Blackcap Blog

Published at 10:25 on 21 December 2023

The verdict is out (as much as there can be such a thing), and Israel almost certainly committed war crimes in its attacks on al-Shifa, which were not justified.

Yes, there was some evident Hamas tunnel infrastructure found on the hospital grounds, as I mentioned here about a month ago. However:

• Contrary to Israeli and US claims, it was not located beneath any hospital buildings. The entry that was in a building, was in an outbuilding near the edge of the hospital grounds, which was not being directly used for medical purposes.
• Contrary to Israeli and US claims, the infrastructure was of limited size, far less extensive than the sort of major command centre that was alleged to be there.
• There is no evidence that the Hamas infrastructure was actively being used at the time.

The article referenced in the initial link here goes into the details.

Finally, this is precisely the sort of war crime one would expect Israel to commit, based on past behaviour patterns. Israel did not know for certain that the hospital was being misused for military purposes (if they actually had better evidence going in, we would now have abundant evidence of a major command centre beneath the hospital buildings). Rather, what happened is that Israel decided to take risks based on scanty evidence with the lives of a people that it has already decided are basically expendable. It is not deliberately intending to massacre civilians, but the end result tends to be substantially the same.

Comparing the war crimes of the two sides is a bit like comparing apples and oranges: they are fundamentally different, but both are still of the same general category.