The disaster in the Christian-Baptist hospital Al-Ahli Al-Ma’amadani at the center of Gaza city is horrific. The mighty blast in the hospital courtyard on Tuesday evening (17.10) took place as 5,000 residents — who fled for their lives from other areas of the strip — took cover there alongside a large number of injured people, rescue and medical teams.
According to estimates at the time of writing, as many as 500 Palestinians were killed in the blast. This is the deadliest event in the strip since 2008. The horrifying number of victims in the hospital is added on to an appalling record of victims in Gaza that has ascended to about 4,100 people in the Netanyahu government’s revenge war, since Hamas’s surprise attack and the massacre in communities in the south on the 7th of October.
First of all — the context
No independent party at this point has been able to definitively ascertain the direct source of the blast in the hospital courtyard, including the Israeli military’s claim that the source is supposedly a rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is still cast in doubt. While an independent investigation of all the specific findings is necessary, the context and circumstances are clear: a political decision made by the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Ganz government, backed up by the top ranks of the military, to carry out an unprecedented attack in the Gaza strip, which is consciously bound with a catastrophic ‘full’ blockade, as part of a policy of collective punishment of over 2 million residents, and mass killing, and essentially a massacre of unprecedented scope, under the bombardments.
According to data collected by the UN, at least 10 hospitals in Gaza were hit since the beginning of the war. Due to the ‘full’ blockade, 20 of the 23 hospitals in the strip are partially running, with a continuous shortage of water and electricity. There is no electricity for incubators for babies, and thousands of injured cannot be treated due to constant bombing by the Israeli air-force.
The bombed Al-Ahli hospital provided services to thousands of residents who were forced to flee from the north of the strip following threats by Israeli military forces, and there have already been reports of dozens of residents who were killed by Israeli bombings that hit fleeing residents.
The horrors and Israel’s propaganda (“Hasbara”)
Netanyahu and his government and the top ranks of the military unequivocally reject any responsibility for the horror with an exceptionally cynical, typical Pavlovian response: “Our hands did not shed this blood”. It is worth mentioning that only three days earlier, the Palestinian red crescent was asked by the Israeli military to evacuate the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza city — medical facilities in the strip are most definitely a target for the revenge onslaught.
Since the disaster was reported, “official Israel” offered contradicting versions regarding the source of the blast: first the N12 commentator Amit Segal shared a report (on the “correspondents chat”) by “an official Israeli source” according to which “unequivocally, it was a misfired rocket launched by Hamas” (our emphasis). Ten minutes later, Israeli military spokesperson asserted that “the Islamic Jihad is responsible for the misfired rocket that hit the hospital”. The hasty change of versions indicates at the very least that conclusions were reported before the event was thoroughly examined. In addition, Israeli military spokesperson admitted that the air-force was conducting raids in the area around the time of the blast, and the “Washington Post” verified a video in which a buzzing can be heard before the blast, probably from an aircraft.
While there is no solid base for allegations regarding the source of the blast, a number of right wing capitalist governments that have actually stood by the Netanyahu regime with regards to his revenge war, are not so quick to repeat the propaganda of the Israeli institutions regarding the blast in the hospital. In other words, regarding an event — the political repercussions of which concern them — no satisfactory evidence was provided which corroborates the version of the Israeli military. “Wait for the facts, report them clearly and accurately”, Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly urged. Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, who returned from a swift visit to Israel on Tuesday, called for a thorough investigation, and the president of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, asserted that the facts should be investigated, and those responsible should be prosecuted.
It cannot be ruled out that the source of this specific blast is Israeli bombing, nor a rocket, and there are cases where rockets misfired. Socialists oppose indiscriminate rocket fire. While residents under a military attack and siege certainly have the right to self-defence, including through partisan warfare, which should be organized under democratic control of the community, through elected action committees — in contrast, the militias firing rockets act according to their own agenda, without any real accountability to the community. Indiscriminate rocket fire harms ordinary residents of all communities and on both sides of the fence, and is even cynically used by the Israeli establishment to mobilize support for bombing Gaza.
Any investigation of the catastrophe in the hospital and any other event must be fully independent, particularly from the Netanyahu government, the military, Israeli security forces and institutions, all of which have a clear interest to shield themselves and abdicate all responsibility for the horrors.
Many times, well-funded propaganda machine was used to clean decision makers in Israel of any guilt, or to deny any links to crimes against ordinary people. Such was the case in many instances when schools and hospitals were bombarded in Gaza in the past, as was the case after reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in Jenin last year.
One of the methods of abdication is turning the atrocity into an isolated event, supposedly detached from other events and processes. Is it possible to detach the blast in the hospital from the fact that the Israeli government is showering the Gaza strip with bombs at an unprecedented scope while consciously causing unprecedented carnage?
By the first week of the war the Israeli air force reported it had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza. In response Marc Garlasco, a military adviser and former investigator of war crimes for the UN, explained that Israel was “dropping in less than a week what the US was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much more densely populated area, where mistakes are going to be magnified”. According to Garlasco, during the most intensive year of the US war in Afghanistan, around 7,423 bombs were dropped.
Protests of rage across the world
Deep shock and horror felt by ordinary people in response to the scope of the slaughtering in the hospital already led to solidarity protests across the Middle-East and the world. Impressive, spontaneous protests in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza were organized as early as Tuesday night in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon and other locations.
Although the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah declared a day of mourning, while solidarity protests organized in Jenin and Ramallah the PA’s police forces shot protesters with gas grenades and even live ammunition, which emphasizes yet again, the role of the PA as the subcontractor of the occupation. The protest that took place on Tuesday evening in Ramallah was the biggest protest since the beginning of the war. During the demonstration protesters called, among other things, “the people want to overthrow the president” against the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is perceived, alongside a number of heads of state in the region, as one who has kept his mouth shut from the beginning of the war. Protests in the region have already pushed the king of Jordan to announce the cancellation of the summit with Biden which was supposed to take place on Wednesday with Abbas and the president of Egypt, El-Sisi.
The planned summit, same as Biden’s visit in Israel, was not intended to promote an immediate ceasefire, but to provide US imperialism with more direct oversight over the management of the war crisis. Despite the differences and tensions between the stance of the White House and the Netanyahu regime, which were implicit also in Biden’s speech, the visit itself provides backing for the bombing of Gaza and even for the possible land invasion of thousands of soldiers. Such an invasion would lead to an even more horrifying surge in the number of victims and amplify the danger of a broader escalation in the region.
A mass movement is necessary to prevent this from happening. The strengthening of demonstrations in the Middle East and globally, and on both sides of the green lines, could force the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Ganz government to stop the revenge war. It should be said clearly: stop the war for the perpetuation of the siege, occupation and the oppression of the Palestinians. Enough with the lie of the “conflict management”! For a mass struggle on both sides of the green lines for a ceasefire, rehabilitation of communities on both sides of the fence and for a root solution, on the basis of ensured rights to exist, self determination and a life in dignity in the framework of a struggle for socialist change in the region.
