Which is worse, Israel’s lies about Gaza or its western backers who repeat those lies?
Mehdi HasanSince the horrific 7 October attack, the far-right Israeli government and its army of propagandists have deceived and fooled Western politicians and journalists not once or twice, but multiple times.
There are almost too many lies, distortions and falsehoods to keep track of. Forty babies beheaded by Hamas? Never happened. Babies baked in ovens or hung on clothes lines? False. A Bond-villain-style lair hidden under al-Shifa hospital? Nope. Palestinians in Gaza caught on camera faking their injuries? A complete fabrication. The list of Hamas hostage-takers found on a wall in the al-Rantisi children’s hospital? Sorry, no, it was just the days of the week on a calendar in Arabic.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ards-children-european-hospital-injured-dying
How about the atrocities that Israeli forces have been credibly accused of, that they then loudly denied, and then later … were found to be responsible for? The flour massacre in February? The bombing of the refugee convoy last October? The white phosphorus attack in southern Lebanon, also in October?
As my friend the Palestinian-American analyst Omar Baddar laid out in a now-viral tweet:
Yet the Israelis keep telling lies and our political and media elites in the west keep getting fooled. Shame on them.
Perhaps no Israeli lie, however, has been more damaging, more destructive, more deadly, than the claim that Unrwa – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the main organization responsible for providing aid in Gaza – has been colluding with Hamas and, worse, that 12 Unrwa employees participated in the terror attack on 7 October. Why? Because it was a lie so consequential that it helped lay the groundwork for a devastating, ongoing, man-made famine inside the Gaza Strip.
In late January, after a relentless anti-Unrwa campaign by Israel and its proxies in the west which culminated in the unproven accusation that Unrwa employees were involved in the 7 October atrocities, 16 donor countries, including Unrwa’s main financial sponsor, the United States, suspended around $450m funding to the agency.
Those countries were warned that crippling Unrwa, the largest relief organization in Gaza, would risk “hastening famine”. They were warned that the Israel’s much-vaunted intelligence dossier on Unrwa contained only “flimsy unproven allegations”.
But they trusted Israel.
Over the past three months, as Palestinian children have literally starved to death, many of those countries belatedly resumed funding to Unrwa – including the German government, which is the second-biggest source of funds for the agency.
Why? Last week, an independent review of Unrwa’s work, led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, concluded that the agency “remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services” and “as such, UNRWA is irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development”.
Crucially, referring to the Israeli government’s explosive claim that Unrwa employees were involved in Hamas attacks, Colonna’s report said that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” for these claims. It also pointed out how Unrwa actually “shares staff lists” every year with both Israel and the United States and revealed that “the Israeli Government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011”.
Since 2011. So it was all a lie. From Israel. Again.
Now, to be clear, as the Guardian’s Julian Borger reports, “there is a separate review under way into specific claims Unrwa employees took part in the 7 October attack” but “the last time there was a progress report … Israel was still withholding cooperation” with that review, too. (Even in the unlikely case that this other review does conclude that a dozen employees took part, that’s 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA staff in Gaza – or around 0.1% of the total workforce!)
The United States, nevertheless, has refused to resume its support for Unrwa; in fact, Congress passed a law banning the funding of the agency till at least March 2025.
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Which is worse, Israel’s lies about Gaza or its western backers who repeat those lies? | Mehdi Hasan
Useful idiots keep parroting provably false Israeli talking points. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me …
