The information war over the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion

They say in war that truth is the first casualty.

Anyone who has been keeping abreast of the geopolitical crisis that is the Israel-Palestine conflict will have heard claims concerning the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday night, an explosion took place at the Christian hospital that was initially claimed to have been an Israeli missile causing the death of some 500 Palestinians. This whipped up a storm in both social media and on mainstream media channels that went along with the early narrative that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) had targeted civilians in a heinous war crime.

Last week, I reported on the Israeli claim (again jumped on by mainstream media) that some 40 babies had been beheaded by Hamas terrorists. It still appears that this was a claim without significant substantiation that was either purposefully or unintentionally (or both) seized upon and exploited by those wishing to further demonize the terrorists and their cause. It's not that Hamas hadn't already committed significant enough atrocities.

As an independent reporter on the Ukraine War over the last year and a half (as well as writing articles on the subject here for OnlySky), I have been on the front lines in the information space battlefields. This is a new kind of conflict known as 5th-generation warfare. Where 3rd generation warfare is understood as fighting amongst nation-states with advanced weaponry and 4th generation warfare is about fighting with entities that exist over borders (such as ISIS), 5th generation warfare is the fight for hearts and minds.

This hybrid warfare is predominantly contested online or from mouth-to-ear-to-mouth. Information is weaponized and used to bring about similar overarching goals as conventional warfare. We have already seen an evolution in the way that one country can attack another. Cyber warfare involves hacking into systems, such as a hospital or energy grid, bringing them down in a way that can lead to deaths or to the crippling of critical infrastructure. This can achieve the same effect as physical damage to that infrastructure.

So where conventional wars and terrorism concern national security, and cyber warfare concerns threats to cyber security, we now have a threat to our epistemic security.

The war on truth

Epistemology, in philosophy, is the study of knowledge and truth. Epistemic security is the idea that we have to fight incredibly hard to work out what is true and what is not, and where chaos and confusion reign, bad-faith actors flourish. Different sides in a war will gain in various ways from getting the upper hand in the information spaces in which we exist. Misinformation— the unintentional spreading of incorrect claims—can be spread in good faith and still have dangerous ramifications. Disinformation—the purposeful spread of incorrect information— is very much a weapon of modern armies and geopolitical chess players in ways that only the internet age has been able to facilitate.

Where conventional wars and terrorism concern national security, and cyber warfare concerns threats to cyber security, we now have a threat to our epistemic security.

The strike on the hospital has been seized upon by both sides in this conflict and supporters worldwide in the public and private information spaces, becoming one of the most heated contests for narrative since the latest iteration of this conflict began.

The hospital claim started as Israel supposedly either purposefully or accidentally but irresponsibly striking one of the beating hearts of humanity: a hospital. The Hamas-run Health Ministry claimed that some 500 people died. This was immediately seized upon and used to vehemently attack Israel and the Israel Defense Force, pouring gasoline onto an already violent fire.

This information really did have consequences, as Jordan canceled President Biden's visit to the country on the back of street protests there, disorder also seen in Iraq, Lebanon, and in the West Bank itself.

In Amman, Jordan, a palace statement referred to “the ugly massacre perpetrated by Israel against innocent civilians.”

The initial video footage made available can be seen here:

People claim that the lack of craters at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, rules out an airstrike by Israel.

But JDAM (includes the MK.83 GBU-32) does have an airburst mode, which does not produce a crater.

It kills using shrapnel, shockwave and fireball from the explosion
1/2 pic.twitter.com/FYnk2zkUt3

— Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai) October 18, 2023

But the airburst is designed to shower the target below with shrapnel, and this is not at all evidenced by the car roofs and scene in the photograph above. Moreover, cars that are only 10 to 15 meters away are largely undamaged, with kinetic damage restricted only to the few cars at the point where the munition landed.

Simply put, this was not a JDAM unitary or airburst warhead.

Taking sides and putting all of your eggs in one basket too often entails sacrificing all rationality to cling to a pre-conceived narrative. The above Twitter handle made this follow-on Tweet:

At the time of the bombing, there were many civilians sleeping/ waiting around the hospital building.

Depending on the height and size of the explosion (JDAM is an entire family of bombs), it rules out the argument of "small blast radius".

Shrapnel damage is hard to spot— Zhao DaShuai 无条件爱国🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai) October 18, 2023

To think it is reasonable to claim that 500 civilians were killed in a car park among all those cars but that every piece of evidence of their existence was cleared up in time for an early morning photo shoot beggars belief. I have seen countless images in my reporting on the Ukraine war to suggest that shrapnel damage is not hard to spot. There is no evidence of the serious shrapnel damage that you would expect from such a munition in the photograph of the hospital car park scene.

The much more plausible explanation is of a malfunctioning or misfiring rocket sent from Gaza itself. US intelligence has claimed it came from another Palestinian terrorist group known as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ):

The American intelligence, first mentioned by President Biden, includes satellite and other infrared data showing a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza. American intelligence agencies have also analyzed open-source video — recordings collected by journalists and others — of the launch showing that it did not come from the direction of Israeli military positions, the officials said. Israeli officials have also provided the United States with intercepts of Hamas officials saying the strike came from forces aligned with Palestinian militant groups....

A senior Defense Department official said based on the launch data collected by infrared sensors that the United States was “fairly confident” the launch did not come from Israeli forces."Early U.S. and Israeli Intelligence Says Palestinian Group Caused Hospital Blast," The New York Times

Interestingly, this could also be a case of Hamas using PIJ as a scapegoat. The IDF has released what seems like a genuine intercept phone call between two members of Hamas admitting that the rocket was a misfire coming from them (sent from a nearby cemetery) and that is why they were blaming PIJ. It is worth noting that Israeli sources have also claimed the rocket was sent from another nearby location other than the cemetery (the cemetery claim could well be an erroneous belief from the intercepted caller).

Rockets or missiles that fail or misfire are not at all uncommon in war. There have been previous claims that 20% of all Hamas rockets fail. The US assessed at the beginning of the Ukraine War that up to 60% of Russian precision-guided missiles failed. The Israel Defence Force has released an infographic of what they believe are failed launches so far in the Gaza Strip since the latest outbreak began, though of course we should treat the claims of both sides with some skepticism: