In the early hours of June 19, 2025, Iranian missiles struck Soroka Medical Centre in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, a major hospital that treats both civilians and Israeli military personnel.

Within hours, a well-rehearsed script unfolded. Israeli officials and media outlets condemned the strike as a war crime, portraying it as a deliberate assault on innocent lives and a violation of international norms. But for anyone who has been watching Israel’s own conduct in Gaza, the outrage sounds more like theatre than tragedy.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted no time. “The tyrants in Tehran will pay the full price,” he declared, as headlines around the world amplified his fury. Defence Minister Israel Katz escalated the rhetoric further, likening Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei to “a modern Hitler” who “cannot continue to exist.” Health Minister Uriel Buso labelled the attack “an act of terror,” accusing Iran of “deliberately targeting innocent civilians and medical teams.” And National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, never one for understatement, compared the Iranian regime to Nazis, stating it had “launched missiles at hospitals, the elderly, and children.”

Israeli media echoed this message with near-uniform intensity. Channel 12 News broadcast dramatic footage of blown-out windows, injured staff, and smoke billowing from Soroka’s emergency ward, describing “extensive damage” and panicked hospital evacuations. The Israeli Foreign Ministry amplified the crisis online: “BREAKING: A direct hit has been reported at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.”

There was no pause, no ambiguity. No time for verification or nuance. The narrative was fixed: Iran had attacked a hospital, and therefore committed an unspeakable war crime.

But one crucial detail was missing from most accounts: Soroka Medical Centre does not only treat civilians. It’s one of Israel’s largest military hospitals, where Israeli soldiers are treated and rehabilitated, including many who were wounded during Israel’s ongoing assault in Gaza, a campaign that has drawn widespread condemnation for its devastating toll on civilians.

In that light, Soroka can reasonably be described as a dual-use facility, a term Israel itself has invoked repeatedly to justify strikes on hospitals in Gaza. By its own standards, Israel has argued that when a hospital houses militants or military assets, it loses its protected status under international law and becomes a legitimate military target.

When is a hospital not a hospital?

This is where the hypocrisy becomes not just evident, but unbearable.

Since October 7, 2024, Israel has systematically targeted dozens of hospitals across the Gaza Strip.

According to the World Health Organization, at least 32 hospitals and 53 primary health centres have been damaged or completely destroyed. The attacks on Al-Shifa, Nasser, Indonesian, and Al-Quds hospitals are among the most egregious. These strikes killed medical staff, patients, and displaced families seeking shelter. Premature babies died after incubators lost power. Doctors were detained. Emergency rooms became morgues. Entire hospital campuses were reduced to rubble.

Israel justified every one of these attacks using a single, sweeping rationale: “Hamas uses hospitals as command centres.” This justification became an all-purpose pretext to obliterate Gaza’s fragile medical infrastructure.

But here’s what’s crucial: no concrete evidence was ever presented to support these claims. Occasionally, Israel released grainy drone footage, computer-animated diagrams, or shaky videos purporting to show tunnel entrances. These were rarely verified. Often, the claims were repeated endlessly in Israeli and Western media despite a glaring absence of concrete proof. When international observers, human rights organisations, or journalists demanded evidence, Israel stonewalled, deflected, or doubled down.

The burden of proof was simply inverted. Israel claimed Hamas was hiding in hospitals; therefore, the hospitals could be hit. No questions asked.

Western leaders largely accepted these claims at face value. US officials echoed Israel’s talking points. British and German politicians emphasised Israel’s “right to self-defence.” Mainstream media outlets ran headlines that blurred the distinction between hospital and hideout. The devastation in Gaza was not framed as a violation of international law, but as an unfortunate byproduct of a necessary war.

But now, the script is flipped. When Iran targets an Israeli hospital — one known to serve wounded soldiers — the outrage is thunderous. The moral language is absolute. This, we are told, is terrorism. A war crime. An assault on civilisation itself.

Moral framework

This contradiction is not just jarring. It undermines the very legal and ethical frameworks that Israel claims to defend. You cannot bomb hospitals for 20 months, excuse it as military necessity, and then call it a war crime when it happens to you.

And there’s more. Israel has long been accused of embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas, including near schools, residential neighbourhoods, and yes, hospitals.

Human rights groups like B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have documented such practices for years. Even Israeli journalists have reported on the military’s use of civilian spaces. Yet when Hamas is accused of the same, it becomes not just a talking point, but a death sentence.

To be clear: hospitals must never be targets. Not in Beersheba. Not in Tehran. Not in Gaza City. Medical facilities are explicitly protected under the Geneva Conventions, and attacks on them — especially those causing civilian casualties — are serious breaches of international humanitarian law.

But what cannot stand is the double standard. Israel cannot claim moral clarity while wading through the moral wreckage of its own making. It cannot flatten Gaza’s hospitals and then act as though the laws of war suddenly matter when one of its own is hit.

A moral high ground must be earned. It cannot be summoned on cue through press releases or social media posts. Right now, Israel is standing atop a mountain of medical rubble and insisting it is a pedestal.

Until there is real accountability for what has happened — and continues to happen — in Gaza, every appeal Israel makes to international law, to civilian protection, to the sanctity of medical spaces, will ring hollow. Justice cannot be selectively applied. Human rights do not come with an exception clause.

If hospitals are sacred, they must be sacred for everyone.