President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter in Israel on Wednesday what made him confident that the Israelis weren’t behind the explosion that killed hundreds at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday.

Biden responded that it was “the data I was shown by my Defense Department.”

Two U.S. officials told ABC News the Pentagon independently concluded the Gaza hospital blast was likely caused by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short of its target.

  • halfempty@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    I don’t consider the Pentagon to be a reliable source for information when they have a vested interest in the conflict. Remember when they said Saddam Hussain had “weapons of mass destruction” which was used to justify the Iraq invasion? Well there never were any. The Pentagon manufactured that disinformation, and media parroted it like loyal puppets.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah why are people believing this? I’m sure someone will quietly peddle it back just like they did with the “40 beheaded babies” lie. This is blatant information warfare.

      • halfempty@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        The US State Department has a long-standing strong alliance with the Israelis. Billions of dollars of weaponry is sold to the Israeli military yearly, with a direct profit for the US defense industry.

        • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Israeli airstrikes killing civilians hasn’t stopped weapon sales before, so why would the pentagon lie about this one instance?

      • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Same as any other conflict… maintain the interests of US govt. and by extension rich oligarchs who have the house and Senate in their pockets.

  • GiovaMC@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This reads like: “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong”…

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, the CIA famously never lies about this stuff on behalf of their country’s military interests!

  • freepalestine@monyet.cc
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    11 months ago

    I just want to respectfully remind everyone that just because this tragedy was likely not perpetrated by Israel, it does not mean they are absolved of any of the hundreds of war crimes they have already committed.

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Can we hold hamas (and palestine for giving them a holdout) for their war crimes, or is your logic only one-way?

    • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Just because they did a lot of bad things doesn’t mean that you can blatantly lie about killing 500 civilians and then get away with it. Can Israel lie about Hamas beheading 500 babies? And when they do, are you going to accept the narrative of well even if they didn’t do it, they did a lot of bad things? Don’t think so.

      I get why you’re saying that, but that doesn’t help anyone.

      • SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        I mean, Isreal bombed that same hospital 2 days earlier, was conducting bombing campaigns in the area, ordered the evacuation of the hospital less than 24 hours before, and kept changing their story around it. It was a pretty fair assumption that it was them until more evidence was produced.

        • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Israel was asking every place that had civilians in the north, including this hospital, to evacuate them south. Which itself is highly problematic, but the warnings were not specific to this hospital.

    • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      They killed multiple journalists earlier this week and killed at least 6 in a strike on a school and this hospital debacle has drowned all of that out.

    • snooggums@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, is there any place in southern Gaza that isn’t packed full of the people they told to move there from the north for ‘safety’?

  • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    For the reference, this is about 500 people:

    Some radical estimations talked of -1000 deaths. This is 1000 people:

    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Both of those estimates come from Hamas sources (well the 1000 people one IDK where you got that from).

      JFC people you can criticize Israel without gobbling up a terrorist organization’s fat propaganda dick. For now we just have no way to know how many people died in that hospital. Find another war crime to criticize Israel for, they’re not that hard to come by.

      • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        You don’t get it. This is to show how ridiculous 500 people claim is. Was the parking lot full of clown cars? If not, 500 claim is pretty much self evident fake news, let alone a thousand.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yeah if they’d said a dozen people died I’d believe it. That crater looked like a stick of TNT went up, not a 2000 pound bomb.

          If it has exploded directly overhead in the center of 500 people packed like sardines I don’t think it could have killed more than a couple dozen.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Ooh gotcha. Unfortunately I’ve read some wild conspiracy theories about this in the last few days so I immediately thought this was more of the same… sorry lol

          • Praise Idleness@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            I get that. It’s one thing to blame Israel for bombing civilian targets but those Hamas apologists are mental gymnastics Olympians.

        • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Yeah, the hospital wasn’t filled with civilians hurt/running away from bombings after Israel told them to run away because they’re gonna bomb them again.

          No way it would have had +500 humans in there.

            • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              The parking loot is a part of the hospital.

              Does it seem out of this world to you that there would be +500 humans in the parking lot of a hospital in a crisis like this?

              • Spzi@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                Yes, that might be the case under the current circumstances. The above picture helped to imagine what 500 people look like crammed squarely in a space. I doubt the 500 hypothetical people resting in the parking lot were placed more tightly than that.

                Next, look at pictures of the detonation crater, which has the size of a sewer manhole. Imagine that explosion going off in the middle of the audience of 500 people. Would they all die from that? The sheer amount of body mass and flesh would shield the people in rows 20+ from the explosion.

                I bet you couldn’t kill 500 people with whatever exploded there, if you tied them directly onto the bomb, or rocket, or whatever. Is there any precedent of a terrorist attack or military strike or anything which killed that many people with a similarly small explosion?

                • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  You can’t imagine people running away from being bombed being more tightly packed than people attending a conference?

              • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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                11 months ago

                Yes, it seems absolutely impossible. 500 people is a massive number.

                • blitzkrieg@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  You have never seen a parking lot as big as the conference in your image?

                  You can’t possibly imaging 500 hundred humans running from being bombed staying together in a parking lot of a hospital that is smaller than the conference in your images? You can’t imagine that at all?

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I haven’t seen anything personally convincing, there’s a photo of a pothole that’s supposed to prove something I guess?

      And the US government has a long and costly history of making up accusations against Arab Muslims.

      • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I’m not sure if you’ve seen the videos released by IDF of them bombing Gaza, but those bombs literally bring down entire buildings. They’re massive. If one like that fell on the hospital parking lot there would be a huge hole in the ground and the buildings around would be obliterated. Also if it was JDAM it would not have hit the parking lot unless for some reason that’s what they were targeting. It’s a guided bomb unlike the unguided rockets Hamas is using. JDAMs are accurate to 10 meters or so.

  • noevidenz@infosec.pub
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    11 months ago

    If anyone made it as far as the third sentence in the article, they might notice that “Islamic Jihad” in the title refers to “Palestinian Islamic Jihad”.

    They’re not blaming Hamas for this incident. PIJ is a separate organisation.

  • maaj@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    I don’t believe Biden or the Pentagon. My country has no problem with lying to me about anything involving the Middle East, so I’d have to be a complete fuckin idiot to believe them now.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      10 months ago

      Not to mention the damning word here is " likely "

      An area that’s small, and they don’t have it under 24/7 digital and visual surveillance? Doubtful

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Ah, if the CIA says it’s true, I’m sure they’re neutral and definitely not trying to push an agenda. The CIA famously never lies about the military capabilities of organisations against US interests.

    Seriously, you all fucking believe this? Shame on you all for your lack of pattern recognition skills.

  • theodewere@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    i believe Hamas would do it on purpose just to make Israel look bad… it probably wasn’t even a mistake… i mean, they use their own people as meat shields all the time, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they bombed their own kids…

    • freepalestine@monyet.cc
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      11 months ago

      gaza is about the size of jersey and one of the most crowded cities in the world. if you shoot 1 ton missiles into a crowd of people to hit one target, chances are you are going to hit more than just your target

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      It is a different group. How much they align with each other and/or cooperate, I do not know.

      • hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest
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        11 months ago

        Hamas is the closest thing to a real government that Palestine has. Hamas has stated a willingness to accept a 2 state solution, they used to want all the land back but now they just want peace. Some countries like NZ take the time to differentiate between Hamas (not terrorists, political arm) and Qassam Brigades (the terrorist military arm of Hamas).

        As far as I have read PIJ is just terrorist who wanna kill all Israelis.

        • Rengoku@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          If they (Hamas) really wants two state solutions he would not have blown up Israel indiscriminately.

        • Nougat@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          … differentiate between Hamas (not terrorists, political arm) and Qassam Brigades (the terrorist military arm of Hamas).

          So kind of like Sinn Féin vs the IRA, this makes sense.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah all that evidence they have put forward to support this claim… But the US defense department would never lie right?

      • VantaBrandon@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I get the cynicism, but you have to trust someone. The DOD for all its faults has vastly more credibility than Hamas.

        • gmtom@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          It’s more that from what I’ve seen that’s pubmically available and both sides reactions to the incident I’m inclined to believe it was Israel.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Man I can’t wait 60 years for the DoD or CIA to declassify these documents that show otherwise.

    Seriously you should check out some of the stuff the CIA has declassified. Some insane involvement and coverups of so many incidents, wars, overthrows, uprisiings, etc.

    I even learned Chuck Yeager had his personal beechcraft bombed by the IAF, and he was so pissed that he listed it as a PAF loss in his 1971 war report lol. He also confirmed PAF’s 3:1 k/d, and interviewed all the captured IAF pilots.

    All back when Nixon was running the show, so who knows what other stuff went down.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      You can think whatever you like, but that means you either have to ignore all the evidence indicating that you’re wrong, or you have to have additional evidence to prove you’re right. You not liking something doesn’t count as evidence.

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You don’t need counter -evidence if you recognize the source as unreliable and biased, which it is.

        The fact that you choose to take the US government at face value doesn’t mean anyone else has to.

        • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          I don’t understand people who do that, to be honest.

          They have repeatedly lied to their own citizens about health and safety. There are multiple channels dedicated to talking about the superfund sites within the US. Most of the time, the people who lived in these horribly toxic areas were lied to by the government, and were told that they were safe. It has led to a large number of injuries, deaths, and deformities. The government regularly refused to acknowledge the harm until it was way to late to stop the people from being afflicted. I would never fully trust someone who allowed children to play in lead dust, and I especially wouldn’t trust someone who told them it was safe to do so.

          I know my country’s government wouldn’t be much better to trust at face value, realistically. So, I don’t.

          Historically, blindly trusting a government can turn out very badly. The people in office are human, so it only makes sense that some of them may be corrupt.

        • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Trust the US intelligence and defense capabilities bro. They never fake data or mislead the public. This is not like the time in the past when they fake information to justify foreign policies.

      • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Firstly, there is plenty of evidence that counters the claim. Secondly, your willingness to believe the US security state at its word is evidence in itself of how many of you people are susceptible to propaganda.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          I reached independently the same conclusion before these news sites which you can verify by going thru my post history. This is not me taking their word for it. They’re just confirming my prior analysis.

          If you have evidence to the contrary I’m interested in seeing it.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    The video seems pretty clear tbh. An aircraft dropping bombs would be quite loud, and a missile would be visible.