naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
More on the hospital blast. NYTimes Visual Investigations is now issuing a debunk on the supposed “lynchpin evidence” in the American and Israeli intelligence finding. A thread from NYT’s Aric Toler (previously Bellingcat) —
Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials believe that a projectile captured on videos shortly before the Ahli Arab Hospital explosion was a Palestinian rocket. nytimes Visual Investigations found that this object was launched from Israel, and likely unrelated to the deadly blast.
An IDF spokesperson went on CNN and the BBC with a printed-out screenshot from an Al Jazeera livestream showing this projectile, claiming it was the rocket that hit the hospital. We also believe that American officials are incorrectly assessing this to be a Palestinian rocket
this projectile launch from the north, south, east and west. By drawing lines of perspective, three of which can be seen here, we assessed that this project was launched from near the Israeli city of Nahal Oz.
Three days before the blast, a 155mm illumination shell, commonly used by the Israeli military and not in use by Palestinian militias, was fired into the Al-Ahli Hospital. Hospital administrators said that they had received warnings from the IDF telling them to evacuate.
Our analysis does not answer what actually did cause the blast or who was responsible, but it does undercut one of the most-publicized pieces of evidence used by both American and Israeli officials.
I hope we will eventually find out what caused the blast. This NYTimes article might wind up confirming my bias that we shouldn’t trust the immediate Israeli/American intel.* Interestingly, the NYTimes conclusion is based on a relatively obscure twitter thread by some random researcher on the 19th. So a +1 for twitter, I guess.
[edit + wording change*] small update, Le Monde agrees with the NYT assessment of the projectile.
On an off-topic note, the mention of Visual Investigations brings back memories to me. I remember finding that series on the NYT's Youtube channel a couple of years ago, and later watching a bunch of parts. I thought they were generally good, and the responses on YT were also generally favorable. But whenever they released a video on subjects deeply triggering to the Blue Tribe audience, like the Capitol "insurrection" and the Rittenhouse incident, it always ended up being obviously biased, and the responses on YT were accordingly dismissive and negative in usual.
The last part I've seen was the one on the Bucha Massacre, and while it seemed convincing and high-quality overall, I found it strange that 1. they identified an airborne unit as the perpetrators even though the overall mainstream consensus had been for months that a completely different unit was responsible 2. the entire argument of the video hinged on using one piece of supposedly captured Russian army document as evidence, which seemed suspect 3. they presented drone and CCTV footage as newly available sensational evidence, even though it was obvious that all that footage have been available to the Ukrainian authorities for almost a year at that point.
The big picture here is that Hamas claimed a hospital was bombed by Israel and 500-800 people were killed. Mainstream outlets, including NYT, ran with that narrative. A hospital was not bombed and I don't think there is a credible estimate on deaths. The downstream effects of this misinformation included widespread anti-Israel demonstrations in the Middle East and cancelled meetings between Arab and Western countries. The NYT faced a lot of backlash over this and isn't exactly a disinterested party. Israel being responsible for the blast would help them save some face.
Let's say the NYT knew everything it knows now. Would "parking lot bombed, 30 people killed" have caused this much ruckus. Instead, ISRAEL BOMBS HOSPITAL is what is anchored in the minds of Middle Easterners.
There was a blast in the inner courtyard of the hospital where patients, families, children, and women were sleeping. You are free, I suppose, to not consider this “the hospital has been bombed”. But it’s just as morally significant. And, of course, on the 15th an Israeli artillery strike did hit the hospital.
It’s true that we don’t know the precise death toll. I’m hoping that the hospital workers come out with an authoritative statement on that. The Anglicans who oversee the hospital confirm hundreds of mostly women and children have died however. So perhaps 200, perhaps as high as 400? We don’t know for sure.
What makes you think "hospital workers" will be given the freedom to come up with an authoritative statement that is independent of Hamas' messaging on this? Did Hamas allow 3rd party investigators in to survey the blast, collect shrapnel fragments, etc? If this were an Israeli strike, isn't it in their interest to allow outsiders to investigate the site?
What I would like to know (and currently do not) is whether there were British Anglicans who visited and/or worked at the hospital at the time of the blast. The Anglicans have put out official statements per above, and they most likely have consulted with the hospital workers they employ. But if there are British Anglicans who can testify “yes I saw *x bodies” that’s the best evidence we will get IMHO. For the record, I don’t think anyone should trust either Hamas or Israel/US assessments on casualties given the obvious conflict of interest. The question of whether we can trust the Palestinians who work in the hospital as doctors is a separate but interesting question, too.
A hospital was not bombed and I don't think there is a credible estimate on deaths.
Come on, if a parking garage at a hospital was bombed, especially if there was a congregation of people seeking treatment or refuge, it would be considered a hospital bombing. It was part of the facility.
I think the point is “Israel bombs hospital, 500 dead” and “hospital
parking lot fire causes 30 wounded” differ both in scale, blame, and incendiariness
This is the point. There is no way this becomes a major international story that dominates discourse if we knew what we know today about the location and size of the blast. But the misinformation got out and we're dealing with the fallout.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
sickamore 6mo ago
If it were 30 wounded and 0 dead then yeah that would be significant.
But my point is that there's a difference between the immediate reaction of the Press reporting breaking news out of Gaza, when they have no opportunity to have reporters on the ground, and the reports from the supposedly "independent investigations" which all concluded the same incorrect thing all based on the same error in interpretation of the same piece of evidence. I maintain it's more significant that the Press was systematically all wrong in the same direction in their "independent investigations" than it is that they reported the Hamas-claimed death toll with varying degrees of qualification.
This NYTimes article proves once again that we should not trust Israel’s assessments or American intelligence assessments on Israel.
This language falls on the wrong side of the "consensus building" line. Speculative analysis by an American news organization (or Twitter randos, or known terrorist sympathizers, or...) may or may not be more reliable than official reports from American or Israeli governments; you and others are free to make the argument either way. But this NYT article does not appear to prove anything, must less prove anything that has already been proven (i.e. "once again"). While you do not actually write the words "everyone knows," you do not present the matter as open to discussion, instead treating certain matters as clearly settled. Your engagement on the topic (which is rapidly approaching "single issue poster" status) does not communicate any willingness to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. Rather, your rhetoric here looks like an attempt to build a consensus about what "we" should think on a question that is open (and may, given the circumstances, forever remain open). That is a way of waging the culture wars instead of discussing them, and is against the rules here.
Fair point, it is my assertion or opinion that America / Israel routinely lie about intelligence regarding strikes, misfires, etc. Next time I’ll link to scholars who agree with my assertion and preface it as such.
single issue poster
Hmm, would you say someone who exclusively posts about D Day in a WWII thread to be “single issue”? Or the bombing of Nagasaki in a WWII thread? The hospital strike is the second most important event in the whole conflict, the first being the actual Hamas invasion. It was front page news for about four days and a major point of discussion. It’s entirely possible that this is the wrong forum to be discussing one of the two most important topics of the conflict, but that wouldn’t be because it’s not worthy of discussion. It would probably be for less rigid and more human reasons.
I can’t help but remember what you replied to me in my last post on this issue:
This strikes me as complete FUD. Every claim I've seen suggesting this was anything other than Hamas weaponry (whether as a false flag or just incompetence, who knows) appears primarily based on "but I want it to have been Israel, so let's imagine the possibilities, shall we?"
This was accusing me, or at least my information, as intentionally false. Then you aimed to build consensus with a “claims suggesting anything other than Hamas are primarily based around fantasy”. You didn’t provide any source, of course. But some of that information I posted has been reinforced by a major NYTimes piece.
Hmm, would you say someone who exclusively posts about D Day in a WWII thread to be “single issue”?
At some point, sure. Depending on how often they posted about it, whether their posts ever really added interesting information or just flogged the same dead horse repeatedly while showing no interest in entertaining the possibility that they might be mistaken, etc.
This was accusing me, or at least my information, as intentionally false.
While it is possible that you or your sources are lying, that is neither what I said nor what I meant. I suggested that the people I see making these claims appear mostly to be wishcasting, and as far as I can tell that remains true. I don't know if you're a propagandist or just a useful tool to someone who is, but you have shown no interest I can see in discussing the hospital incident with anything approaching epistemic humility--only in spreading a particular slant on it. Either of us, or both of us, could be mistaken about what is actually happening--that's not the point. For purposes of the rules, your problem is that you're not writing in a way that is sufficiently open to that possibility.
Then you aimed to build consensus
No, you apparently don't know what "build consensus" means in this context. I never made any claims about what "we" believe (or should believe), or treated my interpretation of events as anything but my interpretation of events--hence phrases like "strikes me," "I've seen," and "appears primarily."
I definitely have a substantive view on these matters, which I expressed to you previously. But that is a separate thing from the way you have approached your rhetoric here.
It seems pretty clear it wasn't THAT rocket which caused the explosion at the hospital; that was a malfunctioning rocket that blew up in mid-air. I don't share the NYTs confidence that THAT rocket was Israeli; their analysis seems to have enough uncertainty to place it on either side of the border. Anyway, I'm sure if a Tamir had hit the hospital, Hamas would be parading the pieces through the streets by now.
Their "debunk" is nonsensical, however. They claim their analysis contradicts a US intelligence assessment that the video showed a Palestinian rocket undergoing catastrophic motor failure and then crashing onto hospital grounds. But if you follow the claim, not only is the US intelligence assessment just an anonymous source, but it fails to specify that it was these particular videos they analyzed.
Anyway, I'm sure if a Tamir had hit the hospital, Hamas would be parading the pieces through the streets by now.
This is really is the most important piece of evidence. Within minutes of the blast, this was international news. If it had been an Israeli missile, wouldn't Hamas be highly incentivized to allow Western investigators full access to the debris the next day? Have they done anything like this? If instead, they hastily scrubbed the area of any evidence, that points to them being responsible.
someone did clear the area of evidence. We can assume it’s not IDF since it’s in Gaza and ground invasion hasn’t started, who could possibly have a vested interest here….
Didn't CNN, the AP, and the WSJ, et al. all rely on this video as a "key piece of evidence" for their conclusion? And this video was cited by IDF spokesman in media interviews.
A key video in the analysis came shortly before 7 p.m. local time, when the Arabic-language news channel Al Jazeera was airing live coverage of the Gaza City skyline. As a correspondent speaks, the camera pans to zoom in on a volley of rockets being fired from the ground nearby.
Didn't CNN, the AP, and the WSJ, et al. all rely on this video as a "key piece of evidence" for their conclusion?
So one media company says one thing and others says another? So what? Some angles of the hospital explosion show two explosions; it seems likely one was this rocket and the other the hospital explosion, and they were probably unrelated (I can't rule out weird crap where a large piece of rocket and fuel managed to get as far as the hospital, but it seems unlikely). But there was a lot of ordnance in the air that night so showing me one rocket which wasn't involved doesn't move the needle much. It's like claiming a bite wasn't caused by a dog because you found one particular dog whose teeth don't match.
And this video was cited by IDF spokesman in media interviews.
As a correspondent speaks, the camera pans to zoom in on a volley of rockets being fired from the ground nearby.
This is clearly not the same launch; the rocket in the disputed video is singular, not part of a volley.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
The_Nybbler 6mo ago·Edited 6mo ago
Is there a different video you would say provides the best evidence that the explosion was due to a rocket failure? From the beginning I found that story hard to believe, but I considered the now-debunked video the best evidence for it (like all the news orgs etc). Without that, the recording released by Israel seems to be the strongest evidence... And that's not saying much.
In any case, certain people here have absolutely jumped the gun by accusing the press of being "stenographers for terrorism." The situation is murkier than that, and if anything the Press has helped Israel's narrative by appealing to a now-debunked piece of evidence to all draw "high-confidence" conclusions...
Is there a different video you would say provides the best evidence that the explosion was due to a rocket failure?
The best evidence I've seen is the damage photos. It doesn't look like a large HE explosion (not enough damage), nor a small one (too much of the wrong sort of damage, especially fire). It looks like a fuel explosion; the bright fireball at the hospital site in some videos matches that also. I don't say this definitely indicates a rocket failure, but as far as I know there aren't any purpose-built munitions the Israelis are using that would create that sort of explosion.
Is there a different video you would say provides the best evidence that the explosion was due to a rocket failure?
IIRC this launch corresponded to PIJ announcing they were using one of their new longer-range (read: bigger) rockets, so the prior spontaneous failure rate probably should be estimated to be pretty high.
As someone who is reasonably familiar with high-power rocketry and has at least read the literature on making large solid motors (which is what these are), scaling up is hard: even small imperfections in the solid grain can cause explosive failures. Fail to get all the bubbles out when casting? Your burn rate (and thus chamber pressure, which can cause explosive failures) will vary drastically. Or maybe your grain cracks and pieces clog the nozzle: now you have a bomb.
Best results require starting with precisely-sized powders, high-grade chemicals, and some industrial equipment (mixing, vacuum casting) that scales with the size of motor you're trying to make. Most of that is something Hamas is having to make or smuggle in. And even for well-prepared amateurs it doesn't always succeed the first time.
IIRC this launch corresponded to PIJ announcing they were using one of their new longer-range (read: bigger) rockets, so the prior spontaneous failure rate probably should be estimated to be pretty high.
What's the distribution of mortality among these rocket failures? This would be a massive outlier, even assuming only 50 casualties. It hit the perfect spot, at some unspecified distance from where NYT reports that Israel was striking only two minutes before. My priors are just that it was an intentional strike, and "this launch corresponded to PIJ announcing they were using one of their new longer-range (read: bigger) rockets" is just weak evidence of a rocket failing in such a way and happening to strike that spot. It's another assumption of a new type of rocket other than the thousands others that have been launched from Hamas. So my priors are moving in the opposite direction if these are the sort of assumptions that need to be layered on to make the Israeli side of the story plausible.
Without the video which did show some sort of rocket failing at about the same time (and turned out to be an Israeli rocket !!), I don't know what evidence there actually is that this extremely unusual thing actually happened. Like I said, this video formulated previously what I thought was the strongest evidence for the Israeli side (but it didn't convince me then), so it's significant it's debunked.
The press (including the most 'reputable' outlets like the BBC) spent the first day after the hospital explosion credulously repeating "Israeli strike on hospital kills 550" (or even 800 in some cases).
It is now clear that even if Israel caused the explosion, which seems very much a debatable matter still, it didn't kill anywhere near the 500-800 people that Hamas' health ministry claimed.
There is no way this event would have been front page news, knowing what we know now. "Parking Lot bombed, 30 killed" doesn't have the same ring as "Hospital bombed, 500 killed".
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
2rafa 6mo ago
I do wonder if these initial reports spooked the IDF into instituting a flat denial of what would have been an intentional strike that was less extraordinary than initially reported.
In any case, the press initially reported excessive death tolls (how excessive is TBD) but then in the subsequent days and weeks their narrative shifted to relying on a bad piece of evidence to draw conclusions with high confidence. The initial press reaction to the news that was coming out of Gaza (where reporters are not allowed) is less telling than the narrative the congealed in the days and weeks after, a narrative that appears to have been based on bad evidence that they all got wrong.
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Notes -
More on the hospital blast. NYTimes Visual Investigations is now issuing a debunk on the supposed “lynchpin evidence” in the American and Israeli intelligence finding. A thread from NYT’s Aric Toler (previously Bellingcat) —
The NYTimes article is archived here: https://archive.ph/ngGpq
I hope we will eventually find out what caused the blast. This NYTimes article might wind up confirming my bias that we shouldn’t trust the immediate Israeli/American intel.* Interestingly, the NYTimes conclusion is based on a relatively obscure twitter thread by some random researcher on the 19th. So a +1 for twitter, I guess.
[edit + wording change*] small update, Le Monde agrees with the NYT assessment of the projectile.
On an off-topic note, the mention of Visual Investigations brings back memories to me. I remember finding that series on the NYT's Youtube channel a couple of years ago, and later watching a bunch of parts. I thought they were generally good, and the responses on YT were also generally favorable. But whenever they released a video on subjects deeply triggering to the Blue Tribe audience, like the Capitol "insurrection" and the Rittenhouse incident, it always ended up being obviously biased, and the responses on YT were accordingly dismissive and negative in usual.
The last part I've seen was the one on the Bucha Massacre, and while it seemed convincing and high-quality overall, I found it strange that 1. they identified an airborne unit as the perpetrators even though the overall mainstream consensus had been for months that a completely different unit was responsible 2. the entire argument of the video hinged on using one piece of supposedly captured Russian army document as evidence, which seemed suspect 3. they presented drone and CCTV footage as newly available sensational evidence, even though it was obvious that all that footage have been available to the Ukrainian authorities for almost a year at that point.
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The big picture here is that Hamas claimed a hospital was bombed by Israel and 500-800 people were killed. Mainstream outlets, including NYT, ran with that narrative. A hospital was not bombed and I don't think there is a credible estimate on deaths. The downstream effects of this misinformation included widespread anti-Israel demonstrations in the Middle East and cancelled meetings between Arab and Western countries. The NYT faced a lot of backlash over this and isn't exactly a disinterested party. Israel being responsible for the blast would help them save some face.
Let's say the NYT knew everything it knows now. Would "parking lot bombed, 30 people killed" have caused this much ruckus. Instead, ISRAEL BOMBS HOSPITAL is what is anchored in the minds of Middle Easterners.
I’d like to point out that this is just a media motte-and-bailey.
Bailey: Israel intentionally bombs hospital, hundreds dead!
Motte 1, new bailey: Israel accidentally bombs hospital parking lot, maybe some dead?
Motte 2, for when Motte 1 fails: The IDF showed a video that maybe isn’t from this incident. No mention of casualties.
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There was a blast in the inner courtyard of the hospital where patients, families, children, and women were sleeping. You are free, I suppose, to not consider this “the hospital has been bombed”. But it’s just as morally significant. And, of course, on the 15th an Israeli artillery strike did hit the hospital.
It’s true that we don’t know the precise death toll. I’m hoping that the hospital workers come out with an authoritative statement on that. The Anglicans who oversee the hospital confirm hundreds of mostly women and children have died however. So perhaps 200, perhaps as high as 400? We don’t know for sure.
What makes you think "hospital workers" will be given the freedom to come up with an authoritative statement that is independent of Hamas' messaging on this? Did Hamas allow 3rd party investigators in to survey the blast, collect shrapnel fragments, etc? If this were an Israeli strike, isn't it in their interest to allow outsiders to investigate the site?
What I would like to know (and currently do not) is whether there were British Anglicans who visited and/or worked at the hospital at the time of the blast. The Anglicans have put out official statements per above, and they most likely have consulted with the hospital workers they employ. But if there are British Anglicans who can testify “yes I saw *x bodies” that’s the best evidence we will get IMHO. For the record, I don’t think anyone should trust either Hamas or Israel/US assessments on casualties given the obvious conflict of interest. The question of whether we can trust the Palestinians who work in the hospital as doctors is a separate but interesting question, too.
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Come on, if a parking garage at a hospital was bombed, especially if there was a congregation of people seeking treatment or refuge, it would be considered a hospital bombing. It was part of the facility.
I think the point is “Israel bombs hospital, 500 dead” and “hospital parking lot fire causes 30 wounded” differ both in scale, blame, and incendiariness
This is the point. There is no way this becomes a major international story that dominates discourse if we knew what we know today about the location and size of the blast. But the misinformation got out and we're dealing with the fallout.
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If it were 30 wounded and 0 dead then yeah that would be significant.
But my point is that there's a difference between the immediate reaction of the Press reporting breaking news out of Gaza, when they have no opportunity to have reporters on the ground, and the reports from the supposedly "independent investigations" which all concluded the same incorrect thing all based on the same error in interpretation of the same piece of evidence. I maintain it's more significant that the Press was systematically all wrong in the same direction in their "independent investigations" than it is that they reported the Hamas-claimed death toll with varying degrees of qualification.
yes agreed. To me, it brings all kinds of doubts to other Gaza death tolls too
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This language falls on the wrong side of the "consensus building" line. Speculative analysis by an American news organization (or Twitter randos, or known terrorist sympathizers, or...) may or may not be more reliable than official reports from American or Israeli governments; you and others are free to make the argument either way. But this NYT article does not appear to prove anything, must less prove anything that has already been proven (i.e. "once again"). While you do not actually write the words "everyone knows," you do not present the matter as open to discussion, instead treating certain matters as clearly settled. Your engagement on the topic (which is rapidly approaching "single issue poster" status) does not communicate any willingness to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. Rather, your rhetoric here looks like an attempt to build a consensus about what "we" should think on a question that is open (and may, given the circumstances, forever remain open). That is a way of waging the culture wars instead of discussing them, and is against the rules here.
Fair point, it is my assertion or opinion that America / Israel routinely lie about intelligence regarding strikes, misfires, etc. Next time I’ll link to scholars who agree with my assertion and preface it as such.
Hmm, would you say someone who exclusively posts about D Day in a WWII thread to be “single issue”? Or the bombing of Nagasaki in a WWII thread? The hospital strike is the second most important event in the whole conflict, the first being the actual Hamas invasion. It was front page news for about four days and a major point of discussion. It’s entirely possible that this is the wrong forum to be discussing one of the two most important topics of the conflict, but that wouldn’t be because it’s not worthy of discussion. It would probably be for less rigid and more human reasons.
I can’t help but remember what you replied to me in my last post on this issue:
This was accusing me, or at least my information, as intentionally false. Then you aimed to build consensus with a “claims suggesting anything other than Hamas are primarily based around fantasy”. You didn’t provide any source, of course. But some of that information I posted has been reinforced by a major NYTimes piece.
At some point, sure. Depending on how often they posted about it, whether their posts ever really added interesting information or just flogged the same dead horse repeatedly while showing no interest in entertaining the possibility that they might be mistaken, etc.
While it is possible that you or your sources are lying, that is neither what I said nor what I meant. I suggested that the people I see making these claims appear mostly to be wishcasting, and as far as I can tell that remains true. I don't know if you're a propagandist or just a useful tool to someone who is, but you have shown no interest I can see in discussing the hospital incident with anything approaching epistemic humility--only in spreading a particular slant on it. Either of us, or both of us, could be mistaken about what is actually happening--that's not the point. For purposes of the rules, your problem is that you're not writing in a way that is sufficiently open to that possibility.
No, you apparently don't know what "build consensus" means in this context. I never made any claims about what "we" believe (or should believe), or treated my interpretation of events as anything but my interpretation of events--hence phrases like "strikes me," "I've seen," and "appears primarily."
I definitely have a substantive view on these matters, which I expressed to you previously. But that is a separate thing from the way you have approached your rhetoric here.
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It seems pretty clear it wasn't THAT rocket which caused the explosion at the hospital; that was a malfunctioning rocket that blew up in mid-air. I don't share the NYTs confidence that THAT rocket was Israeli; their analysis seems to have enough uncertainty to place it on either side of the border. Anyway, I'm sure if a Tamir had hit the hospital, Hamas would be parading the pieces through the streets by now.
Their "debunk" is nonsensical, however. They claim their analysis contradicts a US intelligence assessment that the video showed a Palestinian rocket undergoing catastrophic motor failure and then crashing onto hospital grounds. But if you follow the claim, not only is the US intelligence assessment just an anonymous source, but it fails to specify that it was these particular videos they analyzed.
This is really is the most important piece of evidence. Within minutes of the blast, this was international news. If it had been an Israeli missile, wouldn't Hamas be highly incentivized to allow Western investigators full access to the debris the next day? Have they done anything like this? If instead, they hastily scrubbed the area of any evidence, that points to them being responsible.
someone did clear the area of evidence. We can assume it’s not IDF since it’s in Gaza and ground invasion hasn’t started, who could possibly have a vested interest here….
Hamas is either covering up evidence or they're missing a golden PR opportunity.
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Didn't CNN, the AP, and the WSJ, et al. all rely on this video as a "key piece of evidence" for their conclusion? And this video was cited by IDF spokesman in media interviews.
So one media company says one thing and others says another? So what? Some angles of the hospital explosion show two explosions; it seems likely one was this rocket and the other the hospital explosion, and they were probably unrelated (I can't rule out weird crap where a large piece of rocket and fuel managed to get as far as the hospital, but it seems unlikely). But there was a lot of ordnance in the air that night so showing me one rocket which wasn't involved doesn't move the needle much. It's like claiming a bite wasn't caused by a dog because you found one particular dog whose teeth don't match.
This is clearly not the same launch; the rocket in the disputed video is singular, not part of a volley.
Is there a different video you would say provides the best evidence that the explosion was due to a rocket failure? From the beginning I found that story hard to believe, but I considered the now-debunked video the best evidence for it (like all the news orgs etc). Without that, the recording released by Israel seems to be the strongest evidence... And that's not saying much.
In any case, certain people here have absolutely jumped the gun by accusing the press of being "stenographers for terrorism." The situation is murkier than that, and if anything the Press has helped Israel's narrative by appealing to a now-debunked piece of evidence to all draw "high-confidence" conclusions...
The best evidence I've seen is the damage photos. It doesn't look like a large HE explosion (not enough damage), nor a small one (too much of the wrong sort of damage, especially fire). It looks like a fuel explosion; the bright fireball at the hospital site in some videos matches that also. I don't say this definitely indicates a rocket failure, but as far as I know there aren't any purpose-built munitions the Israelis are using that would create that sort of explosion.
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IIRC this launch corresponded to PIJ announcing they were using one of their new longer-range (read: bigger) rockets, so the prior spontaneous failure rate probably should be estimated to be pretty high.
As someone who is reasonably familiar with high-power rocketry and has at least read the literature on making large solid motors (which is what these are), scaling up is hard: even small imperfections in the solid grain can cause explosive failures. Fail to get all the bubbles out when casting? Your burn rate (and thus chamber pressure, which can cause explosive failures) will vary drastically. Or maybe your grain cracks and pieces clog the nozzle: now you have a bomb.
Best results require starting with precisely-sized powders, high-grade chemicals, and some industrial equipment (mixing, vacuum casting) that scales with the size of motor you're trying to make. Most of that is something Hamas is having to make or smuggle in. And even for well-prepared amateurs it doesn't always succeed the first time.
What's the distribution of mortality among these rocket failures? This would be a massive outlier, even assuming only 50 casualties. It hit the perfect spot, at some unspecified distance from where NYT reports that Israel was striking only two minutes before. My priors are just that it was an intentional strike, and "this launch corresponded to PIJ announcing they were using one of their new longer-range (read: bigger) rockets" is just weak evidence of a rocket failing in such a way and happening to strike that spot. It's another assumption of a new type of rocket other than the thousands others that have been launched from Hamas. So my priors are moving in the opposite direction if these are the sort of assumptions that need to be layered on to make the Israeli side of the story plausible.
Without the video which did show some sort of rocket failing at about the same time (and turned out to be an Israeli rocket !!), I don't know what evidence there actually is that this extremely unusual thing actually happened. Like I said, this video formulated previously what I thought was the strongest evidence for the Israeli side (but it didn't convince me then), so it's significant it's debunked.
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The press (including the most 'reputable' outlets like the BBC) spent the first day after the hospital explosion credulously repeating "Israeli strike on hospital kills 550" (or even 800 in some cases).
It is now clear that even if Israel caused the explosion, which seems very much a debatable matter still, it didn't kill anywhere near the 500-800 people that Hamas' health ministry claimed.
There is no way this event would have been front page news, knowing what we know now. "Parking Lot bombed, 30 killed" doesn't have the same ring as "Hospital bombed, 500 killed".
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I do wonder if these initial reports spooked the IDF into instituting a flat denial of what would have been an intentional strike that was less extraordinary than initially reported.
In any case, the press initially reported excessive death tolls (how excessive is TBD) but then in the subsequent days and weeks their narrative shifted to relying on a bad piece of evidence to draw conclusions with high confidence. The initial press reaction to the news that was coming out of Gaza (where reporters are not allowed) is less telling than the narrative the congealed in the days and weeks after, a narrative that appears to have been based on bad evidence that they all got wrong.
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