‘It Wasn’t An Airstrike’: Critic of Israeli military says IDF not responsible for Gaza hospital explosion

“Whatever hit the hospital in Gaza, it wasn’t an airstrike,” Marc Garlasco — a former US Defense Department and UN official who previously served as a senior military expert with Human Rights Watch — stated in a post on X/Twitter.

By Algemeiner 

A former Human Rights Watch (HRW) official with a long record of harsh criticism of Israeli military conduct has added his voice to the controversy around the explosion on Tuesday near the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City — saying clearly that an Israeli air strike was not responsible.

“Whatever hit the hospital in Gaza, it wasn’t an airstrike,” Marc Garlasco — a former US Defense Department and UN official who previously served as a senior military expert with Human Rights Watch — stated in a post on X/Twitter.

“Even the smallest JDAM [Joint Direct Action Munition, a guided air-to-surface weapon] leaves a 3m crater,” Garlasco added, alongside a photograph of the impact crater in the car park adjacent to the hospital that, according to Israeli and US intelligence, was struck by a misfired missile launched against Israel by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

“Widespread surface damage and total lack of cratering inconsistent with an airstrike,” Garlasco noted.

In later exchanges on social media, Garlasco stuck to his conclusion, even calling out a post that cited a report he wrote for HRW in 2009 on Israeli drone strikes in Gaza as evidence of Israeli culpability for the Al Ahli explosion.

“I wrote this report,” Garlasco responded. “The damage seen at the Gaza hospital site was not caused by an Israeli SPIKE missile. The impact hole from a spike is mere centimeters in width [one centimeter is equivalent to 0.39 inches].”

In an interview with The Guardian on Wednesday, Garlasco appeared to cast doubt on Palestinian claims of high casualties from the Al Ahli explosion, which the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza immediately put at 500 amid profound skepticism among Israeli and Western intelligence analysts over the accuracy of that number.

“The number [of casualties] is astronomically high, an absolute high range of all time if true,” Garlasco said. “The crater is not consistent with an airstrike; it is more likely to be a weapon that failed and released its payload over a wide area. The crater and surrounding damage is also not consistent with a JDAM aerial bomb. The hole on the ground occurred from kinetic energy.”

During his career at HRW from 2003-2010, Garlasco authored three highly critical reports of Israel’s military, focusing on the use of white phosphorous in Gaza, cluster munitions in Lebanon, and the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip.

In 2006, Garlasco was directly challenged by Maj. Gen. Meir Klifi of the IDF over his assertion that eight members of a Palestinian family had been killed at a Gaza beach by artillery shells fired by Israeli forces. After meeting with Klifi, Garlasco revised his conclusion, saying that the deaths were more likely caused by unexploded Israeli ordinance.

Garlasco left HRW under a cloud in 2010, following revelations the previous year that he was an avid collector of Nazi military memorabilia. He subsequently went on to become a civilian protection specialist, serving with the UN’s aid mission in Afghanistan.