‘Squad’ silent after anti-Israel group points finger at Palestinians in Gaza hospital blast

A human rights organization with a long history of anti-Israel statements and behavior has belatedly acknowledged that “evidence points to [a] misfired rocket” by Palestinian terrorists causing a Gaza hospital explosion last month — drawing silence from far-left members of Congress who blamed the Jewish state for the blast.

Human Rights Watch concluded Sunday that the Oct. 17 explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital “resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition, such as those commonly used by Palestinian armed groups, that hit hospital grounds.”

“While misfires are frequent, further investigation is needed to determine who launched the apparent rocket and whether the laws of war were violated,” the organization said in a report released Sunday.

“Squad” Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) immediately blamed the Israel Defense Forces for the hospital blast, citing death counts shared by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health and demanding a cease-fire.

Israeli and US intelligence later determined that a rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas-linked terror group, had misfired and hit the Gaza City hospital, killing between 100 and 300.

President Biden reportedly fumed at the New York Times’ coverage of the incident, which held Israel responsible for the blast and uncritically reported a death toll estimate of 500.

Omar and Tlaib have never taken down their posts on X blaming Israel for the explosion or repeating the inflated death count, opting instead to issue statements that cast doubt on US and Israeli assessments.

“It is a reminder that information is often unreliable and disputed in the fog of war (especially on Twitter where misinformation is rampant),” Omar said the day after the explosion.

“It is critical that we have a fully independent investigation to determine conclusively who is responsible for this war crime.”

Tlaib in a subsequent statement also called for an independent investigation.

“Both the Israeli and United States governments have long, documented histories of misleading the public about wars and war crimes—like last year’s Israeli military assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh and the false claims of weapons of mass destruction that led our country into the Iraq War—and cannot clear themselves of responsibility without an independent international investigation,” she said.

Fellow “Squad” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) also used the inflated death toll to call for a cease-fire.

None of the three responded Monday to The Post’s requests for comment about the Human Rights Watch report.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who unsuccessfully sought to defend Tlaib against a House censure after she called for the destruction of Israel, also did not respond to requests for comment.

Human Rights Watch has asked for the United Nations Commission of Inquiry to also probe the cause of the hospital explosion, saying it “was unable to corroborate” the death count.

“The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 471 people were killed and 342 injured,” the report states. “Human Rights Watch was unable to corroborate the count, which is significantly higher than other estimates, displays an unusually high killed-to-injured ratio, and appears out of proportion with the damage visible on site.”

But the human rights group had already shared the Gaza Health Ministry’s reported death count as factual within hours of the blast.

“A strike on al-Ahli hospital, also known as al-Moamadani, in central Gaza has killed at least 500 people,” the group said in a post on X that remains up.

Reps for Human Rights Watch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The group also found that “Gaza authorities appear to be in possession of remnants that would help make a conclusive determination of the munition that exploded at al-Ahli hospital” — after having initially lied that the missile had “vaporized” and then promising more than a month ago in a comment to the Washington Post that the remnants “will soon be shown to the world.”

“[T]he sound preceding the explosion, the fireball that accompanied it, the size of the resulting crater, the type of splatter adjoining it, and the type and pattern of fragmentation visible around the crater are all consistent with the impact of a rocket,” Human Rights Watch said in its report.

Using photos, videos, satellite imagery, independent analyses and interviews with five witnesses, the group concluded: “Evidence available to Human Rights Watch makes the possibility of a large air-dropped bomb, such as those Israel has used extensively in Gaza, highly unlikely.”

Hamas senior official Bassam Naim, in response to questions posed by Human Rights Watch, claimed Israel was responsible and “no Palestinian resistance faction — to our knowledge — has among its weapons a projectile or a rocket of the destructive power capable of killing a large number of people.”

Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch appointed a new director who began her tenure by denouncing the Israeli government for committing “a rampage against human rights domestically against its own people.”

The director, Tirana Hassan, has also claimed the Israeli government has “not provided evidence that justified the mass removal of patients and doctors and the shutdown of already-overwhelmed hospital” in Gaza during the war. 

The claim comes despite many reports — including eyewitness testimonies from captives — describing how Hamas embeds itself among the civilian population in hospitals.

Fred Baumann, a political science professor at Kenyon College, told The Post that Human Rights Watch had showed its “usual anti-Israel indignation” and “was among those who bought the Hamas lies about” the incident.

“[It] blames Israel for attacks on medical facilities but doesn’t mention that it is now amply proved that Hamas deliberately hides its fighters and weapons underneath them, a gross violation of the laws of war,” he said.

“In sum, the report strikes me as an ugly mixture of embarrassment for having been caught out for repeating Hamas lies, and of ongoing malice against Israel.”