[Longpost] My reconstruction of the timeline of Hospitalgate

I'm gonna try to summarize what we have collectively worked out about the hospital disaster. And by "collectively" I mean whatever I believe but it's informed by my fellow dramatards.

• Hamas launches a massive attack on Israel aiming to kill or kidnap civilians. One part of it is a rocket barrage to distract the Israelis. Kill lots of people.

• Israeli official government spokesmen say they're going to have a policy of not avoiding civilian casualties in Gaza.

• Israel drops 6000 bombs on Gaza.

• Israel orders 1 million people to leave Gaza City, including all hospital patients, and cuts off water and power.

• Palestinian civilians congregate at the hospital because it still has water.

• Israel possibly makes specific threats to the hospital.

• Islamic Jihad shoots a volley of rockets into Israel. One has an issue with its motor shortly after launch and lands in the parking lot where many displaced people are.

• The rocket's impact fuze goes off and it makes a relatively small explosion and small crater. Meanwhile its fuel blows up instantly in a big fireball.

• The hospital suddenly gets a lot of dead bodies and wounded people. In the chaos of dealing with this plus the huge number of casualties from Israeli bombing they get confused and estimate 200 casualties. This gets passed around in a game of telephone and turns into 200 killed, then 500 killed.

• Everyone assumes that since Israel is blowing the frick out of Gaza constantly and there's no dispute over that, they did it. This includes every country friendly to Israel.

• Media reports this as an Israeli airstrike just like all the other ones that day (notably the ones in Rafah that killed dozens and prevented foreign nationals from leaving Gaza).

• Hamas probably assumes the Israelis did it.

• The Israelis know they have to get this right. They do a very careful investigation.

• After several hours the Israelis announce that the Palestinians actually did it to themselves. This is met with extreme skepticism since Israel has cried wolf in exactly this way countless times before. Including when they murdered an American this year.

• The sun comes up and we find out it never happened. Islamic Jihad did it but there apparently were not nearly as many casualties as the Palestinians claimed and the Israelis implied.

• Biden says the DoD told him it wasn't the Israelis. They have a couple cowtools at their disposal that we don't. They've got the data from the Israeli counterbattery radar (which was really really good even in boomer times) and they've probably got Infrared coverage from SBIRS satellites. There's some nerd pyromaniac who can look at that tell you all about the fire.

• Every Muslim in the world goes apeshit.

• Burgers get indignant because we weren't responsible for this one.

EDIT: @Spiderman apparently wants me to get more attention so I guess I have to pin this.