A London cinema is showing a film wrongly blaming Israel for the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City last October which was the result of a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket.
The film is based on the testimony of British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who was present at the blast at the hospital on October 17, 2023 but, as the JC has revealed, has in the past eulogised a terror chief and praised the killer of a rabbi as a “hero”.
Doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a British-Palestinian surgeon and the Rector of the University of Glasgow
Following the misreporting of the incident by media outlets last year, which quickly blamed Israel for the blast, there was an escalation in anti-Israel protests around the world and attacks on synagogues in Berlin and Tunisia.
It was later established beyond doubt that the explosion was produced by a terror rocket that fell short.
Describing the incident as the “beginning” of Israel’s “genocide” against Palestinians, the film, titled When it stopped being a war: The Situated Testimony of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah has been described by media watchdog Camera as “intended solely to spread disinformation”.
The film was made by Forensic Architecture, a research group at Goldsmiths, University of London (UCL) and will be screened at Genesis Cinema in Mile End on November 17. The screening will followed by a discussion between Abu-Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, the co-founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Immediately after the explosion in the courtyard of the hospital last October, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health blamed an Israeli missile strike. The claim was widely shared by major media outlets within minutes, without verification.
Later analysis of the scene and video of the blast revealed the most probable cause to be a misfiring rocket launched by Palestinian terrorists, however.
This conclusion was supported by intelligence sources in the US and the UK as well as investigations by the Economist, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.
The then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons, “the misreporting of this incident had a negative effect in the region, including on a vital US diplomatic effort, and the tensions here at home”.
“The assertions made by these filmmakers have potentially dangerous implications for British Jews,” said a Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) spokesperson, who called the film “disinformation”.
“The BBC has already been roundly criticised for its misreporting of this blast, which has been blamed for fuelling part of the surge of antisemitism in Britain and abroad.”
Genesis Cinema in Mile End, London (Image: Google Street)
In a newspaper article in 2018, Abu-Sittah hailed Ahmad Jarrar, who masterminded the murder of father-of-six Rabbi Raziel Shevach in a drive-by shooting near Nablus, as one of Palestine’s “dearest and best sons” and a “hero”.
In 2019, Abu-Sittah was pictured sitting next to the notorious hijacker Leila Khaled at a memorial for a leader of terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Maher Al-Yemani.
In 2020, a year after Al-Yemani’s death, Dr Abu Sitta delivered an emotional eulogy at his graveside in Beirut which was captured on camera and exposed by the JC last December.
Despite his background, the surgeon is still interviewed as an authoritative source of information by media outlets like Sky News and his comments form the basis of Forensic Architecture’s film.
Abu-Sittah’s lawyers have said that the doctor did not know that Jarrar had been involved in the killing of a rabbi and would never condone murder: and that he was similarly unaware that al-Yemani had been accused of involvement in terrorism.
The doctor has previously said: “While I may in the past have used emotive language in the context of a brutal war in my home country, I vehemently oppose terrorism, and civilian casualties on all sides.”
Abu-Sittah was controversially elected as rector of the University of Glasgow earlier in March this year. In April, the university distanced itself from his views following pressure from the JC and other media outlets.
“The incorporation of testimony from Dr Ghassan Abu-Sitta, who has apparently been seen on video apparently weeping in commemoration of a terrorist, would be laughable if the potential ramifications were not so severe,” said the CAA. “This film is disinformation and it can have serious consequences.”
A spokesperson for Camera said: “It is of course extremely worrying to see a London cinema hosting an event intended solely to spread disinformation to members of the public, just as it is to see that Abu-Sittah continues to be interviewed by British media outlets as though he were an authoritative source rather than a peddler of politically motivated deliberate disinformation.”
Throughout the film, architects from the organisation can be seen sitting with Abu-Sittah at a computer screen, asking him to retrace his steps on the night of the blast using a 3D reconstruction of the hospital, in which they had geolocated and “photomatched” visual material from the blast.
The film opens and closes with a press conference given by Abu-Sittah at the Al-Shifa Hospital, hours after the explosion at Al-Ahli. During the address, the surgeon blames Israel. “This is a war crime that the world has seen coming,” he says.
In the film, Forensic Architecture ignores subsequent analyses by US and UK intelligence which disputed this claim, nor of a report by the Human Rights Watch which concluded that an Israeli airstrike was “highly unlikely”.
Abu-Sittah claims that the wounds of victims, which he calls “clean” and “serrated”, can be used as evidence to determine the cause of the explosion, which he theorises was a fragmentation bomb. He says: “You are able to tell about the weapon looking at wound… you can tell the difference between a fragmentation bomb and a regular bomb.”
Abu-Sittah, Forensic Architecture and Genesis Cinema were approached for comment.
