War Day #147 Hamas Withholds Humanitarian Aid at Gunpoint

Friday, March 1

I was going to tell funny stories on Fridays, but today I’m getting multiple requests for an analysis of yesterday’s humanitarian aid debacle. So.

Here we go again. I feel like, every war, I write the same article, after the international media get it wrong. Is it doing any good? (Not much, or I wouldn’t have to keep writing it.)

It’s always the same: Something bad happens. Hamas blames Israel. The press and the world immediately jump in and blame Israel. There are declarations by the UN, that the US usually vetoes pending more details; there are condemnations by the usual suspects including Turkey and South Africa, and several small countries that no one has ever heard of. Israel is slow to respond, because they’re checking facts (remember checking for facts?) and eventually they show photos and video proving it didn’t happen the way the Palestinians are saying. They are drowned out by the cacophony of world castigation.

Three weeks later, there is a two-line correction on page 83 of the Akron Beacon Journal.

The fact that it happens the same way consistently (ie, Hamas lying, Israel taking a few hours or days to investigate and then coming out with what months later is proven to be true) makes no difference.

Yesterday, it was the stampede.

Gazan civilians, possibly as many as 50 though likely not the several hundred Hamas is claiming, were killed when thousands simultaneously attacked and then began looting 30 incoming aid trucks, and were trampled.

Armed members of the crowd (likely Hamas) began shooting, at which point the (Egyptian) truck drivers drove through the crowd to escape, injuring additional civilians.

The trucks made it a mile or two further north, and were then stopped by more armed Gazan gunmen (ie, Hamas) and the vehicles were then stolen, aid and all.

Hamas is claiming it as a massacre (and they and the Arab press are claiming over 800 dead and injured, though video evidence says otherwise) but it is clear from the videos that this was mostly a trampling.

At some point, several dozen Gazans took the opportunity of the chaos to rush towards the Israeli military checkpoint. Israeli soldiers fired warning shots. When that didn’t serve as a deterrent, the soldiers were told to fire at legs, which they did. No one was killed, but this also contributed to the injured.

(Note that the Israeli checkpoint does not house any humanitarian aid: The only reason to storm it is to hurt Israeli soldiers. )

Then the lying started. Despite Israeli satellite video showing pretty clearly what happened, and none of that video displaying Israeli soldiers firing on the larger crowd.

Hamas, without providing evidence, accused the IDF of committing a “massacre.” The Gazan journalists used words like ‘carnage’ and put the blame firmly on Israel.

And the lying wasn’t limited to Hamas.

“Israeli forces opened fire on Thursday as a crowd gathered near a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza City in a chaotic scene in which scores were killed and injured, according to Gazan officials and the Israeli military, which attributed most of the deaths to a stampede,” per the New York Times, strongly suggests the Israelis fired at the crowd - when the truth is Hamas fired at the crowd, and Israeli troops fired only at the crowd rampaging towards them. In case you’re slow and didn’t get the NYT’s innuendo, the headline reads: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd Aid Trucks, a Crush, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll.”

The Wall Street Journal went with “Israeli Forces Fire on Palestinian Civilians Amid Aid Delivery Chaos.” (At what point do the “Palestinian civilians” metamorphose into militants? How many Israeli soldiers do they need to attack and kill to lose that coveted civilian status they all seem to carry?) Their subtitle acknowledges that the “two sides gave starkly different accounts.” So why is the Hamas narrative the one the media always goes with, despite Hamas’ track record for (lack of) veracity?

It didn’t help that all world leaders used the opportunity to jump on Israel.

Josep Borrell, the top E.U. diplomat, was as usual “horrified by news of yet another carnage among civilians in Gaza desperate for humanitarian aid.” (I believe we’re still waiting for his horror about October 7, though he has several times chastised Israel for its “rageful” response.)

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “deep indignation at the images coming from Gaza where civilians have been targeted by Israeli soldiers.”

The real question isn’t even what happened this particular time, though I for one am not planning to be surprised when Israel’s version of events is proven.

The real question is why Israel is so consistently blamed for everything.

The real question is why the world screams when Israel routs out a missile launcher hidden under a Gazan hospital, but when Hamas missiles almost hit Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon earlier this week, there was no outcry.

Why the US media says so much about the Gazan civilians, but so little about Hamas’ still-daily missiles to Israeli population centers.

Why October 7’s trauma and over 100 kidnapped civilian hostages are seen as justified. Justified.

Shouldn’t the US newspapers know all this?

Shouldn’t they know that headlines blaming Israel invariably turn out to be untrue?

That when humanitarian aid comes in, Hamas grabs it, making the people more and more desperate?

That we know Hamas lies, and this is a near-identical situation to the hospital debacle early in the war?

That instead of using weapons to protect their citizens, Hamas is using citizens to protect their weapons?

That if you’re going to lie about all the circumstances, it’s really easy to get public opinion on your side?

And what is this nonsense that all the media dutifully reported, that Hamas was pausing the ceasefire negotiations because of this debacle? Only Israel seems to have been engaged in these negotiations: Hamas has been refusing to negotiate: They’re holding out for and encouraging a wider attack on the Temple Mount and Jerusalem during Ramadan.

When the encouraged Palestinian masses at the Temple Mount throw rocks and the mobs rush at and shoot at the Israeli soldiers, and Israeli forces shoot into the air and then at legs, and then the mob tramples itself and Palestinians are killed, will the headlines be “Hamas enables Palestinian militants’ deaths”? Or will it be “Israeli Temple Mount forces fire on Palestinian worshippers”?

People: Gaza desperately needs humanitarian aid.

Hamas seems to be deliberately seizing the aid to keep the populace starving.

And now Hamas has engineered events, once again, to put Israel in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t position. And the world, instead of thinking outside the box - like, just one example, humanitarian aid checked by Israel for weapons and then *airlifted* to exactly where it is needed in Gaza so it can’t be as easily seized by Hamas - seems as usual much less interested in helping the Gazans, and much, much more interested in blaming Israel.

And we are all so very, very tired of having to explain this, again and again.

Is anyone even listening?

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