Comment by shykes

My comment is about Al-Ahli, not Al-Shifa. Those are two different hospitals.

> Al-Shifa hospital was ultimately destroyed by Israeli forces

It was damaged by a series of battles between Hamas and IDF, because Hamas militants embedded themselves within it - like they embedded themselves within all civilian infrastructure. That is the reality of urban war against a terrorist group.

> with grave civilian casualties

Hamas alleged grave civilian casualties. Israel contests it. Again, just like the Al-Ahli incident, Hamas rushes to publish suspiciously precise casualties and reframes an urban battle as a genocidal massacre; naive newsrooms uncritically publish it; wikipedia editors quotes it; then people with an axe to grind endlessly reference it in online arguments like this one.

With Al-Ahli, we got lucky. Independent evidence made it impossible to ignore that Hamas was lying. In many other cases, it is impossible to independently verify how many civilians were truly killed in this or that battle. You have to either believe the IDF, or Hamas.

> and no Hamas tunnels ever found

Al-Shifa was controlled by Hamas and used as a military facility. Hostages were held there. After the ceasefire, Hamas used it as a jail and torture center for Palestinian dissidents.

Or do you believe Israel sent troops inside a hospital in a warzone, at great risk to their safety, to destroy a random hospital with no military value?