Last week, a regrettable yet somewhat anticipated incident occurred. Palestinian barbarians, who can’t wield anything better than rudimentary weapons such as machetes, knives or suicide bombs, mishandled a rocket that tragically struck their own civilian population, leading to the loss of hundreds of Palestinian lives. Notably, when these rockets mistakenly hit Al-Ahli Hospital, Hamas and radical Islamists both in India and worldwide swiftly attributed the incident to Israel. In the Indian context, an individual known for his fervent anti-Hindu stance and radical Islamist beliefs, Mohammad Zubair, played a prominent role in assigning blame to the Israel Defense Force for the Gaza Hospital attack.
Mohammad Zubair, who professionally identifies as a fact-checker, has been actively engaged in disseminating a vast number of tweets and retweets. In these posts, he highlights the suffering endured by Palestinian individuals, encompassing men, women, and children, while attributing blame to Israel. Specifically, he accuses the Israeli Air Force of targeting the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Zubair’s actions are noteworthy for their consistent failure to subject this widely recognized misleading assertion to a thorough fact-check. Instead, he actively participates in the propagation of misleading information, notably advancing the claim that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is responsible for the attack on Al-Ahli Hospital.
Here are some screenshots of a tweet shared by Mohammad Zubair.
Within this article, we shall substantiate, through a multitude of compelling pieces of evidence, that the rocket in question was launched by Palestinian militants, rather than by the Israeli Defense Force.
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Fact check
The Associated Press conducted a thorough and extensive analysis, backed by multiple forms of evidence, including live video footage and expert opinions. This analysis strongly supports the conclusion that the rocket responsible for striking Al-Ahli Hospital originated from the Palestinian side.
Video Evidence
Notably, the evidence presented by the Associated Press drew from the reporting of Al Jazeera, a media agency known to have sympathies with Hamas. A pivotal video in this investigation, recorded shortly before 7 p.m. local time, captured a series of rockets being launched from the vicinity, as the camera zoomed in on this action while an Al Jazeera correspondent provided commentary.
In a noteworthy video segment, one rocket within a cluster of launched projectiles exhibited an unusual trajectory, departing from the others that were heading towards the distant lights of Israel. Instead, it reversed course, returning toward the darkened Gaza City, where electricity had been largely cut. The camera diligently tracked the rocket’s luminous tail as it gracefully arched upwards and to the left. Suddenly, the rocket appeared to break into fragments, with one piece plummeting and another shooting upwards and to the right, emitting a vivid burst akin to fireworks before ultimately detonating, leaving behind a fleeting trail of sparks.
Subsequently, a minor explosion was observed in the distance, followed just two seconds later by a significantly larger blast occurring nearer to the camera’s location. Notably, the timestamp at the bottom of the live broadcast footage indicated the time as 6:59 p.m. Gaza time.
Additional video evidence, acquired by the Associated Press, offers compelling corroboration of events. This footage was recorded from a camera inside Israel, precisely synchronized with the Al Jazeera footage and captured the launch of a substantial volley of at least 17 rockets originating from Gaza. These launches culminated in a prominent explosion that illuminated the horizon on the Palestinian side of the border. The camera was positioned on a building in Netiv Ha’asara, a community in close proximity to the border wall, facing southwest. This orientation affirmed that the rocket launches and ensuing explosion were directed toward Gaza City.
Furthermore, the evidentiary trail does not conclude there. A third video sourced from Israel’s Channel 12, filmed by a camera on the upper floor of its building located in Netivot, a town approximately 10 miles (16 kilometres) southeast of Gaza City’s hospital, also documented the rocket barrage at precisely 6:59 p.m.
Collectively, when these three videos are examined in concert, they provide compelling evidence of multiple rockets originating within Gaza. One of these rockets, it appears, disintegrated in midair approximately three seconds prior to the explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
Expert Analysis
AP conducted a visual analysis with the input of six experts, all of whom concurred on the most probable scenario: a rocket launched from within Gaza deviated from its trajectory and disintegrated just moments before the explosion occurred.
Andrea Richardson, an expert skilled in scrutinizing open-source intelligence and affiliated with the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, emphasized that specific identifiable landmarks within the video footage provided crucial clues regarding the rocket launch sites.
Additionally, Justin Crump, a former British Army officer and an intelligence consultant, noted that homemade rockets such as these often have a notably high failure rate.
“You can see obviously it fails in flight, it spins out and disintegrates, and the impacts on the ground follow that,” said Crump, CEO of Sibylline, a London-based strategic advisory firm. “The most likely explanation is this was a tragic accident.”
Furthermore, not only the Associated Press but also The Wall Street Journal has presented compelling video evidence strongly indicating that the Islamic Jihad was responsible for the rocket attack on the Gaza Hospital, resulting in the tragic loss of hundreds of Palestinian lives.
On the day following the attack, an Indian journalist shared drone footage capturing the surrounding areas, which highlights a notable disparity between the craters caused by an earlier Israeli airstrike and the crater generated by a misfired rocket by the Islamic Jihad. This drone footage also reveals that the vicinity of Al-Ahli Hospital remained undamaged. Consequently, we can conclusively dismiss the possibility of categorizing the Gaza Hospital attack as collateral damage resulting from an IDF airstrike.
Recently, New York Times published a report where it states that after six days of attack Hamas failed to make a case in favour of them. Report says, “ Six days after Hamas accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds of people, the armed Palestinian group has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike, says it cannot find the munition that hit the site and has declined to provide detail to support its count of the casualties.”
In summary, we have detailed three live video accounts, obtained expert opinions from two distinct media outlets, and presented subsequent-day drone footage of the incident. Collectively, all this evidence unequivocally points to the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization closely associated with Hamas, as the party responsible for the Al-Ahli Hospital attack.
Now, we must contemplate why, in the presence of concrete evidence available in the public domain regarding the attacks, individuals such as Mohammad Zubair, who identify as fact-checkers, refrain from fact-checking the claims made by fellow Islamists, including himself, that the Gaza Hospital attack was orchestrated by Palestinian terrorists rather than Israelis. Instead, Zubair appears to selectively propagate misinformation with the intention of constructing a false narrative, seemingly aimed at garnering sympathy for terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
| Claim | Israeli Defense Force is responsible for the rocket attack on Al- Ahli Hospital in Gaza |
| Claimed by | Mohammad Zubair and other Islamists |
| Fact Check | Fake |
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