Good morning. We're covering the evidence related to the Gaza hospital explosion — and we're also covering Jim Jordan, gun safes and Britney Spears. |
 | | An aerial view after the hospital explosion.Shadi Al-Tabatibi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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The explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday evening — the source of which remains unclear — hasn't been the only international mystery in recent weeks. Last month, Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, suggested that Indian government agents had helped murder a Canadian citizen near Vancouver in a political attack. |
The course that story took offers some insights into how the world might get some clarity about the Gaza explosion. In today's newsletter, I'll explain — and update you on the latest news from Israel and Gaza. |
On Sept. 18, Trudeau delivered a speech from the floor of the Canadian Parliament in which he talked about "credible allegations of a potential link" between India's government and the shooting of a Sikh nationalist. Trudeau cited Canadian intelligence agencies. |
But he offered no evidence that outsiders could evaluate on their own — no photographs, no video, no financial transactions, no narrative of the events leading up to the shooting. |
Indian government officials strongly denied the allegation, and almost everybody else was left uncertain about what had happened. Other governments — including Canadian allies like the U.S. — did not publicly support Canada or criticize India. "They're not coming out as unequivocally as Canada would have hoped," as my colleague Mujib Mashal, who covers South Asia, said. |
The aftermath of the Gaza explosion has been different in some important ways. Intelligence agencies released information much more quickly than usual, hoping to avoid what you might call the Trudeau problem. But they have not avoided it — because they did not release the kind of information, like satellite images or videos, likely to clear up confusion and sway undecided people who are open to empirical evidence. |
There are reasons that officials are hesitant to do so. Releasing information can expose its source, like a spy or a hidden surveillance camera. Yet the stakes seem high enough that the side that's telling the truth could gain a huge diplomatic advantage through transparency. |
After the explosion happened, Palestinian officials quickly said that an Israeli airstrike was the cause. Some media organizations — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CNN and BBC — prominently reported the claim without caveats. |
But Israeli officials soon told a very different story. The explosion was the result of a malfunctioned rocket — intended for Israel — launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group tied to Hamas, the Israelis said. U.S. officials have since said that their own intelligence supports the Israeli version of events. |
Below are the arguments that each side has made so far. |
Gaza officials and their supporters have three main arguments, all circumstantial. |
The first claim is that Israel previously targeted the same hospital. It was hit by rocket fire last week, independent observers agree (although the source remains unclear), and hospital managers said they had later received texts and calls urging them to evacuate. Palestinian officials say the warnings were specific to the hospital compound; Israeli officials say they were general warnings for northern Gaza. |
The second argument is that Israel has previously dissembled about civilian casualties. Last year, after Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, was killed in the West Bank, Israeli officials said that a Palestinian gunman might have shot her. A later New York Times investigation suggested that the bullet had come from an elite Israeli military unit. |
The third argument is that Israelis changed their story of the hospital bombing in the hours after it. For example, Israel's official government Twitter account posted a video on Tuesday purporting to show a Palestinian rocket barrage near the hospital. In truth, the video's time stamp was too late to be showing the source of the hospital explosion, and Israel removed the video from the tweet. |
Israel and its supporters have pointed out that Hamas and its allies have their own history of dissembling about violence, including about rockets that killed Palestinians last year, as The Associated Press has explained. |
But the Israeli case also includes more current and detailed arguments than the Palestinian case does. |
First, U.S. officials say that infrared data, including from satellites, shows the launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza on Tuesday evening. Open-source video — recorded by journalists and others — also shows that the launch did not come from the direction of Israeli military positions, the officials say. (In an Oval Office address last night, President Biden said that the hospital attack "was not done by the Israelis.") |
Second, the Israeli military argues that its missiles cause large craters when they land, and photos of the area show no such crater. As a U.S. intelligence report wrote, "There was no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters." |
Third, Israeli military officials released a recording that they said contained a conversation in Arabic between two Hamas members. One says that he has heard the missile "belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad." |
"It's from us?" the other asks. |
"It looks like it," the first replies. He then adds that shrapnel appears to be "local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel." |
 | | At the site of the hospital.Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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None of this evidence is definitive. Even U.S. officials, as my colleague Julian Barnes wrote yesterday, say that there is "significantly more work to be done to determine what precisely happened." |
Still, it seems likely that Israeli or Palestinian officials (or their allies) have stronger evidence — like satellite images, which government have released in other circumstances — than they have offered so far. Until they release it, much of the world will remain confused, and few people seem likely to change their initial opinions. |
 | | Representative Jim JordanKenny Holston/The New York Times |
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- Representative Jim Jordan will continue his bid to become House speaker. He rejected a plan to empower the temporary speaker.
- His reversal followed a tense House Republican meeting. Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, yelled at Matt Gaetz, who led the push to oust him.
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