Face Value

On the Israeli airstrike that wasn’t.

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Rep. Rashida Tlaib speaks at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on September 19, 2023, in Washington. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

On Wednesday morning the United States found itself managing two different crises involving Jordan.

The domestic Jordan fiasco is more comic than tragic and has nothing to do with the Middle East. Or almost nothing.

The foreign Jordan fiasco is grave. It began when news outlets reported that an Israeli airstrike had destroyed al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, killing more than 500 Palestinians. Global media was outraged by the bloodletting; by evening, a crowd attempted to storm Israel’s embassy in the Kingdom of Jordan to take retribution. The king promptly canceled a summit he’d planned to host between Joe Biden and the leaders of Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, and he denounced the airstrike as a “shame on humanity.”

In an instant, a horrendous error had shifted the balance of diplomacy not just abroad but here at home:

Biden is visiting the Middle East this week to try to drum up support, by which I mean “grudging acquiescence,” among Sunni powers for Israel’s coming ground campaign against Hamas. The horror at the hospital left him suddenly stranded in that effort without the (even more grudging) backing of his progressive wing in Congress. “These unspeakable crimes must stop now,” Bernie Sanders declared in a statement after the airstrike. “The bombs and missiles from both sides must end, massive humanitarian aid must be rushed to Gaza, and the hostages must be returned to their families.” It was a debacle for Israel. 

As I write this on Wednesday, it seems almost beside the point that every particular of the original report appears to have been wrong. The hospital wasn’t struck, its parking lot was. There are casualties, but photos circulating in the aftermath suggest it’s nowhere near 500.

And it wasn’t an Israeli missile that did the damage. It was, according to U.S. intelligence, a rocket fired by Palestinian jihadists.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Nick you forgot the cardinal rules: “escalation” is only escalation when the US or Israel or Europe is doing the escalating. When the bad guys escalate things, “they had no choice” (translation: it’s America’s fault). Only the good guys ever have to lay down their arms in a ceasefire. “Peace” means America doesn’t fight back. Since the more powerful side is always evil (meaning Israel and the US), it’s only violence when it’s the good guys kicking the terrorists’ butts. All governments lie but some lies are more equal than others (translation: once again, it’s America’s fault).

    I could go on, but you get the idea.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Jim Canestrari

    Watching Laurin-Whitney Brottbath from Axios on CSPAN breathlessly revising the entire story this morning. According to her, no one knows any more than immediately after it happened. Breathtaking indeed.

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  3. Wes.Bridges

    We are traveling in Egypt at the moment—this whole thing broke after we arrived. We have observed demonstrations from a distance; loud, but less unruly and better-mannered than what we are seeing on American college campuses.

    I have been asked by people from many nations what is *really* going on; after suggesting that we keep our voices down, I provided a brief summary of the news, with the proviso that we can’t, and shouldn’t, rely on any of it. What is happening, and what is reported, are two wildly different things. And it feels to me as if what is out there in the MSM is being influenced and manipulated by Foggy Bottom to a degree we haven’t seen in a long time.

    Watching from a distance.

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  4. Ken Motamed

    "Saying that there’s a moral difference between an accident and a deliberate attack is not an answer." Really? I'm not siding with the likes of Tlaib and Omar, but there's a pretty big difference between murder and manslaughter.

    I realize Nick has a word-count figure to reach, but this column could have been half as long.

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  5. Trumeau

    What I found incredulous with all those "Free Palestine" supporters is how they believe Israel is the only gate between that slogan and reality. The truth is that if there is no more Israel, and is replaced by Palestine, all you will get is either a religious autocracy, like Saudi Arabia, a dictatorships, like Egypt, or another failed state, like Lebanon.

    Also, the media will suddenly completely ignore what's going in Palestine, like they are doing with Yemen and Afghanistan. The only reason they care about Israel is because that's a democracy with strong ties with the US, and lots of freedom of press. Something they do not have in other countries in the region.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      Yeah since Israel is on the US’s side, they don’t get to ever be the victims. And if you aren’t the victims, you’re the “oppressors.” Or basically: all evil in the world traces back to the United States and poor countries don’t have agency. It’s a load of crap, but it explains why so many on the left sympathize with terrorists. They don’t all hate Jews, they just hate America.

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    2. Wes.Bridges

      The problem with this problem is that, absent a complete genocide ( God forbid!), there is no solution to this problem. Hard stop.

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  6. Pundette

    So Rashida Tlaib is going to "...remember where you stood." Oooooh, I'm shakin' I'm shakin'!

    No worries, babe. Just ordered my "I Stand with Israel" bracelets, combo U.S./Israeli flag lapel pins, and chai necklace from Amazon, just in case you forget where I stand.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Citizen60

    Excellent.

    I listened to a Palestinian historian at Columbia University spout the ever common refrain “ what can you expect after decades of oppression.” When asked if the Palestinians hadn’t walked away from several offers for a state, that was “water under a bridge.”

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  8. Indisguise

    So the point of the Hamas attack was to begin a war to murder Israel? Or maybe no more thinking ahead than the leadership of Hamas to stay in the terror business.

    It would be interesting what the Palestinian people on the street think happened. if they could speak freely.

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    1. Ken Motamed

      Murder Israel?

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  9. Phillyex1

    We’ll, Omar did say “reportedly”.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Paul Montagu

    This is why I subscribe. Factual and well reasoned.

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