There are recent parallels, but this time by Biden who was fed false information. Though this time, the white house retracted that statement immediately instead of waiting for things to blow over[1].
I suppose the difference was that this time, the US government had nothing planned to capitalize on the lie.
>"given the countless cases of verified Iraqi [here: Israeli, the author] human rights violations", it was "unnecessary and counterproductive to invent atrocities."
In that sense I do see the connection between that made-up event and the bombed hospital, in that it doesn't really matter if this specific case happened, there's enough true ones to go around.
That is to only say that I now get your point, not that I agree to what I would call muddying the waters.