Right, so last night social media was pretty much talking about one thing and one thing only and that was the appalling spectacle of a hospital in Gaza being blown to bits by a missile attack. Who targets a hospital? Fatalities are numbering in the high hundreds at time of writing. Who’s missile though? Well if you talk to Israel, they’ve given several conflicting accounts of the matter, if you speak to Palestinians, they are very much saying it is Israel, if you speak to any number of other Middle East countries they’re saying Israel too, Western Countries more likely to say the opposite, but of course we need to prove all of this and yet the media and our politicians are refusing to highlight what appears to be obvious even when there is evidence to point to, certainly enough to prompt some urgent questions to the authorities concerned.
Right, so there’s no escaping the news that the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Northern Gaza has been hit by a missile, killing hundreds of people who had been inside. This is one of the worst examples of innocent blood being spilled needlessly this century and short of being a complete sociopath your heart breaks for the people and the families affected by this horrific course of events, this tragedy, where a hospital get’s targeted during the course of a war. It’s civilian infrastructure, surely it ought to be a no go zone even if your enemy might use such places to hide? The Baptist Hospital is separate from Gazan health infrastructure, it is a standalone and self-contained, set up 141 years ago by the Church of England’s Christian Mission Society and now it is gone, along with so many people who were inside. With fuel, food, water and electricity cut off, many people from the north of Gaza, despite the Israeli order to evacuate and head south, could not do so. Many chose the hospital to shelter in, so on top of patients and staff, who also couldn’t evacuate, having no way to move their patients, a great many others were seeking refuge there too, believing that Israel wouldn’t target a hospital, that not even they would go there. Except it looks very much like they did. Now I’m not just saying that as someone who is pro-Palestinian here, I’ve been calling Israel out for its apartheid for a long time, regular viewers know this, it’s not a new thing, but there is ample albeit still circumstantial evidence pointing to Israel as the perpetrators of this attack. Let’s start with the lead up to these events. Israel gave the 1.1 or 1.2m people who live in the north of Gaza 24 hours to evacuate and move south. It didn’t matter what building you might occupy there, everyone was told 24 hours. Now this got extended, when various bodies and organisations pointed out how impossible it was to evacuate that many people that quickly with resources cut off and all of that, but there were no exceptions made in this demand at all. Why ask the likes of schools and hospitals to evacuate if you didn’t mean to bomb them? I’m of a mind that this imposed exodus of Palestinians from north to south is about another potential land grab, hence why they want the entire region cleared. Hamas will still have their hostages, surely you aren’t so concerned for innocents if you want Palestinians out so you can be more indiscriminate in your attacks, not if you want those hostages back alive? So there was the request to evacuate the hospital. Now somebody interviewed in the wake of the missile attack yesterday was Canon Sewell of the Jerusalem Diocese, who confirmed Israel hit al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which the Diocese has responsibility for, last Saturday. He called that a warning to people that it was not a safe place to stay. The missile hit on Saturday, believed to have been Israeli and it caused significant damage in and of itself, enough to injure 4 people. So last night’s attack wasn’t even the first strike on the hospital. There’s more evidence to point to though. The biggest piece of evidence implicating Israel in the attack came from Pro-Israel social media influencer Hananya Naftali, who tweeted out, before deleting his post that: ‘The Israeli air force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists are dead.’ He hurriedly deleted this, presumably he backtracked on it when the scale of civilian loss of life became apparent, but he then changed it to a post then blaming Hamas for the attack. So what does a social media influencer know about this anyway you might be thinking. Well, he actually happens to work for Benajmin Netanyahu, he’s digital spokesperson for the IDF. In fact Naftali and Netanyahu are actually rather close, Netanyahu gushed about his employee in a speech he gave, at Naftali’s wedding no less. That’s how close he is to the regime. Nothing quite says innocent like not getting your story straight though and Naftali wasn’t the only one struggling. The general messaging coming out of Israel has been we bombed it, no we didn’t bomb it, what do you mean a hospital has been bombed? We don’t know anything about that? Oh that hospital, well that was Hamas. It didn’t even stop at that point. Then it moved to they were warned to evacuate, it’s their own fault they didn’t, never mind that they literally couldn’t, but the latest has been it was a failed Islamic Jihad rocket that did it. They’re an aligned group with Hamas, but for Israel they smack of being another convenient scapegoat, one that happened to also backfire on them when it emerged this excuse was based on a piece of video footage of an Islamic Jihad strike, but it wasn’t the same one, as the timestamps showed the Islamic Jihad strike took place 40 minutes after the hospital was hit. Why would Israel push knowingly false information? Former Corbyn speechwriter Alex Nunns made a great comment on just this. He said: ‘Isn’t it funny that Israel instantly knows the exact location of Islamic Jihad’s rocket launches yet didn’t target them with air strikes? If we’re to believe their story we’d have to assume the thousands of residential buildings they’re blowing up are a more urgent priority.’ Seems I’m not the only one that might be thinking a land grab is the opportunity that is being seized. Here’s the thing though. Israel get’s billions of dollars in aid from around the world, mostly the US. They have arms manufacturing bases here in the UK, those Elbit Systems sites that keep getting targeted by protesters, targeted with good intent in my opinion given what they manufacture fundamentally amounts to being death. Palestine, Hamas, they don’t have these top of the range arms to hand, they build glorified home made fireworks pretty much and call them rockets, or Israel do anyway. Israel funnily enough love to mock the inaccuracy of these rockets and how often they misfire, so it’s crazy that Hamas happen to have one not only powerful enough to kill hundreds of people in a hospital, but that they’ve misfired and happened to hit that hospital twice in the space of 4 days? In fact lets make it potentially three times as there’s some reports at time of writing, I’ve seen a piece of footage, but it’s not confirmed when it took place that I’ve seen and I like to check everything, that humanitarian workers looking to find people amongst the rubble have been targeted by another air strike, so that’s incredibly bad shooting on the part of Hamas isn’t it? Yeah and pigs might fly. So there’s a fair bit of evidence floating around, much of it circumstantial, but there’s a fair bit of it. So in light of all of that, what are our politicians saying about it? What will their next line be? Israel has the right to defend itself against hospitals? That seems to be the level of discourse we experience isn’t it? That line of theirs that they trot out in every media interview, their ongoing support for the aggressors just eggs them on to be more aggressive, more extreme, to do worse things in the belief they’ll get away with it and every single politician defending Israel has Gazan blood on their hands now as a result. Regardless of their opinions, regardless of what our media are saying and I have to say, there seems to be a bit of a shift in some media narrative, if you haven’t seen Sky News’ Anna Botting’s recent interview, clips going around on social media, where she absolutely shreds that arrogant career apologist for Israel Mark Regev, it’s a truly wonderful sight, an example of how brilliant our media could be if they really were free and fearless and not bought and paid for. However it’s ordinary people the likes of you and I that have been the change here and after that missile strike, across the Middle East and beyond. Demonstrations spontaneously erupted across the Middle East in solidarity with Palestine in the wake of the missile attack on the hospital. In Palestine Square in Iran, at the Israeli Embassy in Jordan, which protesters set on fire, at the Israeli Embassy again in Ankara, demonstrations in Baghdad. In Tunisia they gathered outside the French embassy to protest both about the Israeli war crimes and Western complicity, there were more protesters in Beirut in Lebanon, the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, in Yemen and in Hebron in the West Bank. The hospital wasn’t the only example of Israeli atrocity yesterday though. Going vastly underreported as a result of the hospital strike story’s dominance, is the fact Israel again bombed southern Gaza, the very place they instructed 1.1m people from northern Gaza to go to be safe. They then bomb them anyway and the targets include Rafah, where the only exit from Gaza into Egypt lies and where many Gazans are gathering in order to get out into Egypt. 100 people have reportedly been killed in those strikes too, so if Israel are bombing people who are evacuating, as we saw in that terrible attack on a convoy heading south out of northern Gaza the other day and they have repeatedly now hit southern Gaza where they’ve told these people to go, when apparently Hamas are in the north, the reason we’re told the evacuation is being called for, why are they blatantly targeting civilians as their southern strikes imply? Why are they as a result of those strikes preventing people leaving and going in to Egypt? And if they can do all of that why is it so hard to believe they wouldn’t strike a hospital? Well perhaps the words of the Israeli President from the day before the hospital strike might answer some of that. The Israeli president Isaac Herzog said in a speech: ‘We are working, operating militarily according to the rules of international law period. Unequivocally. It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up, fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat. But we are at war. We are at war, we are at war, we are defending our homes, we are protecting our homes. That’s the truth and when a nation protects it’s own it fights. And we will fight until we break their backbone.’ He’s talking about an area where over 1 million of the 2.1m population are children and most are under 14. He wants to break their backbones and he blames them for Hamas and you really think it’s people like this, who’s rockets mostly consist of little more than glorified fireworks can bomb out a hospital, not once, but twice, first time accurately enough to act as a warning, second time to devastating effect, a third time allegedly, targeting the humanitarian workers searching the wreckage for signs of life. Social media is challenging a genocide right now in a way the world has never seen before, it is exposing everything that you know normally wouldn’t get out. It will absolutely continue to do so, because if we keep the pressure up, we might affect a change. Israel’s backtracking in the face of global condemnation, led by those online calling it out, not by mainstream sources still supporting Israel has been the difference maker. Let’s keep it up because If Israel did this and of course this still needs definitive, independent verification, but if they can get away with bombing hospitals now, they’ll do it again and again. And just before I finish I happened to become aware of one more piece of evidence, something al-Jazeera have reported on no less, a tweet put out by the Israeli Army in Arabic Facebook page I believe this is, again deleted already, so can’t check it myself, which when translated, and this is likely why it hasn’t been picked up until today, said: ‘Due to the lack of medical supplies and medical staff it has been decided to bomb the Baptist hospital in Gaza and give them euthanasia.’ Closest to a confession that’s I’ve seen. If that gets confirmed Israel are busted.
What do you reckon? Israel’s missile or not? Convinced of that or still in doubt? Do have your say in the comments below and be part of the conversation. Thanks for watching, I hope you found this video useful, please like, share and subscribe if you did, more content out daily. Meanwhile here’s a video recommendation where that Israeli evacuation order, impossible as it was didn’t get called out by our supposed leaders at the time, though this chap called Jeremy Corbyn might have chipped in and had something to say about it and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.