They bombed a hospital yesterday. Technically, they bombed a hospital again yesterday.
After threatening the most inhumane actions imaginable for the past week and a half, the genocidal military of the apartheid state of Israel finally followed through on their murderous promise. The enforcers of occupation and defenders of apartheid conducted an airstrike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of patients and defenseless civilians in the most brutal way imaginable. Adding insult to injury, rather than having the opportunity to grieve the hundreds of innocent people murdered, Palestinians are now having to disprove absurd Israeli claims that Hamas was somehow responsible for the attack.
The corrupt and abhorrent Israeli military has attempted to place blame for the attack on Palestinians, claiming that “actually, it was a misdirected rocket from Hamas that broke up in midair, blew up the hospital, and killed all those children and civilians”. And unsurprisingly, every western media outlet is urging caution when reporting on this war crime, the same caution they failed to exercise when it involved ridiculous Israeli claims of 40 beheaded babies.
I understand it's all very confusing, with the ‘fog of war’ and such, but my best guess as to who bombed the hospital in Gaza would be that it might be the people who have been indiscriminately bombing Gaza for the past 10 days and bragging about it on social media. If the defenders of occupation and apartheid wanted the benefit of the doubt, they probably shouldn't have told doctors numerous times over the past few days that they need to evacuate hospitals to avoid getting bombed. Just a thought.
The current (ridiculous) Israeli position is that a single Hamas rocket misfire somehow killed more people by a factor of about 20 than every single rocket launched into Israel since 2001, combined. Bear in mind that no Palestinian group has a missile or rocket anywhere near powerful enough to blow up a building, much less level a hospital and kill hundreds of people. If Hamas truly had rockets capable of such devastation, I can’t imagine why they would’ve resorted to using makeshift paragliders to invade Israel last week.
Photos from Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital showed fire engulfing the hospital, with shattered glass and body parts littering the surrounding area. The Gaza ministry of health said that at least 500 people had been killed in the explosion, but I understand it’s a bit difficult to arrive at an exact number, on account of the scattered body parts. The images and videos of the aftermath will haunt me until the day I die. I’ll never forget the disturbing footage, and I’m not sure my rage will ever subside.
Israel’s attempts to avoid responsibility for the bombing are a tried-and-true strategy straight from the apartheid playbook. If you think back to just last year, when journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by sniper fire, the same exact tactics were employed. First the Israeli military claimed it was Palestinians who actually fired the fatal shot. When that was easily disproven, they claimed Abu Akleh was simply collateral damage and the bullet was intended for a nearby enemy militant. Eventually the truth prevailed and the cowardly military admitted to murdering Shireen in cold blood.
Earlier this week, the BBC insinuated that ‘Hamas builds tunnels under hospitals’, doing its part to manufacture consent for the ongoing genocide in Gaza and specifically for attacks on Gazan medical facilities. Their shoddy reporting and absence of accountability is nearly as repugnant as the hospital bombing itself. This was by far the deadliest Israeli airstrike in the five wars fought since 2008.
The war crimes are seemingly endless. The propaganda being broadly spewed is similarly endless. The genocide being committed by the Israeli army (and funded by American taxpayers), continued yesterday and will continue today and tomorrow with no clear end in sight, only escalation and further devastation. Now our crusty shell of a president Joe Biden has taken a trip over to Israel, to glad-hand with a genocidal maniac and to emphasize his unwavering support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israel is now asking for an additional $10 BILLION in emergency aid, presumably to bomb more hospitals or purchase more white phosphorous. I have very little doubt that Biden will authorize such foreign aid.
Mass arrests of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are taking place throughout the West Bank and in Israel. Palestinian teachers, lawyers and doctors are having their licenses revoked and being arrested over social media posts sympathetic to Palestinian liberation. There’s no other word for it, what we’re seeing is totalitarianism. Rabid zionist totalitarianism.
At this point, if you still feel confused about why ending the occupation is essential to Palestinian liberation, your struggles to understand are between you and God. May the memory of all the innocent murdered in the past 11 days haunt you for eternity. If you are finding it in your heart to side with an apartheid regime that’s openly and regularly committing war crimes I honestly don’t know what to say except that many of the people in your life, your friends, family, even your children someday, will remember long from now your silence and complacency. Seek help, like professional psychiatric help, because truly and undoubtedly there is something wrong with you.
I’m not running out of words, I’m just constantly furious and exhausted and I’ve been as patient and as even-tempered as I can be. If you’re reading this, you’re witnessing a man slowly descend into madness. I tried to be polite and avoid using the profanity that my all-consuming rage desires, but what the fuck are we doing here folks? Go read a book, organize or attend a rally, argue with your bigoted family members, debate your zionist friends. Educate yourself because so much of the media has been trained to avoid placing blame where it belongs.
End the genocide. End the occupation. End the apartheid. Free Palestine forever.