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.
What we know
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…
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.
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
Your description of the Afghanistan hospital bombing is similarly misleading.
Frankly, most of your post is falsehood and conjecture based on falsehood.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-hospital-blast-what-we-know-about-explosion-2023-10-18/
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.
You said quote “you are making things up” and then you quoted two statements that I made
Did I make it up or not?
Either they are hitting civilian areas or they are not. If you say that they aren’t, and I say that they are… Only one of us is making a factual statement. All the evidence points to -> Yes, they are bombing civilian areas.
Maybe there’s a justification. Maybe the thousands of buildings they’ve bombed all have Hamas weapons caches. But has it happened? Yes. End of story, I’m not making it up.
Do you believe Gaza has designated military or Hamas areas?
Of course not. Every single mosque, university, hospital, residential building, refugee camp, and border crossing the IDF has bombed must have had some sort of Hamas presence. Hamas is very well integrated into Gaza, they’re in over 10,000 buildings.
When I quote statements you make, they are examples of shit you make up, yes.
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
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.
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.
there are different types of bombs you can use with JDAM. It doesn’t have to be a massive 2,000lb bomb like the MK84 (of which Israel has a large stockpile of)
the MK82 for example is also compatible which is 500 lbs or the 1,000lb variant MK83. here’s a vid of MK82.
that could plausibly do damage similar to what we saw, especially if we vary the elevation at which it blows up. and all of them would sound similar to each other to someone on the ground
main point is that “there’s a small crater” isn’t definitive evidence for “israel didn’t bomb”
Sure evidence is never going to be for certain but I will say that again because your bullet points have things that are from straight out lies (the fake facebook posting) Any information from you is suspect. I mean we could go all the way to maybe the pilot dropped a grenade.
which ones are straight up lies? enlighten me
i tried very deliberately to only make statements in the bullet points that i could back up.
we can disagree about my logic but something either happened or it didn’t.
These definately
The majority of the Palestinian rockets do not have the payload to do so much damage IDF Digital Spokesman posted a tweet admitting responsibility for the attack, only to quickly delete itHananya Naftali is the name of the spokesman. here’s a link to his twitter
this was the tweet that made immediately after the hospital event go ahead and look it up, it was widely reported on
he then posted this after deleting the original
now go search for a reuters article about the bombing that was live before he posted his original tweet. i couldn’t find one, personally. although to be fair, i didn’t look very hard
you can read more about palestinian rocket arsenal. it’s not secret classified information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_arsenal
their most common rocket is the Qassam, this is the one they produce themselves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket
the biggest payload is 20kg
we’re talking about a bomb in the 250-500lb range. it just isn’t enough.
they do have stronger rockets, but they are fewer because they cannot produce them entirely on their own. that’s where iranian rockets come in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajr-5
for example that one they have been known to fire before. it’s an actual rocket from an actual military. not jerry rigged together. that one we’re talking 125kg, so we’re starting to get into the discussion range we’re talking about
they have a lot more shitty qassam rockets than anything else. this is evident by the amount of damage the average rocket does when it lands in israel - virtually nothing. they have to send like 150 rockets to kill 1 israeli
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
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-bombs-egypt-border-crossing-it-had-touted-as-an-escape-route-for-besieged-palestinians/ar-AA1hYfk2
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.
Endeavoring to minimize civilian casualties does not mean there will not be civilian casualties.
The argument that Israel is aiming for civilian casualties is nonsensical.
Delusions or lies?
The reality.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
I will repeat myself because now I realize you are not understanding. Read carefully.
If I pick a random point on a map, and decide to drop a bomb there - no matter the size - the chances of it causing hundreds of deaths is low. Even strong munitions. This “event” happened to cause hundreds of deaths. This is a rare occurrence. Go ahead and randomly throw a dart onto a map of a large city. Then kill everyone within 10 meters of that point. The vast majority of the time, you’re not going to get hundreds of deaths.
That’s the only claim I’m trying to make here. The probability of such an event happening is low. I don’t see how that is a controversial statement.
I don’t understand how this is relevant to the discussion at hand. Please elaborate.
It’s still unusual. If big rockets fail at 5x the rate as small one, but you send out 9 big rockets and 1 big one, it’s still more likely for a failure to be the small one. Realistically, I think it’s the opposite though. The big ones are donated by Iran which has a much more advanced defense industry. The small ones are jerry rigged together by Hamas themselves.
Here you let slip your bias. Israel themselves announced 6 days into the war that they had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza. It’s been 12 days into the war, if we assume the same ratio that’s 12,000 bombs. The same government that couldn’t stop some terrorists from literally driving a bulldozer up to the border wall is now somehow capable of having a mountain of precise and accurate intelligence of over 10,000 targets?
As for the precision attacks… please see this video with a large stock of MK84 bombs. There are more videos of them loading it onto their planes. These aren’t precision guided munitions. They are dumb bombs. read more about them here
I want to re-iterate the ridiculous amount of bombs they have dropped. In 2019 during the ENTIRE YEAR the United States dropped 7,500 bombs on Afghanistan. And 2019 was a particularly bad year, it was the most bombs in the past decade.
Consider the size of Afghanistan. Consider the size and population density of Gaza.
Come on man, think for yourself a little bit. Stop floating in the mayonnaise.
Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, I know. The people you think are good guys are actually brutally murdering thousands of people. Don’t worry, just like we eventually realized as a society that the Iraq war was a crime, we will eventually realize that this destruction of Gaza is a crime. Of course, that doesn’t help the thousands of dead children.
One can believe that the destruction of Gaza is a crime and also believe that this particular explosion was caused by some other group.
i agree absolutely.
i don’t know what happened with the hospital. i don’t know how many people died. i don’t even know who stands to benefit, really. what has been the immediate after-effects of the attack?
the US and Israel are now isolated from the western world. Who would want that? Well, Hamas is the obvious one. Iran and Russia, too. But what about Israel? Now the US and Western Europe are further committed to this conflict, and they don’t have to juggle the interests of the Arab countries.
so the typical question - cuo bono - doesn’t even help here.
the only constant i have is the nagging feeling that we are being lied to. i think everything happened too fast and the probability of such an event too low for it to be an accident.
Lol the irony of
Maybe you do genuinely believe the shit you say but that’s not exactly better lol