Even Human Rights Watch admits Palestinian terrorists caused al-Ahli

Thousands of people demonstrate in Toulouse, France, in support of Gazans, the Gaza Strip and more generally for Palestinians on Nov. 18. Alain Pitton/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Palestinian culpability for the rocket that struck al-Ahli Hospital is now so indisputable that even Human Rights Watch, an outfit deeply hostile to Israel, has admitted it — but rest assured, this won’t be the last time major media let Hamas guide the “narrative.”

HRW’s report on the tragedy says it “resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition, such as those commonly used by Palestinian armed groups.”

Armed groups — i.e., terror cadres like Islamic Jihad, the group Hamas operatives blamed in an audio clip intercepted and published by Israel.

HRW also damns the clearly inflated death and casualty totals provided by Hamas: Their number “displays an unusually high killed-to-injured ratio” “out of proportion” with the damage the rocket did to the hospital site.

The admission comes more than a month after the hospital tragedy itself — and the subsequent agitprop push by Hamas that was uncritically repeated by major media outlets like the New York Times.

It’s the latest in a series of independent investigations that have confirmed again and again that Israel did not fire that rocket.

True, no amount of evidence will ever satisfy the American wing of Hamas apologists, like far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who has descended into full-on “trutherism” over the attack.

But with HRW now admitting the truth, there’s no moral cover left for Tlaib and the antisemites who hang out with her on Facebook.

Don’t expect Hamas’ useful idiots in the media to see the light, either: They’ve been compromised for far too long.

Indeed, former AP reporter Matti Friedman has described the way his former employer covered Gaza as “shaped by Hamas” going back to 2008, when the Associated Press first began letting Hamas censor its Gaza stringers without notifying readers.

He also notes that Hamas since then has been “basically wiring Gaza like a suicide bomber — they’ve created a military landscape that is indistinguishable from the civilian landscape — and that means necessarily that when war breaks out, it’s going to be a civilian disaster,” but “the big Western press organizations” have “been largely happy to ignore it.”

That remains hugely important context for understanding this war — but goes unmentioned in most reports about civilian suffering.

Then there’s false context, like the near-ubiquitous use of the words “militants” or “fighters” to describe blood-soaked killers of children and the elderly.

It’s critical, as Israel continues its hostage exchange with Hamas, to remember that the Jewish state is battling murderers and war criminals, not righteous freedom fighters.

No matter how hard elite institutions seek to suppress that fact.