Israeli Military Changes Stories Yet Again on Gaza School Attack

Who would’ve thought that killing a school full of civilians in a refugee camp would be such a difficult thing for the Israeli government to get its story straight on? Five days since causing over 100 civilian casualties with a mortar attack on a UN girls’ school, Israel now has its fourth “official story,” which looks suspiciously like its first story.

Israel started with the claim on Tuesday that the attack was “according to procedures” and the school was attacked as a defensive measure after Hamas fired rockets from the courtyard. This was quickly refuted, and Israel quickly backed off the claim. It left the reason for the attack unexplained for days, but this morning it came up with its third version, that the attack was the fault of a US-supplied weapon malfunction, and the mortars that hit the school missed a team of rocketeers less than a yard from the school.

Now the Israeli military is saying that story is no good either, that it did deliberately hit the school, and that “we are still sticking by our official position that according to our initial inquiry, the whole thing started when terrorists fired mortar sells from the school compound.” That claim has already been refuted, and Israeli army have already conceded that it was not true.

But in a world where the official truth is increasingly malleable and disconnected from reality, going back to an official story that you’ve already admitted was untrue probably seems perfectly reasonable. The only thing we know for sure about Israel’s attack on the school is that they killed a lot of innocent people. They’re still trying to figure out if they meant to or not.