There’s No Evidence IDF Attacked Gaza Aid Center. U.S. Media Ran with the Hamas Claim Anyway By Brittany Bernstein
Over the weekend, media outlets including CNN, CBS, and ABC uncritically amplified Hamas’s claims that Israeli forces opened fire near a Gaza aid distribution center, killing dozens and injuring hundreds of others.
According to officials from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 31 people were killed and 170 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on civilians massing near an aid site run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Israel immediately denied it was behind the attack and released drone footage of unidentified masked men shooting unarmed civilians near the aid center.
“Findings from an initial inquiry indicate that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false,” the IDF said in a statement.
“The IDF is cooperating with the GHF and international aid organizations in order to enable the distribution of aid to the Gazan residents — and not to Hamas.”
The IDF did acknowledge firing warning shots in an effort to maintain order at the aid site, but says no one was hit.
Curiously, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the organization running the distribution center, insists nothing happened at all, releasing a statement Sunday saying that food had been “distributed today without incident.”
“We are aware of rumors being actively fomented by Hamas suggesting deaths and injuries today. They are untrue and fabricated,” the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said.
It’s not entirely clear what happened, but it’s worth noting that Hamas aggressively opposes the distribution of aid by organizations that it does not control.
It appears an attack of some kind did take place, given the drone footage released by the IDF, but no evidence has yet been produced to substantiate the Hamas line — promoted by “health officials” beholden to the terror group — that the attack was carried out by Israel. That lack of evidence didn’t stop several major media outlets from quickly running with the Hamas version of events.
“At least 31 Palestinians killed after Israeli forces open fire near Gaza aid distribution center,” a CNN headline read. (CNN later amended its headline to read, “Dozens shot dead and injured near Gaza aid hub, health ministry and doctors say.”)
The BBC went with a similar headline: “31 dead after Israeli forces attack near Gaza aid centre, says Hamas-run health ministry.”
The Associated Press at least refrained from immediately assigning blame to Israel: “Red Cross hospital in Gaza says at least 21 people were killed and another 175 were injured as they went to receive aid from an Israeli-backed foundation.”
Over on ABC’s Good Morning America, correspondent Ian Pannell reported on “devastating scenes in Gaza.”
“According to the Hamas-run health ministry at least 31 were killed, around 200 injured after Israeli forces opened fire near this U.S-backed aid site,” he said. “Food, of course, is in desperately short supply in Gaza and eyewitnesses are saying a large crowd was waiting for this center to open.”
Pannell reported that “already struggling hospitals” in the area had been “overwhelmed with victims,” with patients telling doctors they were “shot at from all sides.”
The report did acknowledge that the IDF is “strongly denying that its troops opened fire on the crowd in this incident.”
The outlets published the unchecked Hamas propaganda on the same day that an Egyptian illegal immigrant used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to set several members of a Jewish group on fire Sunday during a demonstration in Boulder, Colo. The group was gathered to express solidarity with the hostages remaining in Hamas captivity.
The suspect, 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was heard yelling “Free Palestine” during the attack. Video of the incident also shows Soliman shouting about “How many children you’ve killed” — a detail that shows the consequences of the media’s reporting on the conflict in Gaza, with many media outlets indiscriminately parroting casualty figures, including those related to women and children, from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Soliman’s attack left eight people wounded. The victims ranged in age from 52 to 88 and reportedly included a Holocaust refugee.
The media’s anti-Israel bias seemed to even creep into its reporting of the domestic terrorism incident, with many avoiding mentioning that the attack was against Jewish pro-Israel demonstrators.
Coverage of the incident included headlines that read: “Boulder attack updates: Multiple people injured in ‘act of terror,’ FBI says,” from ABC News; “Attack at Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall in Colorado burns several people, police say,” from CBS News; and “Multiple people burned in attack on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall,” from local CPR News.
The New York Times, however, not to be outdone, reported on the suspect’s illegal immigration status by placing “illegally” in scare quotes: “Suspect in Boulder Attack Was in U.S. ‘Illegally,’ Homeland Security Department Says.”
Soliman entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and then overstayed it, before getting a work permit during the Biden administration, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said.
“A terror attack was committed in Boulder, Colorado by an illegal alien. He was granted a tourist visa by the Biden Administration and then he illegally overstayed that visa. In response, the Biden Administration gave him a work permit,” Miller posted on X.
The attack comes just weeks after a left-wing, anti-Israel gunman shot and killed two young Israeli embassy staffers, one Israeli and the other American, outside of the Capital Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. The gunman in that attack, Elias Rodriguez, chanted “Free, free Palestine.”
Headline Fail of the Week
The Washington Post reports on a mystery that is confusing no one but its reporters: “The mysterious drop in fentanyl seizures on the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“The reasons behind the decrease of fentanyl seizures in the U.S. and along the Mexico-U.S. border are complex,” the outlet explains, apparently failing to take into account the power of deterrence in the form of stricter border policies from one administration to the next.
Media Misses
- Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg apparently doesn’t “understand” the “narrative” that the media covered for President Biden’s declining mental acuity.
“I don’t understand how this narrative is developed that the media was covering for Biden,” Goldberg said Friday when he interviewed CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, who have a new book out about Biden’s decline and its cover-up. “I think what might be going on here is the lack of understanding about how reporting works,” Goldberg said. “In order to prove that he’s diminished, you have to have people, sources inside telling you this.” Yet one could argue reporters in the White House press corps were ignoring what they were seeing with their own eyes. In fact, there were numerous moments throughout Biden’s presidency where conservatives publicly expressed concerns about Biden’s health based on his appearances at public events, and they were met with outrage and deflections from both the administration and members of the media, who undoubtedly participated in that cover-up.
- Michael Schneider, executive editor for Variety’s TV section, says The Boys and The Handmaid’s Tale are closer than ever to becoming reality. Schneider said The Boys, which is based on a group of superheroes who cause more chaos than good, “feels a lot less fictional every season it’s on the air.” Meanwhile, he claimed the events that take place in the dystopian Handmaid’s Tale series “don’t seem so far-fetched anymore.”
- New York Timescolumnist David Brooks says Elon Musk belongs on a list with other mass murderers in history because of his role in DOGE’s cuts to USAID. “So far, 55,000 adults have died of AIDS in the four months since Trump was elected; 6,000 children are dead because of what DOGEdid. That’s just PEPFAR, the HIV. You add them all up, that’s 300,000 dead, and we’re four months in. You add that all up and accumulate that over four years the number of dead grows very high,” Brooks said on PBS NewsHour.
“There are mass murderers in the world, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, Stalin. We don’t have anybody on the list from America,” Brooks added.
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