The IDF on published footage it said showed gunmen opening fire at Gazans seeking to collect looted humanitarian aid in Khan Younis. It should be manifestly clear that Israel has no interest in deliberately gunning down Gaza noncombatants approaching an aid center set up with Israel and American backing. Hamas, by contrast, has every interest in seeking to doom the aid project, which threatens its hold on Gaza aid, and constitutes an alternative to the trucks of supplies it has routinely commandeered, and either used for its forces or sold off to helpless Gazans to finance its efforts to recruit and revive. The trouble is that Israel does not maintain the mechanisms necessary to make very much at all manifestly clear.
IDF Spokesman Effie Defrin said Hamas’s figures were “exaggerated.” Relating to Tuesday’s incident, Defrin said “warning shots were fired” at suspects “who posed a threat to our forces, far from where they were supposed to be.” The shots were aimed so as “not to hit anyone,” he said.
On three successive days this week, Hamas alleged that Israeli troops opened fire at and near the newly established US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution center in Rafah.
On Sunday, the terror group charged that 31 Gazans were killed by Israel, on Monday that the death toll was 3, and on Tuesday that 27 were killed. The way Hamas depicted it, and much of the world reported it, Israel was brutally gunning down Gaza civilians who were desperately seeking access to vital food supplies.
A False Massacre Report, Based On Anonymous Sources
On June 1, the BBC issued a breaking update claiming that “Israeli tanks” opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians at an aid site, killing 26. The allegation was presented without confirmation, based solely on anonymous sources: “residents and medics” and a “local Palestinian journalist.” The details, according to the BBC’s own Middle East Editor Sebastian Usher, included bodies carted away by donkey, and “thousands” of civilians gathered near the U.S.-backed aid center in Rafah.
The story appeared as a major headline update to an already misleading and sympathetic headline about Hamas’ ceasefire rejection: “Hamas pledges to free 10 living hostages but seeks permanent ceasefire in response to US plan.”
That headline stayed live for much of the day. The claim of 26 dead later became 31, courtesy of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. And despite a firm denial from the GHF — stating unequivocally that reports of deaths and injuries were “false and fabricated” and warning that the lies were being “actively fomented by Hamas” — the BBC did not retract the story.
#fakenews #gaza #israel
