Anatomy of ‘500’ Murders

By Bruce S. Ticker

PHILADELPHIA — If Israel sought to cripple Hamas, they would have targeted Shifa Hospital last week rather than Ahli Arab Hospital, both in Gaza City.

During past conflicts, the Hamas leadership cowered underneath al Shifa to deter Israel from destroying that facility. Unless Hamas moved its headquarters, what did Israel have to gain?

The hospital tragedy, a product of the Oct. 7 Hamas raid in southern Israel, serves as a depraved mystery. Amid its series of bombings last Tuesday, Oct. 17, did Israel do it intentionally or by accident? Did a Palestinian terrorist group do it purposely or by mistake?

The Arab side immediately accused Israel of murdering 500 people, with no evidence, and Arabs throughout the Middle East gathered to condemn Israel in mass wall-to-wall rallies. This attitude is nothing new, but the decibel level was far higher than usual.

However anyone feels about the ongoing bombings, Israel has succeeded in scaring and hampering the Arabs within the first few weeks of this new frightening chapter of this century-old war. The conflict commenced long before the state of Israel was created in 1948. Now, Arabs are stung by Israel’s ability to retrench after 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered and its plans to destroy Hamas. Their concern is not over the deaths of innocent civilians but the possible future losses for Hamas.

Estimates of the death toll were subsequently revised to 100 to 300.

How far would Israel go to harm or destroy Hamas, which controls Gaza? And how far would Arab terrorists go to destroy Israel? Would they purposely slaughter hundreds of their own people so that the civilized world will blame Israel?

Extremist Arabs would kill their own because embarrassing Israel takes priority over preserving lives. I initially imagined that terrorist leaders ordered a rocket strike on a heavily populated area so they can tell the world that it was Israel’s doing. Israel and America provided preliminary evidence that a terrorist group accidently bombed the hospital with a misfired missile.

Israeli Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a news conference that the terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, fired 10 rockets at 6:59 a.m. and one rocket fell to earth prematurely, striking a parking lot outside the hospital, The New York Times reported. Rockets fired by terrorists in Gaza have fallen short in the past, often killing their neighbors.

Israel had not fired any ordnance near the hospital at that time, Hagari added, according to the Times. He pointed out that a photo of the parking lot did not show the kind of impact that an Israeli missile would have caused. He noted that there was no evidence of a crater that would have been caused by an Israeli missile.

The damage was caused by rocket fuel that caught fire after hitting the ground, according to Hagari.

The senators who lead the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican Marco Rubio of Florida, said committee members reviewed the intelligence and likewise attributed the explosion to a failed Palestinian rocket launch, according to the Times.

That explanation makes the most sense.

Yet Israel had a plausible reason – displaying Israeli military might. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must address both Western civilization and Israel’s Arab enemies, among other audiences. The former expects Israel to respond in a humane manner, which means avoiding the deaths of Palestinians to the greatest extent possible.

If Israel minimizes loss of life, extremist Palestinians may well laugh and feel emboldened to kill more Jews. Peaceful nations think in terms of right and wrong, yet Hamas thinks strong vs. weak. The more Israel bombs Gaza and other enemy sites, the more Israel will be feared. Since Israel bombed Gaza, 5,000 Palestinians have died and Hamas has released six inmates.

Perhaps Israel struck the hospital to remind Hamas how far it will go. Netanyahu might have ordered the hospital bombing knowing full well that he had no strategic need to kill all those people. The bombing could have helped persuade Hamas to send more hostages back.

It is beyond belief that Netanyahu would do that, but who knows? I still opt for the more realistic theory that Islamic Jihad mistakenly murdered the victims at the hospital.