Israeli Airstrike Kills Two Bazillion Starving Children (Or Maybe Zero)

The Israeli airstrike in Rafah that killed dozens of civilians on Sunday — the one even Bibi Netanyahu called a "tragic mistake" — isn't what everyone said it was. 

The claim was that the Israel Air Force (IAF) hit a camp for displaced Palestinians, killing at least 45 people and wounding more than 200 others — assuming all those people were killed and injured as Hamas claimed, of course. But a close look at the actual evidence reveals that isn't what happened.

I won't get too technical or lost in the weeds on this one because the broad strokes are all you'll need to see through Hamas' lies.

While I've read several different reports over the last 24 hours clearing Israel, this one is the most succinct (TL;DR below).

CNN Defense Analysts have now determined that the Israeli Airstrike on May 26th against a Hamas Compound in Western Rafah, which was believed to have possibly caused an Explosion and Fire which resulted in the Death of between 35-45 Palestinian Refugees, could not have been… pic.twitter.com/kcfND1FOou

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 30, 2024

Here's the TL;DR: The IAF used small-diameter bombs to successfully take out two Hamas leaders who were not in the refugee camp. The bombs were too small to cause the explosions seen on video. They were, in fact, secondary explosions created by a Hamas weapons cache placed right next to the camp.

Hamas stores weapons and embeds themselves with civilians — and not to create human shields. What it wants is dead civilians (even when it has to make them up) that it can use for propaganda purposes. Death is Hamas' business, and business is good. 

But the facts don't much seem to matter. Hamas got its propaganda out quick and dirty, as it always does. Jerusalem bowed to international pressure — given force because of Hamas propaganda — to conduct an investigation into an airstrike that it likely already knew wasn't what Hamas claimed. While the Israeli military was going through the motions to find out "what really happened," Hamas and its compatriots in the media had already set the narrative.

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Netanyahu's wartime cabinet could be doing a better job or, more importantly, a faster job. As one X user posted last night, "Israel wins the war of truth over lies but loses the battle of world opinion. Why? They take too long to verify every fact and need to change their modus operandi and respond immediately with imperfect data on the likely cause of an incident, to mitigate the Hamas propaganda."

Indeed. "Falsehood flies," Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, "and the Truth comes limping after it." Jerusalem had better start getting its version out just as quickly as Hamas does — and make any necessary corrections later.

I could do a better job, too. The Sunday airstrike news didn't pass the sniff test, but instead of immediately writing about why that was, I waited for the analysis to come in. 

But the worst problem the truth faces rests, as always, with the Biden administration.

The White House again played both sides of the story. On the one hand, spokesweasel John Kirby parroted Hamas propaganda, calling the deaths "devastating." On the other hand, he said the airstrike would not be enough to change American policy toward arming Israel.

What the world needs to see and hear is an American president with the moral fiber to announce that Hamas is an organization built on murder and lies and that this country will refrain from making any statements about Hamas's claims until after the truth is known. "My administration," this president would say, "does not repeat or reinforce the unproven claims of terrorist organizations."

Needless to say, we do not have that president.