‘Findings’ without evidence: Human Rights Watch’s report on the Al-Ahli Hospital attack

Two days into the since-interrupted truce that gave Palestinians in Gaza a moment to take in the destruction and devastation and search for their dead, Human Rights Watch (HRW) saw fit to publish a misleading report that could only serve to undermine Palestinians’ suffering and credibility, even as Israel intensifies its genocidal onslaught. HRW’s latest report claims to present “findings” on the Al-Ahli Hospital attack in Gaza on October 17, which killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, among them patients, healthcare workers, and those internally displaced from Israeli airstrikes.

Despite drawing on inconclusive evidence, not having had access to the scene, and concluding that it could neither “confirm” nor establish its finding “with precision,” HRW insinuates that the attack on Al-Ahli “resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition, such as those commonly used by Palestinian armed groups.” Yet, it maintains that it “has not been able to conclusively identify” the munition in question and that a “full investigation” is needed. One is left to wonder why HRW would publish such a report at all if there is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions regarding the Al-Ahli attack.

Speculation over evidence

Despite lacking conclusive evidence, the Al-Ahli report makes dangerous insinuations, the implications of which are severe in a context where HRW has acknowledged that lives literally “hang in the balance.” Riddled with speculative and vague language, the report fails to provide links or detailed explanations and analysis regarding the videos and photos reviewed. HRW admits it is unable to verify essential information and presents no new data or credible analysis beyond that already examined by professional groups. Indeed, Forensic Architecture, Al-Haq, and Earshot have cast “significant doubt” on the Israeli military allegation that the attack on Al-Ahli Hospital resulted from a rocket misfire, maintaining that “Israel has yet to provide any conclusive evidence” supporting this claim.

HRW’s report effectively discredits Palestinian voices and international demands calling for an end to the attacks on Gaza. Even when referencing Palestinian lives lost in the Al-Ahli Hospital massacre, HRW dismisses the number of victims in an absurd manner, claiming it has looked at “images” that “display between 65 and 75 body bags, rolled-up carpets, and bodies.” This is clearly not a valid method or tool of any sort to challenge the veracity of Palestinian “casualties” reported on the ground. HRW even questions “whether all of these victims were from the Al-Ahli explosion.”

Additionally, in choosing to attribute blame to “both Israeli and Palestinian authorities,” HRW calls for a credible investigation into violations of international humanitarian law. This framing suggests an equal responsibility on both parties, ignoring the fact that, as HRW has recognized in previous reports, it is Israel that has actively prevented independent investigators from accessing the Gaza Strip after each previous Israeli military offensive, refusing to cooperate with them, thus hindering independent investigations and evidence collection. In fact, a day before the publication of the Al-Ahli report, HRW received a letter from the head of the political department and external relations of Hamas in response to a request sent to the Ministry of Interior in Gaza. In summarizing this response, HRW omits the main point made in the letter: due to Israel’s attacks on the infrastructure and the targeting of the Ministry of Interior’s employees, it was impossible to obtain the initial results of the investigation; they will cooperate with international investigation efforts and competent authorities to submit evidence, documents, and verified images at the first possible opportunity. Yet, HRW blames the authorities in Gaza for not presenting remnants they declared they had, using this as a pretext for their “findings.”

Selective ‘Investigation’

The attack on Al-Ahli Hospital is one of 203 attacks on healthcare recorded by the World Health Organization in Gaza since October 7, in the context of relentless Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion in which 1 in 200 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed. Despite recognizing and having reported on these attacks, HRW still treats the Al-Ali Hospital massacre as a standalone incident

Throughout Israel’s genocidal onslaught, HRW has consistently refused to analyze patterns in Israeli military conduct and its cumulative effect on the Palestinian civilian population, including violations of the principles of distinction and proportionality. While there is merit in specifically examining the Al-Ahli Hospital massacre and further attacks on Palestinian civilians, to do so without establishing a general pattern of violations, as HRW has done, is to misleadingly take such attacks out of context. This approach minimizes Palestinian suffering while casting doubt on Palestinians’ credibility, even as human rights fieldworkers face risks to their lives when reporting on the atrocities being committed in Gaza.

The Al-Ahli Hospital report thus obscures crucial facts about Israel’s ongoing genocidal onslaught. When it happened, less than two weeks into the war, the hospital attack set a grim record for the number of civilians killed in one strike. Since then, subsequent and ongoing Israeli attacks, including on the Jabalia refugee camp and UNRWA schools — with the responsible party being undisputed — have resulted in high civilian death rates. Moreover, at the time, the targeting of hospitals, patients, and civilians seeking shelter at Al-Ahli was unimaginable. Since then, it became clear that Israeli attacks on hospitals have been integral to its genocidal campaign where, as Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah explained, “Anybody who was lucky enough to survive the initial assault, the Israeli strategy was to destroy the health system so that they would not survive the wounds.”

Stop the genocide or dehumanize its victims?

Since the beginning of the Israeli assault, Israeli officials have been very clear about the intent behind cutting off electricity, water, food, and fuel to the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, which was followed by indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes that have decimated entire Palestinian neighborhoods and destroyed 60% of civilian homes. HRW neither gives weight to Israeli officials’ direct and public statements of intent to commit genocide nor acknowledges warnings by scholars, human rights organizations, and UN experts of the risk that genocide is unfolding in Gaza. HRW does not even consider such Israeli statements as acknowledgment of engaging in indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against Palestinian civilians. 

HRW’s refusal to acknowledge a pattern of Israeli military conduct, including repeated violations of the basic principles of international humanitarian law, allows Israel significant leeway in advancing claims that purport to justify its ongoing atrocities against Palestinians. This seems to convey tacit approval for Israel to continue its indiscriminate attacks while urging it to strive for “improving” its conduct but not stopping it.

In fact, to this day, HRW still refuses to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. This is part of a policy of some international organizations that do not take positions on questions considered “political” and outside the scope of legal work. This is problematic in itself, but HRW further limits its approach to a conservative interpretation of international law that privileges Israeli claims while relegating the main goal of protecting human lives to the sidelines. This is still a political choice in the context of colonization, the ongoing Nakba, and the risk of genocide, where HRW chooses to manage Israel’s onslaught but refuses to take an assertive stand in demanding an end to further atrocities.

To feed them before they are killed

For over a month, HRW published statements on Israel cutting electricity, water, fuel, telecommunications, and blocking humanitarian aid in Gaza without framing the context of this policy as integral to Israel’s genocidal onslaught and the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This disconnect often results in absurd positions where, in one report, HRW highlights the denial of water, fuel, and electricity as endangering the lives of Palestinian children — calling for an end to the illegal blockade of Gaza due to its impact on wounded and sick children who need “life-saving medical care” — but fails to recognize Israel’s massive, indiscriminate bombing of homes, hospitals, and schools as the main threat to the lives of children in Gaza. By then, over 1,000 Palestinian children had been killed by the Israeli occupying forces. Now, over 6,150 children have been killed.

Similarly, in their report on the situation of Palestinian women and girls, HRW recognizes Israel’s blockade of Gaza as collective punishment and a war crime but does not qualify the killing of over 1,300 women as a crime of any kind. Over 4,000 women have now been killed in Gaza, yet HRW is still not calling for a ceasefire. These examples go on, but all show the same pattern: Israel’s genocidal war is not recognized as unlawful by HRW, nor is the bombing of buildings, trapping thousands of Palestinians under the rubble, or the forced displacement of 80% of the population.

In another report, HRW states that “The laws of war require parties to facilitate the rapid delivery of relief supplies, subject to inspection and monitoring to prevent diversion or arms delivery.” Nevertheless, HRW goes on to add that “Israel can, in other words, monitor the shipments organized by the UN, but it cannot block a life-saving supply, which is what fuel is to Gaza right now.” In doing so, HRW refuses to acknowledge Israel’s systematic violations, ethnic cleansing, and intent to collectively punish the civilian population. Instead, it grants legitimacy to Israel to continue managing how the needs of the civilian population are addressed. This stance by HRW evades its responsibility to effectively protect Palestinian victims of these violations as the cornerstone of human rights work.

For years, Palestinians called on HRW to recognize Israel’s institutionalized oppression and domination of the Palestinian people. HRW finally did so when it published its report on Israeli apartheid and persecution in April 2021. But even when it did so, it left out key elements of how Palestinians have understood Israel’s apartheid regime. Notably, HRW failed to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and continued to fragment Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line while legitimizing Zionist policies of colonization. Today, we are witnessing an outcome of Israel’s prolonged impunity and the failure to address the root causes of Israeli apartheid as a tool of Zionist settler colonialism.

Human Rights Watch’s double standards put Palestinian lives at risk

Amid calls for the extension of the truce and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, HRW decided to publish a misleading report on the targeting of Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17 without conducting a genuine investigation or providing conclusive evidence regarding their speculations.

The unspoken starting point of HRW’s analysis has been that the problem with Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Palestinians is a matter of disproportionality in dispersed “incidents” to be investigated. In most of its reports or articles, HRW’s analysis starts with absolute language on the “heinous,” “vile,” and “unspeakable” October 7 attacks by Palestinian armed groups, with a clear determination that these are crimes. Yet, when reporting on Palestinian victims of atrocity crimes, the killing of at least 15,523 Palestinians in Gaza is either entirely absent or otherwise not acknowledged as unlawful. What can explain the violence inherent in such double standards, the devaluing and near erasure of Palestinian life and suffering, other than racism and white supremacy? 

By not demanding a ceasefire, only calling for humanitarian aid without recognizing Israel’s indiscriminate attacks against Palestinian civilians as a crime, and not framing the broader context of Israeli oppression and domination, HRW’s reporting places Palestinian lives at further risk. HRW must take a proactive role in protecting Palestinians from Israel’s escalating genocide by immediately calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza to prevent more attacks that would require further “investigations.”