difference does it make, in the context of the premise of my original comment, if it landed on the hospital or on the parking lot next to the hospital? The probability is the same. The point was that is was an unlikely place for a rocket to fall. Not impossible. You flip a coin 5 times and sometimes you’ll get heads 5 times. If you flipped a coin 25 times and it landed heads 25 times in a row, it’s more probable that there is something wrong with the coin.
Please address other things. I don’t believe you would have such a response to my comment if a semantics discussion on what constitutes as “hitting a hospital” was your main point of contention with my comment.
Are you denying that the blast hit the hospital?
This is a far cry from “landed directly stop the hospital in such a way as to maximize civilian casualties”
You’re just disingenuous at every point. Even in this post.
Going further, is it wrong to say the probability of a misfiring rocket landing precisely the point where hundreds of people happening to be sheltering, right next to a hospital, is low?
This is ignoring that
A) it’s a public area and there are lots of people looking for shelter
B) there was likely a munitions dump near the hospital because Hamas and other militant groups readily do that
C) bigger, more dangerous, less commonly-used rockets are more likely to have incidents, for all of those very reasons in the descriptor.
D) Israeli attacks have been precision attacks thus far, full stop. The idea that they are indiscriminately bombing is absurd and does not match evidence of said bombings. If they wanted the hospital levelled to maximize civilian casualties, as you literally state, then the hospital would not be standing.
Oh and E) it’s on fucking video happening and we have audio of IJ soldiers discussing it
I don’t believe you’re engaging in this topic in good faith at all.
The mass murder of Palestinians in the last 2 weeks is not disturbing however
I find Fetterman’s allegiance to an apartheid state disturbing.
“The Media shouldn’t have rushed to a story and conclusion” is hardly allegiance to Israel.
His only allegiance is to the dripp yo
I’d still say there’s a chance it was them… And it was just the most logical assumption to make.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
called some of his colleagues’ quickness to blame Israel for the hospital blast in Gaza “disturbing” in a statement Wednesday.
“It’s truly disturbing that Members of Congress rushed to blame Israel for the hospital tragedy in Gaza,” Fetterman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
In a follow-up post, Fetterman pledged to “always stand with Israel” and said he “look[s] forward to supporting any military, intelligence, or humanitarian aid to get the job done.”
The Democratic senator’s pointed comments come after U.S. intelligence on Wednesday independently determined that a deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza was the result of a failed rocket launch by Palestinian militants, not by an Israeli airstrike.
Some members of Congress reposted reports that blamed Israel for the attack, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who also sharply criticized President Biden for not encouraging a ceasefire.
“We must support Israel in their efforts to eliminate the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women, and children.
The original article contains 474 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Liberals are useless.
And the more investigation that comes out the more it’s revealed that Israeli government story is wrong: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hospital-in-gaza
Lol aljazeera is where you’re getting your news.
Why not?
The IDF seems incapable of telling the truth, so I don’t know whatever they’re saying, but evidence is pointing towards a misfire at the moment. I’m not sure if I agree with Al Jazeera’s conclusion here, because it would mean the coverage and responsiveness of the iron dome would be insane.
