So much for the New York Times’ “editors’ note,” and so much for the First Rule of Holes. Despite the broad acknowledgment from other media that Hamas played the Western media for suckers with its claim that the Israelis had bombed the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, the Paper of Record still refuses to admit the obvious.

Instead, they argue today that the video and audio evidence doesn’t rule out an Israeli strike. Their sourcing? Themselves, natch:

The footage has become a widely cited piece of evidence as Israeli and American officials have made the case that an errant Palestinian rocket malfunctioned in the sky, fell to the ground and caused a deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City.

But a detailed visual analysis by The New York Times concludes that the video clip — taken from an Al Jazeera television camera livestreaming on the night of Oct. 17 — shows something else. The missile seen in the video is most likely not what caused the explosion at the hospital. It actually detonated in the sky roughly two miles away, The Times found, and is an unrelated aspect of the fighting that unfolded over the Israeli-Gaza border that night.

The Times’s finding does not answer what actually did cause the Al-Ahli Arab hospital blast, or who is responsible. The contention by Israeli and American intelligence agencies that a failed Palestinian rocket launch is to blame remains plausible. But the Times analysis does cast doubt on one of the most-publicized pieces of evidence that Israeli officials have used to make their case and complicates the straightforward narrative they have put forth.

Emphasis mine. The New York Times has validated the New York Times! What a scoop! Let’s put it another way: the same experts that breathlessly regurgitated Hamas claims that Israel had destroyed the hospital, and that couldn’t even wait until sunrise to see if the hospital was still standing, now claims that Israel hasn’t sufficiently proven itself innocent.

Film at 11! Call the Pulitzer committee — but perhaps only through its Walter Duranty review panel.

First off, this is sheer sophistry, as becomes apparent in reading the rest of the article. The claim that this explosion came from a Palestinian rocket launch rests on more than just the Al-Jazeera video, and the Times knows that. US and European intel and defense agencies came to that conclusion on their own data, for instance. The impact shown in the pictures after sunrise make it clear that this was not a missile impact; it barely left a dent in the ground and the damage radius appears to be between 10-15 meters. Other than its windows, the hospital itself was undamaged despite the NYT’s initial report that it had been directly hit and destroyed.

And more to the point, the video isn’t the only evidence supplied by the Israelis either, as readers discover nearly three-quarters of the way into the article:

Israeli officials released a report about the explosion on Oct. 18 and also made public one conversation they said was intercepted between Hamas fighters blaming Islamic Jihad for the blast. Israel also has cited several other pieces of evidence that have not been made public, including logs of military activity, information gleaned from radar systems, other audio intercepts and other videos.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have pointed to the Al-Jazeera video in media interviews and social media

Yes … along with the intercepted communication in which two Hamas terrorists describe the failed PIJ launch hitting the hospital. The Times never addresses that intercept other than the cursory mention in the above excerpt, not even bothering to argue against its authenticity. Instead of dealing with that and all of the clear visual evidence that the hospital was not destroyed and an Israeli missile did not hit the parking lot, the Times spends most of its time describing how they themselves synched up all the video to “prove” that the falling missile in the video couldn’t have been the one that hit al-Ahli.

Trust us! We’ve proven ourselves so reliable on this story already!

Let’s just say for Ss and Gs that the falling missile in the video isn’t the specific missile that hit al-Ahli. So what? Hamas and PIJ missiles routinely fail at somewhere between a 20-30% rate. If it wasn’t that specific missile, it was another one. How do we know that? We have audio of two Hamas operatives discussing the misfire, and we have visual evidence that what hit the parking lot wasn’t a warhead — no impact crater and a small area of destruction.

The New York Times can spin this as much and as enthusiastically as Sheldon Whitehouse trying to find the true meaning of “boof” for as long as they want. Their initial story was a lie in its entirety, one which they willingly amplified without doing any checking at all, and none of this desperate attempt to divert attention from it changes that fact.

If they want to keep flogging this story, though, we should apply the same standard to them as they apply to the Israelis. The New York Times proved itself a willing participant in terrorist propaganda. Now let them prove otherwise to my satisfaction.

I ran the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast yesterday, but the discussion is on topic here too:

• The American media almost all fell for a Hamas lie …. but only the New York Times won’t report the story accurately six days later.
• Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the latest infuriating Big Misinformation moment from the people who love to lecture on that topic, and try to drill down to why the media seems to love Hamas propaganda.
• Also, do we have two major parties or do we have four?
• And for a bonus, Andrew and I reveal The Secrets of Hot Dudes on Social Media! Well, based on recent follow activity on social media for our accounts, Andrew and I apparently know a few …

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!