Israel bombs Greek Orthodox Gaza church sheltering displaced people

The smart ones are. I've been seeing a lot of US folks head over heels for Israel through this.

The Order of St. George, an associated order of the church, issued a statement confirming the strike. “Archbishop Alexios appears to have been located and is alive, but we don’t know if he is injured,” the Order of St. George stated. The blast hit “two church halls where the refugees, including children and babies, were sleeping.”

the church was 1600 years old too

Just a quick note, we're seeing reports on this post complaining that it's coming from Al Jazeera.

AJ is a left of center source and does tend to lean on loaded words, but they are not considered to be factually dishonest. Well, as long as it's not about Qatar. They do have an obvious blind spot there.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

"These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation. See all Left-Center sources.

Overall, we rate Al Jazeera Left-Center biased, based on story selection that slightly favors the left, and Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar."

Also why Israel is after actively banning Al Jazeera. They are trying (desperately) to hide their war crimes and the genocide.
https://lemmy.ml/post/6760749
It's not pro Israel so it's clearly biased and anti semitic. Delete it now.
Don't put your American Overton window on an international news source.
- The reports were asking for removal because they consider AJ to be a propaganda source. I'm clarifying that we do not concurr and won't be removing posts simply because they come from AJ.

Isn't the Gaza hospital at the very least confirmed to have been a relatively minor explosion in the parking lot?
- That was the latest that I saw. Not to excuse the rest of Israel’s actions. Really hard to discern the fake news and propaganda from reality on that one though. And it’s a moot point anyway. It’s blamed on Israel now, because that’s the story that is sticking.
- Yeah, but there was a bunch of people who were gathered there because their homes had already been bombed...
Already bombed a UNRWA school
- UNRWA schools have been confirmed, by the UN itself, to store weapons in the past. It's a known technique by Hamas to store military items in civilians infrastructure in order to maximize civilian damage.
Double Speak - (satire) The church was bombed to punish Hamas for bombing the hospital... (/satire)
Though to put on a serious hat for a second, forcing half the population to move, so you double the number of people in the south of gaza, just means there will be more civilians everywhere including "legitimate" military targets.
What happened to the whole roof knocking warning system?
For the Hospital bombing...
This lines it all out.
The TLDR is that it's not enough visible damage to have been an Israeli bomb. The entire article is worth a read, Bellingcat actually does video and image analysis to figure out what likely happened.
As for the church bombing, Israel has taken responsibility for it, but are quibbling on the damage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/20/gaza-church-strike-saint-porphyrius/
The Israel Defense Forces said in an emailed statement that a strike targeting a Hamas control center “damaged the wall of a church in the area” and that it is “aware of reports on casualties” and is reviewing the incident.
So Israel got away with bombing a hospital
If you're going to just lead with things that are, at the very least, not at all clear facts, I'm going to have a hard time taking anything else very seriously.
So Israel got away with bombing a hospital
Your evidence?

For anyone else who doesn't like Al Jazeera, here is an article they wrote 4 days ago about this very church being the last refuge for hundreds of displaced civilians who had nowhere left to turn. Thankfully it's hosted on MSN, so it's not fully taboo to read about the horrified people who were at their wits end trying to escape death and largely accepting the futility of the effort.

Any strike on the church “would not only be an attack on religion, which is a vile deed, but also an attack on humanity”, Father Elias said. “Our humanity calls us to offer peace and warmth to everyone in need.”

George Shabeen, a Palestinian Christian and a father of four sheltering in the church with his family, said they had nowhere else to go; their streets had been targeted by three Israeli air raids.
“Coming here saved our lives,” he told Al Jazeera. “During the night, we huddle together, Muslims and Christians, old and young, and pray for safety and peace.”

If someone at the IDF read through some of this propaganda then maybe they wouldn't have put a bomb right next to the church.

Oh well, everyone makes mistakes.

- Al Jazeera has biases, like every media organization, like Reuters, like the BBC, like the guardian. They're supposed to be one voice in a choir of voices. The reporting is excellent. While they demonstrate their biases by what they cover, I've always found the reporting to be professional and excellent.

Reuters article.

The first report is always wrong.

Unverified video after the bombing: https://streamable.com/rzajna

Washington post confirms video with Geo-location
Hard to see what's what in there. I'd be interested in confirming or disproving Israel's account:
The Israeli military told AFP that its fighter jets had hit a command and control centre involved in launching rockets and mortars towards Israel.
“As a result of the IDF [Israeli army] strike, a wall of a church in the area was damaged,” it said, adding “we are aware of reports on casualties. The incident is under review.”
Witnesses said the attack damaged the facade of the church and caused an adjacent building to collapse, adding that many injured people were evacuated to hospital.
If this is true, then you would think most of the church is still standing.
- Daytime photos show that this is the building next to the church. The church itself is still standing, though one wall was destroyed.
- https://streamable.com/bobmch
  Lots of Christians dead for a church that's "still standing"

Bet they have proof Hamas did it.

More "totally legit audios" in Arabic spoken with Hebrew accents.

I like to shit on Israel as much as the next person but looking at Al-Jazeera as a source when it comes to Israel vs Palestine conflict is like citing RT as a source for Russian vs Ukraine.

How about this one?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/20/gaza-church-strike-saint-porphyrius/
It has a quote from the IDF saying it was their bomb, but claiming that it struck a "Hamas Stronghold" and "damaged a nearby Church Wall".
Or you could read it and the hundreds of other clearly pro-israeli western cum rags we call newspapers these days and make up your own mind. Calling one of the few news sources not openly shilling for the Israeli side of the conflict biased, seems a little... Biased.

this