Hamas's lies have been debunked, why does the world blindly parrot Gaza aid killings? - comment
Hamas knows what the international press and the UN want to hear. It feeds them the right numbers, images, and soundbites.
At the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War, it was indiscriminate bombings, forced displacement, and a notoriously high casualty rate that was mysteriously missing any men of fighting age within the Gaza region.
Now, the media narrative is the indiscriminate shooting by Israeli forces on those Gazans waiting for aid. In recent weeks, the international conversation around humanitarian aid in Gaza has returned to a familiar and troubling refrain: Israeli forces are allegedly killing civilians trying to access food. The reports, the headlines, and the outrage are all immediate and explosive.
Due to the ongoing issue of aid in Gaza, a new initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), was established in February of this year to distribute humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
Foreign governments have weighed in on Israel’s alleged actions. The UN has accused Israel of every crime under the sun it feels. All very immediate and explosive. Good for headlines.
But dig even slightly beneath the surface, and the foundations once again begin to crack. The question that must be asked of the world, yet again, is this: Why are you still trusting Hamas?
According to reports from May 31 through June 10, more than 100 Palestinians have allegedly been killed near aid distribution points in Gaza. These figures, repeated across Reuters, AP, and cited by the United Nations, come, unsurprisingly, from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and its affiliated sources.
These same sources, which have for years produced wildly exaggerated and politically motivated statistics, are once again setting the narrative. And the world is falling in line.
Let’s take a closer look.
From June 1 to June 10 alone:
June 1: 31 civilians killed, Khan Yunis – Source: AP, Reuters
June 2: 12 civilians killed – Source: AP
June 3: 27 civilians killed – Source: AP, OHCHR
June 8: 4 civilians killed – Source: Reuters
June 9: 14 civilians killed, over 130 injured – Source: AP
June 10: 17 civilians killed – Source: Reuters
That’s 105 deaths in just 10 days, all tied to aid distribution efforts. And while initial headlines scream, “Israeli fire kills civilians,” the IDF consistently counters: these were warning shots, crowd control measures, or responses to perceived threats in combat zones.
Even the GHF has released statements countering the media myths that have been proclaimed. But no matter. Hamas’s health authorities issue their death tolls. Uncorroborated, undocumented, and unverified. And once again, just like previous reports of Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip, they are instantly treated as fact.
The UN’s own Human Rights Office went so far as to say that “willful impediment of access to food and relief for civilians in Gaza may constitute a war crime,” while citing Palestinian Health Ministry data to support its accusations.
Yet this same body failed to even mention that Hamas has hijacked aid trucks, diverted food supplies to its fighters, and even sold donated food at extortionate prices.
Hamas, which has stolen much of the aid intended for its own people, has charged them triple the price to buy from a Hamas-run warehouse. Hamas has literally and willingly placed its own people in harm’s way to turn the international narrative against Israel (and has done such a successful job).
Once again, the nations are silent. The outrage over Hamas’s actions is minimal. Where is the outrage at Hamas’s war crimes?
The Fletcher Farce
Enter Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian aid, whose job description includes neutrality. Fletcher recently accused Israel of committing “forced starvation,” classifying it as a “war crime” in a BBC interview.He also repeated the now-debunked claim that “10,000 aid trucks” were waiting to enter Gaza, a statement so absurd that even veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour pushed back.
Israeli officials swiftly responded: There are no 10,000 trucks. In fact, there are hundreds of trucks that the UN itself hasn’t picked up from inside Gaza. The routes are open. The aid is there. The bottleneck is not Israel. It’s the inefficiency and dysfunction of Hamas and international agencies that trust it.
Fletcher also recycled the myth that 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours if aid were not allowed in. The UN itself was forced to walk that back, admitting it was a year-long projection misused for rhetorical effect. Desperation is one thing, but deception is another.
This is a dangerous and deliberate distortion of facts.
A terror group with a PR Dept.
It’s not news that Hamas lies. It has lied and lied and lied in every conflict with Israel since it came to power 20 years ago. It lied about weapons being stored in hospitals. It lied about the use of human shields. And now, it continues to lie about civilian deaths and aid disruption because it works. Because the world swallows it up and at no point questions where the information is coming from.Why? Because Hamas knows what the international press and the UN want to hear. It feeds them the correct numbers, the right images, the right soundbites, often with little to no verification, and the press dutifully reports it.
A headline shouted out from the rooftops does wonders for Hamas’s PR. The corrections to the stories, when they do eventually come, are minimal and meek. The world remembers the headlines; it forgets the amendments.
Take the repeated claims of Israeli targeting of hospitals. When Israel produced intelligence, surveillance, and even physical evidence of Hamas operating out of Shifa Hospital and other medical centers, the headlines didn’t change. The narrative was already baked in.
The same has happened with the issue of humanitarian aid.
Or consider the consistent omission of military-aged males from death tolls. The Gaza Health Ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and terrorists. It allows every Hamas casualty to be relabeled a civilian. Yet independent investigations (like those conducted after the 2014 and 2021 wars) often find that a substantial portion of those killed were male, of fighting age, and involved in combat. The current war is no different, yet we’re still served the same cooked statistics.
No one denies the suffering in Gaza. The humanitarian conditions are catastrophic, and every innocent death is a tragedy. But the facts must matter.
When Hamas manipulates data and the UN echoes it without scrutiny, they are not helping the ordinary Palestinians, many of whom would be glad to see the back of Hamas. They are assisting Hamas. They are prolonging the war. They are silencing the very voices of Gazans who fear their own rulers, although some are beginning to strike back.
So the question remains: Why does the world continue to believe Hamas?
