Earlier today, we looked at the debunked story of a supposed Israeli missile strike on the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City and the likely reality of what actually happened. As “whodunnit” stories go, this one no longer appears to be all that much of a mystery. Still, it created enough fallout to qualify as a media scandal at a minimum and the guilty parties need to be identified if that’s possible. So that made it strange, at least for me, when I noticed a journalist posing the question, “Does it matter who is responsible for the Gaza hospital blast?” That’s the title of a column from Bangor Daily News opinion contributor Gwynne Dyer.

At first glance, it might be easy to assume that this was a journalist who was hoping to blame Israel, but after learning that Hamas was almost certainly responsible, tried to sweep the whole thing under the rug. I’ll confess to that being my initial assumption. But upon reading the piece I realized that wasn’t what the author was doing at all. Dyer seems fully convinced that it was almost certainly the work of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or at least some bad actor from the Hamas side of the fence. What he’s questioning is whether or not getting to the truth (if that’s even possible) will make any difference in the end.

So can we figure out where the truth lies in all this — and does it even matter? Physical evidence would be best, but only one side has access to the site.

What we’re left with is the old Latin legal strategy deployed by the statesman and lawyer Cicero in a famous case in the late Roman Republic: “Cui bono?” Who benefits from this [crime]?

If it really is a deliberate crime, it’s unlikely to have been committed by the Israelis. The consequence was to stir anger in the Arab Street, influence world opinion against the Israelis, and force the cancellation of the meeting between the U.S. president and Arab leaders. All those things benefit Hamas’s cause, not Israel’s.

In the conclusion to the piece, Dyer lists the most likely explanations based on what is known thus far and puts them in descending order of probability. They are a malfunctioning PIJ rocket, an off-course Israeli missile, a false-flag operation by Hamas, or a deliberate strike by Israel conducted for inexplicable reasons. (“Cui bono?”) I tend to agree with that assessment and the order of the list.

Then the author gets to the meat of the question in the title. Does it really matter who did it? According to Dyer, no. It does not. And that’s because, “Everybody will believe what they are used to believing, and act as they usually act.”

That is a depressing, but probably very nearly true conclusion to draw. We already see that prediction playing out with many stories coming out of Gaza these days. Protesters right here in the United States are still screaming about Israel “destroying” the hospital and wiping out a nursery ward full of premature children. Others continue to insist that Hamas didn’t behead any babies during the initial attack. Or if there were babies without heads, it was not clear that Hamas was responsible. And for all we know there might be dark things happening in the other direction that Israel is in no hurry to talk about and some of us would be skeptical of.

But I would argue with Dyer in terms of it “not mattering” for a number of reasons. First of all, the assumption above is certainly true for a measurable number of people, but not everyone. There is still balanced criticism taking place in at least some media outlets and on social media platforms. And those people should have the truth available to them in as much as that may be possible.

Even more than that, the truth matters in a historical context. People will be reading about this stage of the troubles in the Middle East for generations to come and getting the details wrong could lead to even more disastrous consequences. Personally (and I hate myself for saying this), I’m still not 100% positive that Israel will be able to survive over the long run with so much of that part of the world arrayed against them, some of them in an overtly hostile fashion. Even if they prevail in this specific exchange and even if they manage to almost nearly wipe out the Hamas fighters, that won’t be a permanent solution. It will not suddenly cure the deep-rooted antisemitism and anti-Israeli hatred that permeates too much of the world. The fight will go on, and future observers and participants should have an accurate historical record to keep everything in context.

So I suppose my final answer to Mr. Dyer’s question of whether or not it really matters who did it will have to be yes. It matters very much. And even if revealing as much of the truth as we can find doesn’t shift the ground game significantly today, it will matter even more in the long run.