Question the world still asks: ‘Who bombed Gaza hospital?’
Sunday Times lk 22-10-23
‘Eye for an eye’ makes Israel-Hamas both blind to the full horror of war
Israel showed on Tuesday it had lost none of its Judaist zeal to claim an eye for an eye in revenge for Hamas’ first strike against Israeli civilians on their day of fast following the nightfall end to the Jewish religious celebration of Sukkot on October 6.
The conflict kicked off on October 7 when hundreds of armed Hamas fighters crossed a border security fence and indiscriminately mowed down Israeli civilians and soldiers taken by surprise.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in the attack, including children. A further 203 have been taken hostage by Hamas.
The Israeli retaliation to quench its revenge thirst came in the early hours of Tuesday morn.
It was expected but none could have foreseen or dreamt the chosen target. But it was, perhaps, most exquisitely apt in Israeli eyes. Both Hamas and the Israelis subscribed to the ancient ‘eye for an eye’ principle of Talion.
Out of all the soft targets in the Gaza Strip, the choice of a civilian hospital, al-Ahli Arab, to bomb to wreak revenge for Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians may have seemed, in Israeli eyes, the best way to convey the message home that would make Hamas understand its clear import in no uncertain terms.
But to the world that awoke with shock on Tuesday morn, it was perfectly clear that the exchange of missiles by the two warring factions had left them both completely blind. In the wake of the Hamas attack, the tide of world sympathy had drifted at first towards Tel Aviv but with the horror of the hospital bombing, it soon turned to one of outrage. Sympathies now surged and raced to flood the Gaza Strip.
The attack on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital sparked immediate international condemnation, as news outlets and social media became filled with images of burning rooms and heavy stretchers.
Though the United States has said an analysis of “overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information” showed that Israel was not behind the attack, it had also said that the US would continue to collect evidence. With the investigation in progress and no final decision reached wasn’t it a trifle too hasty for Biden to have rushed to judgment and assumed divine omniscience to pinpoint the blame to one side alone?
