RUTHFULLY YOURS

When Iran’s proxy Hamas, on behalf of Iran, invaded Israel to carry out the worst massacre against the Jews since the Holocaust, the thin civilizational veneer that used to stop most of “elite” society from displaying the ugliest parts of its Jew-hatred completely peeled off. It is now on full display, though still cloaked in the transparent pretense of “anti-Zionism.” Its vilifications, falsely defaming the Jewish state and its inhabitants, embody echoes of Nazi propaganda.

Since Hamas launched the Gaza war in October 2023, contemporary versions of the false accusation that Jews kill non-Jews to use their blood for ritual purposes have proliferated. It is a lie that was widely spread by the Nazis, especially by Julius Streicher, the propagandist and publisher of the Third Reich newspaper, Der Stürmer.

This time the lies are being fabricated by Iran and its proxy Hamas — with the generous help of the “international community” not least the UN, see also here, the Red Cross and a variety of NGOS, see for instance here, here, here and here — and eagerly and enthusiastically spread and propagandized by Western legacy media, see for instance here, here, here, here and here for just a tiny fraction of the more recent examples. Having long ago discarded religion, the “ritual” aspect of the libel has been removed, and instead the media spreads the totally false messages that Jews kill for “genocide” and “apartheid.”

Iran, Hamas and their more-than-willing helpers in the West have been through several iterations of this defamation in the past 20 months and continue to regularly recycle them to fit the current Hamas agenda of maintaining control in Gaza, presumably to continue presiding over Israel’s eradication.

At the moment, however, Hamas needs to regain control of the aid entering Gaza. These donations are distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by the US and Israel. Previously, aid was distributed via UNRWA, which is fully infiltrated by Hamas — see here for nearly 50 examples of Hamas-UNRWA collaboration — which meant that the terrorist organization was able to siphon off the humanitarian aid and use it for its own purposes and sell the leftovers at premium prices to the Gazans for whom it was intended for free. As the GHF is independent, UNRWA and a host of other NGOs are clamoring for it to be abolished and the UN to be reinstated.

To make GHF go away, Hamas has been shooting at Gazans lining up for aid at the sites where GHF operates and then accusing — together with its accomplice UN — Israel of committing the massacres. The legacy media, as always, have eagerly spread the lie, while the UN keeps repeating it at every possible occasion, conjuring up the Nazi-like images of evil Jewish soldiers killing helpless Palestinians children as they line up to receive aid:

“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said. Most recently, Hamas has enlisted what the media claims to be 170 charities and NGOs — including Oxfam, Amnesty International and Save the Children — who have called for an end to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

It has apparently made no difference to mainstream media reporting that there is footage showing that Hamas deliberately shoots at Gazans waiting for aid, or shoots them as punishment for receiving it; or that local Gazans working for GHF have testified that Hamas deliberately targets the aid sites where GHF operates and that 12 of its local staff have been murdered, and others tortured; or that audio has been released in which a resident in Gaza explains how Hamas operates:

“Look, this is how Hamas forces operate. They shoot the people… deliberately… They want to show the people that the [Israeli] army is shooting at them.”

It has also apparently made no difference to the mainstream media that the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily newspaper in the Palestinian Authority, a self-declared enemy of Israel, has, in an article,

“accused Hamas of murdering Gaza residents trying to get to the American food aid distribution centers established in the Gaza Strip. According to the article, ‘death squads’ from Hamas’s Al-Sahm unit hunt down Gazans coming to the distribution centers, shoot at them and kill them on the pretext that they are collaborating with the distribution centers and with Israel.

“The article added that Hamas does not hesitate to target Gaza residents in order to maintain its monopoly on the distribution of food and thus its control, and that Hamas steals the food aid and sells it on the black market.”

Iran and Hamas would be nothing if it were not for the legacy media, which for all purposes has become Der Stürmer of our times; a media that displays zero desire to investigate and question the claims of Hamas, instead relentlessly inciting against Israel, and feigning acute deaf- and blindness, whenever their defamatory propaganda is exposed for what it is.

The effort by Western legacy media organizations on behalf of Hamas and Iran — which have wanted to politically isolate Israel as part of their war on the Jewish state – has evidently paid off: a majority of adults in many Western countries now harboring negative views of Israel.

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, “In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed, around half of adults or more have an unfavorable view of Israel. Around three-quarters or more hold this view in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.”

As former NPR and CNN reporter Josh Levs notes, “The Mainstream Media Is Biased Against Israel. I Know, I Was Part of It.”

“For decades, many news organizations have framed their coverage of the Middle East, either consciously or unconsciously, with an anti-Israel bias. Many even have rules to enforce this bias. I know because as a journalist at two of them (NPR and CNN), I saw these rules in action.”

Former AP correspondent Matti Friedman concurs in a Free Press article:

“The New goal [in journalism] was not to describe reality, but to usher readers to the correct political conclusion…. By selectively emphasizing some facts and not others, by erasing historical and regional context, and by reversing cause and effect, the story portrayed Israel as a country whose motivations could only be malevolent, and one responsible not only for its own actions but also for provoking the actions of its enemies. The activist-journalists, I found, were backed up by an affiliated world of progressive NGOs and academics who we referred to as experts, creating a thought loop nearly impervious to external information. All of this had the effect of presenting a mass audience with a supposedly factual story that had a powerful emotional punch and a familiar villain.”

These are just two testimonies. For more, start here, here, here, here, here and here.

And there you have it.

Robert Williams is based in the United States.