Sensemaking The Gaza Hospital Bombing

Why we need to be skeptical of propaganda from all angles. And why a different level of consciousness must be brought to this situation.

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We live in a time where it’s almost impossible to know what is true anymore. Trust in government must be near an all-time low, and people have become wise to propaganda and power elite narratives.

That said, we can still move toward truth through discernment, synthesis and bringing a different level of consciousness to the table. But we must slow down and widen our scope to do this.

As the conflict between Israel/Hamas/Palestine continues to increase, so do polarization and emotions. Part of this is based on the feeling of sadness and grief of witnessing horrific events, and part of it emerges from propaganda and social engineering designed to create black and white narratives around complex situations.

You may be reading this wondering what side I am on and who I think the bad guys are. My perspective has always been that understanding the core of why our world is the way it is as this is the only place we find true change. When we become holistic and curious enough to more accurately define a problem, we have a chance at a solution.

Sensemaking these ongoing events has been very challenging. Facts are changing by the minute and there is literally no reason to believe in full faith the propaganda coming from The US, Israel or Hamas on this issue.

It is tough to confirm the details around this but there aren’t many news organizations on the ground in Gaza right now. The Associated Press, BBC, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Al-Jazeera have all had beureaus there, but given the nature of evacuation orders it’s tough to know what kind of presence each have currently. Most other media outlets are not there and are getting information secondhand.

With this said, I want to look at the subject of the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing that occurred killing hundreds of people, some reports say even up to 1000. Isreal has stated that the death numbers are being inflated but have not offered any of their own.

Prior to the Al-Ahli Hospital strike, Israel had already flattened entire districts of Gaza in its airstrikes and it is estimated to have killed 3,478 Palestinians according to Gaza health officials. Most of them women and children. This followed the initial attacks by Hamas that saw around 1400 Israelis killed.

First a couple of notes as an attempt to integrate the WHOLE of the actions ongoing in order to sense into how vengeance begets more vengeance, and that current leaders aren’t seeking real solutions.

1. The US and its allies rejected an emergency meeting at the UN to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza.

2. Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza in 6 days than the US dropped on Afghanistan in an entire year.

3. Many Israelis who are not Zionists feel what Israel is doing to Palestine is slaughter and unjust. Actions supported by The US and its allies.

4. To say the Hamas attack is “unprovoked” doesn’t feel right and seems shortsighted. Sure, in THAT moment, it appears unprovoked, but how many years of conflict led to this as “justification” in the minds of Hamas? Can’t we oppose horrific actions while also seeking to understand how those horrific actions came to be? Do we have the courage to say: “By looking more closely, I’m not justifying this but I’m seeking to understand something I casually label as evil and think no further about it?”

5. Hamas, which does not represent Palestinians as a whole, has not hidden how they feel about the state of Israel and their desire to seek vengeance for the conflict that has raged for many decades. They engage in terror and have taken some horrific actions, I don’t think they have denied this.

6. In contrast, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who does not represent Israelis or Jews as a whole, has extreme views of his own. He has though hidden to some extent the nature of his extremist views. Even when he does let them out as he did on Twitter (X), they are deleted as seen below.

In that Tweet, he was claiming Palestinians are the children of darkness, while his actions and that of the IDF are of the light. This is akin to religious extremism in my opinion.

If one thinks this Tweet is fake news and these aren’t his words, even Snopes isn’t trying to claim this is false.

I am not suggesting people hate or pick sides here, to me this will not help us solve issues at their core. But we must integrate the WHOLE of the situation and leave the distortions of bias aside.

The Hospital Bombing

The reason it’s important to break down this event is because it gives us insight into a way of seeing things that isn’t about who the “good” guys and “bad” guys are, but how far people are willing to go to get what they want and deceive populations in the process.

It may show us how our existing ways of “solving global crises’” truly don’t work, and that world leaders are not leaders at all, but purveyors of destructive stories.

Perhaps it inspires us to truly embody new ways of solving these problems as well, perhaps one centered on forgiveness as I’ll appeal to more below.

Prior to the bombing of the hospital, Israel had already fired multiple shells at/near the hospital days prior. They called and warned the occupants of the hospital to evacuate. Why? Perhaps they were planning to bomb the hospital?

Further, decades of war and conflict has seen all parties do horrific things, but typically it is only ever the Palestinian resistance that is seen as ‘the bad guys’ or ‘terrorists.’

Israel has a long history of horrific actions as well, including bombing hospitals in Gaza. Israels’ IDF also has a history of killing innocent people, like journalist James Miller and journalist Sharine Abu Akleh and denying it, only to later admit they did it.

There are currently claims that people are minimizing the horror Hamas recently committed in Israel while trying to understand the nature of this conflict. Yet minimizing Israels terror has long been an issue in the West.

After the hospital bombing, Israel claimed it was not their doing but instead a failed rocket from a Palestinian militant group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Hamas blamed Israel. As did the PIJ.

Israel eventually released audio footage and video footage to support their claim.

The video footage the IDF released to prove it was the PIJ was broken down in detail by many people, many times as being highly problematic.

One of the most concise breakdowns was done by Aljazeera which you can see below. Channel 4 News also did a breakdown with similar conclusions, that video is below as well.

I invite you to watch both:

Essentially both videos force us to consider that Israel made claims about this attack that were misleading, and the US supported them. This does not mean we know what happened but that the narratives as of now don’t make sense.

Could it have indeed been an air strike missile from Israel? That is a real possibility. We also can’t discount it was from inside Gaza by a militant group.

An even more extensive breakdown of the bombing can be seen here and includes a side-by-side sound comparison of a Hamas/IPJ rocket and an Israel/US rocket. What you notice is the sound of the rocket hitting the hospital sounds like an Israel/US rocket and nothing like a Hamas/IPJ rocket.

How does this audible fact fit into our sensemaking regardless of what officials are saying? Could this have indeed been an airstrike missile?

If Israel did it, perhaps their explanation came as they realized the scale of the civilian death toll and the fact that it was a serious war crime.

What would the implications of Israel and The US lying be? It’s very common for us to state that “the terrorists” are lying, but how often do we consider this behavior from the West?

We are asked several questions here:

1. Do we believe our officials because they say so?

2. Do we admit there is uncertainty here because our eyes and ears CLEARLY tell us the official explanation isn’t complete?

3. What else do we need to consider in the process of truly making sense of this situation, and what is the cost of not doing so?

Sense deeply into these questions and in your awareness comes the knowing that there are layers to why we believe or don’t believe things. It takes a developed level of self-awareness and courage to go beyond the way our body and feelings reinforce our worldview at times, especially when we have to overturn trust in our governments. And yet this is what we are being asked to do as our institutions continue to break down.

As I mentioned above, even mainstream media is not entirely buying Israel’s story as seen here via the BBC, here via MSNBC and the Channel 4 news story. They seem to feel something is off and aren’t afraid to say it.

The US claims their National Security Council verified it wasn’t Israel and thus much of the US media has begun parroting that statement. What evidence do they have? We don’t entirely know. What reason do we have to believe the US? In my experience, none.

What strikes me as interesting is that there are many people open to questioning whether Israel is lying simply because the mainstream media (MSM) is.

By mainstream definitions, it is a “conspiracy theory” to suggest Israel is lying about this. If indie media were to point out all the obvious facts that draw into question whether Israel is lying, they’d be fact-checked and called conspiracy theorists.

But SIMPLY because the MSM is also skeptical, indie media is given the permission space to say it too. This invites the question: are many ‘conspiracy theories’ avoided because of a lack of facts? Or because people are simply not allowed to talk about them unless the mainstream does?

Concluding Thoughts

I write this today not to provide you with a conclusion of what happened with the hospital bombing, that is still in the works. Instead, this is a reminder that everyone has their own desire to push propaganda and we have no reason to trust one side over the other.

It is hard to make sense of what is going on right now and important to move slowly and keep an open mind. Further, we must ask: is it wise to think that more vengeance and violence will truly solve the problem? Or are we just creating more of these events down the road?

This asks us to go beyond the drama of the event and into questioning what a real solution to this situation might be. Perhaps a mother who lost her son in this conflict (via Hamas) has words of wisdom around forgiveness as you can hear below. Notice her appeal to forgiveness applies to all, whether in Israel, Gaza or anywhere in the world.

mayarimer

A post shared by @mayarimer

What has the killing of innocent people during war solved? What would it mean to choose forgiveness and support each other as global citizens? What would that look like? How could that be done?

What we need now are people in positions of power who are willing to stand for a new and different direction. One that truly begins to end war and destruction, and doesn’t just say “we want peace” but that takes actions that TRULY produce that outcome.

It’s easy to chalk any talk like this up to naive wishful thinking or spiritual nonsense, but the alternative, which we do in cycles now, does not work. We know that already.

Imagine if other countries had the courage and heart to stand firm to the US and Israel and say “No, we don’t support your war, we want to negotiate a ceasefire and a solution here.” It may change the conversation. It may move in a different direction. Sure, we don’t know this, but we can’t know if we don’t try. To simply continue forth without standing up for true peace and solutions is playing the old game. Should we expect that THIS TIME it will work? That seems insane.

As I always say, current events are always posing an opportunity for deeper inquiry and evolution if we bring a new mind, heart and consciousness to the table. Perhaps that reminder can be a guiding force in how we continue to discuss these events moving forward.