According to a quote widely attributed to Winston Churchill, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” This is absolutely true when it comes to reporting about Israel, except even more so. We could say that anti-Israel lies become canonized, even becoming part of sacred religious lore, before the truth even gets out of bed.
This will now be the case with the lie that the IDF massacred more than 100 Gazan civilians trying to get desperately needed food supplies.
So, not only do the Israelis cruelly and inhumanly starve these Gazans to death, but they cynically send in limited numbers of food trucks and then massacre the starving masses trying to get food for themselves and their families.
Before sharing what really happened in Gaza this week – and it is quite tragic – and without minimizing for a moment the very real suffering of the people of Gaza, let me share with you an Instagram post commenting on the event shortly after it took place. (I’m not linking to the comment since I have no desire to draw attention to the individual who posted it for quite a few reasons. It was sent to me by a pro-Israel pastor.)
“Israeli tanks and snipers MASSACRED over 100 starving, defenseless Palestinian refugees and injured over 700 more this morning while they were waiting for trucks to deliver food and other humanitarian aid. It is indisputable that this is a war crime atrocity of epic proportions by the genocidal sociopaths who run Israel’s current government and the IDF.
“The most disturbing part is that American Christian Zionists will support it – even CELEBRATE it . . . .” (The post gets even worse after this, repeating some of the more ridiculous antisemitic libels of the day.)
So, Israeli tanks and snipers carried out an intentional massacre of more than 100 starving and defenseless refugees, something that will now be celebrated by American Christian Zionists.
Yes, these “brainwashed” Christians (to use a word found later in this same post), it’s as if their sentiments will be, “Way to go Israel! Slaughter and butcher those defenseless Palestinians! God bless you, Israel! Kill them all in Jesus’ name!”
Sadly, while not everyone will be as unhinged as this individual, the false report has already been canonized. Not only did the Israelis bomb a hospital in Gaza earlier in the war, slaughtering hundreds, but now they have massacred unarmed civilians trying to get food.
As for the hospital bombing, as pointed out by David Harel in Haaretz, which is to Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel what MSNBC is to Donald Trump in America, “it turned out, with a high level of certainty, that the incident occurred due to an accident in the firing of a Palestinian rocket, which landed on the hospital, and that the number of those killed was less than a tenth of what had been reported earlier.”
As for the alleged massacre this week, the New York Sun reports what really took place, noting that “most of the deaths were caused by a stampede.” This occurred when 30 food trucks traveling together “were surrounded by a throng of desperate civilians in northern Gaza trying to confiscate bags of foodstuff before they reach Hamas or criminals that take the aid to sell later.”
Aerial footage released by the IDF indicates that “most of the victims were crushed as the Arab drivers pushed the trucks into the crowd.”
In another incident, also in southern Gaza, when a crowd surrounded an Israeli tank crew as food supplied were entering the Strip, the soldiers “first fired warning shots, which failed to deter the crowd. It later aimed at limbs. Ten people were hurt, according to the IDF, and some of them were likely killed.”
None of this actually matters, though, as this latest lie spread worldwide instantly, drawing “near universal condemnation” (to quote the Sun again).
As explained by Harel, “On the basis of an initial investigation, the IDF said Thursday that most of the casualties – dead and injured – were caused by the crowding and that only a small number of casualties occurred as a result of the soldiers opening fire. It's hard to cast blame on junior commanders on the ground, who in their perception found themselves in a situation that threatened the soldiers' lives. A video of the event, filmed from the air, shows masses of people crowding around trucks.”
That being said, “The Israeli version of the events appeared late, some 10 hours after the shooting. It's doubtful whether the Israeli explanations will make a difference to anyone. The grim scenes from the incident dovetail with a statistic that the Health Ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, published on Thursday, according to which about 30,000 Palestinians, among them 12,500 children and teenagers have been killed in the war. Israel is perceived internationally as bearing the chief responsibility for the war's consequences, even though Hamas initiated the murderous terrorist attack of October 7, and its methods and views do not get much sympathy in the West.”
To repeat, “It's doubtful whether the Israeli explanations will make a difference to anyone,” and, “Israel is perceived internationally as bearing the chief responsibility for the war's consequences.”
This means that, all the more, we must continue to combat lies with truth, continue to remind people of the horrors of October 7, continue to expose worldwide antisemitism, continue to point out that the root cause for Gazan suffering is Hamas, and continue to defend Israel’s right to defend itself.
We can also ask why there has not been a universal call for the release of all hostages – surely, even Islamic nations, let alone the rest of the world, should agree on this – in contrast with the incessant calls for a ceasefire.
And we can ask why there is not more world pressure on Egypt to allow Gazan civilians to be housed temporarily in their country, something Egypt has refused to do. This would have alleviated massive suffering for the people as well as enabled Israel to bring down Hamas much more effectively, also minimizing Israeli losses in the process.
But no, it is only Israel that is to blame.
Again, this does not mean that Israel has done everything perfectly in this war or that we should not be grieved over the terrible loss of Palestinian life, even if the figures of the Hamas-run, Gazan Health Ministry are exaggerated and fail to distinguish the killing of terrorists from the deaths of civilians. The losses are still high, the suffering of the Gazan people acute, and the needs growing greater by the day. This is terrible and real news.
But let us distinguish the lies from the truth, however old that exercise becomes. Telling the truth is one weapon that we can never surrender.