You couldn't make it up

How a catalogue of lies and misinformation about Gaza has actually led to swinging a key by-election in the UK.

Five months from the war in Gaza ending – if we take the point of the last Israeli hostages being released as ‘the end’ – it was discovered that aid and food to Gaza through UNRWA was being skimmed by Hamas by as much as 30-40%. As a result, a new aid organization was formed titled the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Fund’, GHF, with the aim of getting food directly to Palestinian families without skimming by Hamas – which was, of course, being used to further support their arms and war effort.

Hamas saw this as an immediate threat to their income, so started spreading false stories about Israelis killing Palestinians trying to get aid. These stories were in turn picked up by Palestinian news ‘stringers’ in the pay of Hamas and repeated without question or checking by news outlets worldwide. For almost two months hardly a day went by without a fresh horror story about Israelis killing poor Palestinians while simply trying to collect food.

This reached such a level that finally a strong message was shot across the bows of news outlets by no less than Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel, with the following statement:

‘Without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press have reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These reports were FALSE. Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos.

It is Hamas that continues to terrorize and intimidate those who seek food aid. The only source for these misleading, exaggerated, and utterly fabricated stories came from Hamas sources, which are designed to fan the flames of antisemitic hate that is arguably contributing to violence against Jews in the United States. Media sources who willingly parrot these libelous allegations should recant their fake news stories, apologize, and pledge to practice actual reporting of fact instead of engaging in dangerous propaganda that assists the terror group Hamas as they continue to hold innocent hostages for over 600 days after butchering over 1,200 people on October 7th.

The efforts of GHF have resulted in over 5 million meals to civilians without incident. For the New York Times, AP, and CNN to be part of a Hamas-fed false narrative is reprehensible. It represents more than mere sloppy journalism. It’s feeding and inciting violence against innocent people in the United States.

We are demanding an immediate retraction of the lies and are appealing to all media sources to act with objective professionalism to cover actual events instead of being a partner of terrorism by blindly following Hamas news releases.’

However, despite this strong message, these stories spread by major news outlets continued with abandon with reports of Israeli fire killing Gazans as they desperately try and get aid, yet when examined deeper – particularly when sourcing GHF worker accounts, who are directly on the spot distributing the aid – there have been no such incidents of the IDF killing Gazans. The only verifiable action has been of the IDF firing in the air to warn off a pressing crowd, who it appeared were trying to loot aid.

But these numerous false stories and images of Palestinians in Gaza struggling to get food and aid obviously had a strong impact. So much so that Greta Thunberg, undoubtedly the world’s champion ‘green’, set out with a small ‘aid flotilla’ to Gaza. Little more than a publicity stunt, since the amount of aid in the flotilla was only 3% of one truckload, at a time when GHF were bringing in 100 trucks a day of food and aid to Gaza. Greta and her little band of supporting ‘Greens’ were apprehended by Israeli forces off the coast of Gaza, and there were lame attempts to try and claim Israeli ‘mishandling and brutality’ – but the truth of the matter was they were all given sandwiches and water by the Israeli troops and were put on flights back to their home countries, all paid for by the Israeli government. A stark contrast to the starvation, brutality and rape of Israeli hostages by Hamas.

Also missed by Greta and her band of Greens is the fact that for two years leading up to October 7^th, Hamas fired a succession of incendiary balloons over southern Israel to burn and scorch hundreds of thousands of acres of pastureland and farmland. Hardly something that a ‘Green party’ should be supporting.

But it seems that Greta’s little flotilla ‘stunt campaign’ struck a chord with the ‘Greens’, because suddenly they became ardent supporters of Gaza and Hamas. To the extent that in the recent campaign in UK’s Gorton and Denton – seen as pivotal because it’s one of the first by elections since Labour and Kier Starmer took control – little mention was made of the ecology or success of wind farms. The usual staples of ‘Greens’. Instead, the Gaza drum was beaten strongly – no doubt to appeal to the area’s 30% Pakistani-Muslim population. And the bid succeeded. The ‘Greens’ won their first by-election ever, with ‘Reform’ coming second and Labour pushed into a weak third. When for 30 years, Gorton and Denton has been a Labour stronghold.

The only positive to take away from the whole debacle is ‘Reform’ coming 2nd ahead of Labour, which when rolled out into a nationwide electorate where the Muslim vote is no more than 5%, bodes well for them. It seems unlikely that the ‘Greens’ would perform as well on a ‘Gaza ticket’ in areas with a negligible Muslim vote. In fact, the ‘Greens’ could ensure ‘Reform’ win the next UK general election by robbing Labour of the Muslim vote in key areas.

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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.

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