“No edits, no cuts, just the undeniable truth.” With these words, the Israeli army shared a seven-minute message on Wednesday video on X from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. In it, international press spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus gave a tour of the MRI center of Gaza’s largest hospital, which was captured by the Israeli army after days of heavy fighting.
The attack was widely criticized worldwide, because hospitals have a protected status during wars. There were hundreds of patients in Al-Shifa and thousands of displaced people had sought refuge there in recent weeks. But according to Israel, Hamas used the hospital for military purposes, and even housed an important command center underneath it, removing its protected status.
The video was Israel’s first attempt to prove those accusations. But the result was so unconvincing that the video was mocked by many on social media. There was no trace of the tunnel network and command center that Israel recently built detailed three-dimensional animation had shown. Instead, Conricus showed some sports bags containing Kalashnikovs, hand grenades and bulletproof vests that the army allegedly found at the MRI center.
“The most interesting things we found confirm beyond any doubt that Hamas systematically uses hospitals during military operations, in violation of international law,” Conricus says in the video. “And this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Hoon
On social media people mocked with details in the video. They pointed out that those rusty Kalashnikovs might as well have been left behind by hospital guards. And that your weapons should not hide next to an MRI machine because that’s a giant magnet. The box of dates that was displayed next to the weapons could also be used the necessary scorn calculate. Was that all?
“Israel will have to come up with much more than a handful of ‘grab and go’ guns to justify the closure of hospitals in northern Gaza, with the enormous costs this entails for a civilian population with urgent medical needs,” tweeted Kenneth Rothformer director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch.
A few hours later, the Israeli army had removed the video. This initially seemed to be an attempt to limit the damage to its image after the storm of criticism. But not much later the army shared one new, shorter version of the video, of which only the ending was deleted. In the missing part a laptop was visible with a photo on the screen of Israeli soldier Ori Megidish, one of the few hostages released by Hamas. Conricus points to the laptop and says her name. The military provided no explanation as to why this was removed. Megidish’s name and photo are public information and have also been published by many Israeli media.
Moved
The video was only the beginning of the Israeli PR offensive around Al-Shifa. The American channel Fox News and the British BBC were invited to tour the hospital’s MRI department the same day. There they were also largely shown the same weapons seizure that appeared in the army video. On social media, some fact checkers pointed out, such as the Dutch freelance journalist Thomas van Linge, pointed out that there were strange differences between the images. In the army video, only one Kalashnikov was seen behind the MRI machine, but in the reports from Fox and the BBC two Kalashnikovs appeared to have been added. According to Van Linge, this difference casts doubt on everything the army shows, because it appears that it has moved weapons.
The images of Al-Shifa that the army released a day later were subjected to the same thorough investigation. For a day after capturing the hospital complex, the army was still combing the vast terrain. One of the videos released by the military showed a white pickup truck in which booby traps and weapons were allegedly found: Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, grenades and other explosives. The army had laid them out on the ground under a piece of tarpaulin. In addition, soldiers found the lifeless body of one of the hostages, a nanny Yehudit Weiss (65), in a building next to the hospital. The army also shared a video of a ‘terror tunnel’ which was found on the north side of Al-Shifa.
“Over the last 24 hours, we have received many questions about the initial seizure of Hamas’ weapons and explosives at Al-Shifa Hospital,” tweeted army spokesman Peter Lerner with the images of the pick-up truck and the tunnel. “Too many journalists concluded that if we couldn’t immediately show the entire fortress of terror, it wouldn’t exist.”
He said Hamas also had ample time to remove evidence of its military activities from the hospital. “Since they launched the attack on Israel on October 7, they have been preparing for the day when the Israeli army would reach Al-Shifa Hospital.” Yet a tunnel network or command center is difficult to conceal. It will become clear in the coming days or weeks whether they were actually hospitalized.
#Israeli #armys #finds #Gazas #largest #hospital #evidence #Hamas #military #activity