Palestinians Accuse Israel of Attack But Turns Out It Was Their Own Inept Forces
Fighting broke out again between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza following Israel’s targeted killing on Tuesday of a top commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group named Baha Abu al-Ata, which prompted retaliatory rocket fire from the terrorists and subsequent Israeli airstrikes.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a building in Gaza that houses the offices of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights was struck by an explosion on Tuesday that caused significant damage and left one employee of the organization injured.
The attack on the building was immediately blamed on a missile strike from Israel and international condemnation quickly followed, but as it turns out, it’s likely that the destructive explosion was actually caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists that fell short of its intended target in Israel.
The ICHR issued a statement in the aftermath of the explosion blaming the “shelling” of the building on “aggression carried out by the occupying power” and called for “urgent international intervention and investigation” to stop what it described as “Israeli war crimes” and the “targeting [of] human rights institutions.”
The organization was almost immediately joined in the condemnation of the attack by anti-Israel organizations like Amnesty International, which blamed “an Israeli missile” for the explosion, and Code Pink, which claimed Israel “bombed” the ICHR building in a statement.
But as U.K. news outlet ELINT News shared in a pair of tweets, a video clip said to have come from a Reuters livestream showed that the rocket that struck the ICHR building had come from within Gaza and wasn’t a bomb or missile from the Israelis.
Video from the @Reuters livestream via @RelicHq showing the errant Palestinian rocket falling short and hitting the Palestinian Independent Commission For Human Rights building in Gaza. Not an Israeli airstrike. pic.twitter.com/P76Dx0RyIU
— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) November 13, 2019
Furthermore, The Times of Israel reported that the rocket had likely been one of the more than 250 fired by PIJ toward Israel on Tuesday and into Wednesday in retaliation for the assassination of Abu al-Ata.
The Times noted that a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces had confirmed to the media that the IDF was not responsible for the strike on the ICHR building and explained that the IDF was taking extra precautions with its own responsive airstrikes to avoid hitting populated civilian areas by strictly targeting PIJ locations.
On top of that, local Palestinian media inside Gaza appeared to impose upon themselves a complete blackout of any reporting on the blast — an indication that the damage may have been caused by a Palestinian rocket.
Otherwise, the strike would have been trumpeted far and wide for propaganda purposes to gain international sympathy.
For what little it is worth, Amnesty International appeared to walk back its initial condemnation of Israel — though notably without an apology for being wrong — with a follow-up tweet that cited “conflicting information” about what hit the ICHR building and where it came from, calling for an “impartial investigation.”
The Times reported that PIJ had fired off more than 250 rockets toward population centers in southern and central Israel following the death of its commander, with the IDF’s Iron Dome defense system intercepting and destroying roughly 90 percent of those rockets. The few that made it past the interceptors hit and damaged businesses, homes and roadways, though thankfully, only a few innocent Israelis were injured and nobody was killed.
According to The Times, rockets fired by terrorists in Gaza sometimes fall short of their intended Israeli targets. A recent instance of that kind in September resulted in at least seven Palestinians being injured when part of a rocket barrage into Israel fell short.
Tuesday’s incident is just the latest example of how some Palestinians and their leftist allies will lie and accuse Israel of atrocities that they themselves are responsible for committing.
Israel maintains the moral high ground in its interminable conflict with the Palestinians, even as the country is routinely targeted by actual attacks by jihadis who have no qualms about using their own people as disposable shields for propaganda purposes.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
