On the menu today: There’s a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence indicating that Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired a rocket toward Israel yesterday, the rocket failed, and it landed in the courtyard of the Al-Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing scores of people. But the Palestinians are insisting it was an Israeli attack, a charge that the Israel Defense Forces vehemently deny. This morning, at a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Biden said, “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But there’s a lot of people out there not sure.” But a lot of people in this world may not care, because they’ve got their narrative of who the heroes and the villains are, and they aren’t going to let a little thing like the facts get in the way of that. Western media voices give Hamas far too much credibility, in part because they insist there are distinct political wings and militant wings of Hamas.
‘It’s from Us?’ ‘Looks Like It’
Yesterday’s Corner post holds up well. Tuesday evening local time, something fell from the sky into the courtyard and parking lot of the Al-Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip and killed an unspecified but significant number of civilians. Founded in 1882 and run by the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem, the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital has 80 beds and was providing care for Palestinians injured in other attacks as part of the ongoing Israel–Hamas war.
Hamas and its affiliated Palestinian authorities stated that more than 500 people were killed, which seemed difficult to determine within a half-hour of the strike, in the dark. The contention of Hamas and the Palestinians is that it was an Israeli airstrike.
The Israel Defense Forces “categorically” denied the accusation and posted a video statement from spokesman and rear admiral Daniel Hagari declaring, “Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch that hit the hospital in Gaza. This is the responsibility of Islamic Jihad that killed innocents in the hospital in Gaza.” The Israelis contend that photos of the scene do not show the kind of crater that would be caused by an Israeli missile, nor structural damage to surrounding buildings.
The IDF also posted an audio recording purportedly of Hamas operatives realizing it was their allied terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that fired the rocket that landed in the hospital parking lot:
“I’m telling you, this is the first time we see a missile like this falling and so that’s why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
“What?”
“They are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
“It’s from us?”
“Looks like it.”
“Who says this?”
“They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel.”
Separately, a Times of Israel military correspondent shared surveillance-camera footage from a settlement near the Israeli–Gaza Strip border, looking into the Gaza Strip beyond the border wall. On the right side of the screen, we can see a large barrage of rockets being launched from northern Gaza, soaring high and to the left. A few moments later, a large orange explosion arises from the distance in the center of the screen.
As noted yesterday, Hamas fires a wide variety of rockets and mortar bombs at Israel, with some produced domestically that are effectively “homemade” from old water pipes. Unsurprisingly, the failure and malfunction rate of those rockets is high.
This not be the first time that Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives fired rockets at Israel and hit Palestinians instead. Back in the summer of 2022, Hamas tempers flared at Islamic Jihad over rocket attacks that killed Palestinian civilians:
However, according to exclusive information obtained by Al-Monitor from several leading figures who attended this meeting, tension was high at the meeting, where Hamas called on Islamic Jihad to financially compensate the families of the civilian victims who were killed by its rockets that fell inside the Gaza Strip.
The sources said that Islamic Jihad denied that any of its rockets fell inside Gaza and rejected any responsibility in this regard.
The recent confrontation killed 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and four women, according to an Aug. 12 report by the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Another Hamas leader confirmed to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that his movement called on Islamic Jihad to financially compensate the families of the victims after Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, investigated allegations that local rockets had landed in Palestinian areas and killed Palestinians.
The leader explained that the investigation team, consisting of members of the Gaza ministries of interior and health, collected evidence indicating that Palestinians were killed by locally made rockets. “The investigation team got their hands on rocket shrapnel and local missiles that fell in residential neighborhoods,” he added.
He refused to comment on the number of Palestinian civilians killed by local missiles.
While both groups hate the Israelis, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are rivals for power and influence, as both claim to be the group that truly speaks for the Palestinians.
A year earlier, in 2021, Human Rights Watch investigated a barrage of rockets landing on both sides of the border and concluded:
The Hamas armed wing and other Palestinian armed groups launched rockets and fired mortars toward Israeli population centers that resulted in the deaths of 12 civilians in Israel and injuries to dozens of others. Munitions apparently directed toward Israel that misfired and fell short killed and injured an undetermined number of Palestinians in Gaza. Human Rights Watch investigated several of the attacks that killed Israeli citizens, as well as a Palestinian rocket attack that misfired above the city of Jabalya in the Gaza Strip, killing seven Palestinian civilians and injuring 15.
Of course, groups dedicated to Israel’s destruction aren’t going to let a little thing like facts get in the way of their nonstop contention that the Jewish state is the root of all evil. Yesterday, Lebanon’s Hezbollah denounced what it contended was Israel deliberately targeting the hospital and called for “a day of unprecedented anger” on Wednesday, which comes just a few days after Friday’s “Day of Rage,” announced by Hamas.
That’s all these guys have to offer, one day of fury and violence after another. They never get around to calling for a Day of Mourning, never mind a “Day of Calming Down,” or a “Day of Taking a Breath and Reconsidering Whether Terrorism Is Getting Us Where We Want to Go.” Day in and day out, they argue to the Palestinians, the Arab world, the West, and perhaps even to themselves that the only reason they haven’t won the war is because they just haven’t gotten angry enough. Of course, they’ve been angry at Israel for 75 years, and the Palestinian territories are still impoverished, underdeveloped, barely functioning states.
Hezbollah also denounced the United States, which the terrorist group contended “bears direct and complete responsibility for this massacre.”
Keep in mind, the truth about who fired the projectile that led to that explosion in the hospital courtyard may matter to you and me, but it doesn’t matter that much to those in the region so invested in their cause that they cannot acknowledge the possibility that their side did something wrong.
One last reason to be skeptical that this was an attempted Israeli strike upon a hospital: The missile landed in the courtyard and parking lot, and the surrounding hospital buildings are still standing, according to available footage. When the IDF wants a building destroyed, it tends to leave little left beyond a smoking crater.
Biden’s Envoy to Iran on Hamas in 2009: ‘None of Them Are Crazies’
One of the reasons so many voices in the Western mainstream media repeat the claims of Gaza Strip authorities intertwined with Hamas with so little scrutiny or skepticism is that they genuinely believe that the Hamas “political wing” is different from the Hamas “militant (or more accurately, terrorist) wing.”
When push comes to shove, they’re all the same guys. Way back in 2014, I noted the absurdity of the distinction:
The Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, claimed responsibility for the drone and said it would continue its “surprises.”
Ah, the “military wing.” Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal told Al-Jazeera last month, “Hamas is comprised of a political wing and a military wing.”
Really? Because from over here, it looks like a public-relations wing and a convenient-scapegoat wing. “Oh, it wasn’t us that fired those rockets! It was our militant wing!” Militant wings are the evil twins of geopolitics. If your organization has a military wing — as opposed to an actual, declared, uniforms-and-everything-military — you’re probably a troublemaker. You notice the good guys in life rarely have a militant wing. “I’m with a hardline faction of the Red Cross.” “I’m with Mother Theresa’s paramilitary branch.”
These groups really seem to think that the political wing can’t be blamed for what the militant wing does. Guys, you’re two halves of the same chicken. Colonel Sanders just sees one bird.
One of the strong advocates of the idea that there is a distinction between the two wings is Robert Malley, formerly the program director for the Middle East and North Africa International Crisis Group, a transnational think tank. Back in a 2009 documentary, Malley said:
Hezbollah and Hamas . . . it’s a mistake to only think of them in terms of their terrorist-violence dimension. Their social political movements are probably the most rooted movements in their respective societies. . . . There’s so much misinformation about them. I speak to them, and my colleagues speak to them. Now we may disagree with them, but they have their own rationality. That’s the one thing to understand, these are not — none of them are crazies.
Now, to me, the clearest indication that someone is crazy . . . is publicly insisting that no one in Hamas is crazy. If one of your friends ever said that to you, you would want to check them for signs of a concussion.
In January 2021, Joe Biden named Robert Malley his special envoy for Iran. Malley is currently on leave, pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations he mishandled classified information.
How Popular Is Hamas?
This morning’s newsletter from Axios includes the “crucial context” that “most Palestinians aren’t members of Hamas, which controls the Gaza government.”
That’s technically true, but a bit misleading, as any open opposition to Hamas is hard to find. That might be because everyone is afraid of Hamas, or it might be because most Palestinians genuinely believe that Hamas is fighting for them.
Another article from al-Monitor from the summer of 2022 pointed out that plenty of Palestinians knew that Islamic Jihad missiles often landed short of their targets and killed innocent Palestinian civilians, but openly acknowledging it would spur a vicious response from Palestinian authorities:
A resident of a nearby street told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “On Saturday, the second day of the military operation, at 9 p.m., we were startled by the sound of a huge explosion hitting the next street. My brothers and I rushed to see what happened. I saw people trying to extinguish a fire with water as they waited for the civil defense and ambulance cars to arrive. I saw a 12-meter-long missile that exploded horizontally. I thanked God that it did not explode vertically. Otherwise, a very big massacre would have ensued.”
He lamented, “Everyone knows that the missile that fell on Saturday was a local missile, but no one dares talk about it, especially to the media and the press, let alone name names. Here, there is no freedom of opinion and expression. There is no respect for others’ points of view, and whoever holds the PIJ responsible for the missiles that veered off course is deemed unpatriotic and a partner in Israeli crimes against us. Whoever they are, they would be arrested by the authorities and investigated. This is why no one would dare talk about this.”
Back in June 2021, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released a survey that found 53 percent of Palestinians believed Hamas was “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14 percent preferred President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah party. But the pollster noted that support for Hamas rises and falls with the tensions in the region.
By December 2022, the same pollster conducted another survey and found a majority “support the formation of armed groups that don’t take orders from the Palestinian Authority and that are not part of the PA security forces, but numbers were higher in Gaza, where 84 percent of respondents backed the concept, than in the West Bank, where 65 percent supported the idea.”
Note that this survey did not indicate that Palestinians viewed their leaders through rose-colored glasses. “Eighty-one percent of respondents see [Palestinian Authority] institutions as corrupt, and 69 percent hold the same view of institutions under control by Hamas.”
If a solid majority of the Palestinian people clearly hated or opposed Hamas, it would be considerably easier to inch our way toward something resembling peace. Alas, the evidence suggests that a significant portion of Palestinians view Hamas sympathetically, or as a force that is fighting on their behalf.
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