Evidence mounts that terrorist rocket hit Gaza hospital

Analysis shows that IDF not responsible for al-Ahli Hospital strike that is now being used to paint Israel as the villain of this war.

By Ryan Jones | | Topics: Gaza
Evidence that the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was not hit by Israeli ordinance. Screenshot
Evidence that the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was not hit by Israeli ordinance. Screenshot

A hospital in Gaza was hit yesterday. Hamas claims up to 300 people were killed, but their casualty figures are notoriously unreliable. Whatever the body count, it was a tragic event. And the Palestinians, the Arab world and the United Nations swiftly latched on to it as an opportunity to finally paint Israel as the villain in this war.

But did Israel bomb the hospital?

Israel is among the most self-critical nations on earth. It is not like its enemy Hamas, whose leaders happily lie through their teeth despite overwhelming evidence of their crimes. And everyone in Israel is saying the IDF did not target that hospital yesterday.

Evidence is mounting that the hospital was hit by a failed terrorist rocket launch. These failed launches are commonplace, and often kill local Palestinian civilians. In this war alone, at least 450 terrorist rockets have malfunctioned and failed to clear the Gaza border, instead landing inside Palestinian towns.

It would seem that was what happened on Tuesday evening, when al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City was hit.

Shortly before 7 pm, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched a rocket barrage at the Greater Tel Aviv area. IDF satellite imagery shows that it passed over the part of Gaza where the hospital is located.

IDF Spokesman

Several video clips, including the background of a live Al Jazeera broadcast at that time, show one of the rockets almost immediately veering off and hitting the ground.

This is a different angle from the security camera at the Israeli village of Netiv Ha’asara.

And another from someone in Gaza who filmed the launch of the barrage on his mobile phone You can clearly see one of the rockets malfunction and hit the ground. At the end of the clip, you see the resulting fire and can clearly make out the distinctive massive solar panels on the roof of the al-Ahli Hospital.

Here is some of the IDF aerial and satellite imagery and the army’s analysis showing before and after images of the hospital. Some important things to note from the following video:

  1. The hospital itself was not hit. The rocket landed in the parking lot.
  2. There is no evidence of serious damage to the hospital itself, though there might have been people congregating in the parking lot.
  3. There is no crater or other structural damage that would certainly have resulted from IDF ordinance.

The third party and unaffiliated group GeoConfirmed also verifies in a series of posts on X (Twitter) that the rocket that hit the hospital was launched by Gaza terrorists groups.

Israeli intelligence, which monitors all terrorist communications in Gaza, also intercepted this conversation between two Hamas operatives, who acknowledge that the hospital was hit by “friendly fire.”

Given this and additional operational analysis, including speaking to sources on the ground in Gaza, as well as the fact that the IDF wasn’t bombing in the area at that time, army officials concluded and stated emphatically that the hospital was not hit by Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also stressed the point:

As did opposition leader Yair Lapid:

Lapid later took the international mainstream media to task for believing the word of Hamas and running with the story that Israel bombed the hospital before checking the facts.

The al-Ahli Arab Hospital is a small Christian hospital of 80 beds located in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. It is today operated by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. It was founded in 1882 by the Church Mission Society of the Church of England, and from 1954 to 1982 was operated by the Medical Mission of the Southern Baptist Church. During those years it became known as the “Baptist Hospital.”

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