Israel does everything it accuses Hamas of and worse
The Israelis have bombed hospitals, ambulances, schools, refugee camps, women, children, and the elderly as their barbaric assault on Gaza continues unabated.
Since the Palestinian resistance group Hamas’s Operation Al Aqsa Flood on Saturday, October 7, the Israelis have set in motion a campaign of extreme brutality over the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. They have openly declared intentions to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population from Gaza, and the world leaders have given the Israelis their full support to go ahead with their plans.
The state of Gaza
Gaza has been blockaded for the past 16 years, which means that the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza cannot move in and out of their little enclave by land, water, or air. They are living in what the UN special rapporteur has called a “constantly surveilled open-air prison”.
The Israeli regime controls Gaza’s electricity, medicines, food, and other essential supplies. Nothing goes in or out of Gaza without the permission of Israel.
Any resistance to their poor treatment by the Israelis is met with indiscriminate violence — which levels residential buildings, leaving countless homeless, pushing them further into misery and poverty — by the country that calls itself the “only democracy in the Middle East” while maintaining the world’s only apartheid state that has discrimination against its Arab population enshrined in law.
Since their October 7 attack, there has been a flood of accusations against Hamas, attributing to them all kinds of atrocities. However, most of those claims have turned out to be nothing but naked lies.
Beheaded babies
Among their more egregious lies, the Israelis have accused the Hamas fighters of beheading 40 Israeli babies. The beheading story was first “reported” by Nicole Zedeck of the Israeli channel i24. During a live broadcast, she claimed to have spoken to Israeli soldiers who had witnessed decapitated babies. The claim went viral on social media and has since been plastered on the front pages of a host of major Western newspapers.
Here’s The Independent newspaper from the United Kingdom with a headline that could be a poster for how not to do journalism or, alternatively, how to do propaganda.
The headline reads: “‘They decapitated women and children. We saw dead babies,’ an Israeli major claims. The bodies are hidden so it’s impossible to verify. But this village smells of death”.
Read that bit again. “It’s impossible to verify”.
Any self-respecting journalist wouldn’t dare publish a story that is impossible to verify. But everything goes when it comes to vilifying Palestinians and justifying Israeli barbarity.
Moreover, the world’s most powerful politician gave the “beheaded babies” story further ground.
US President Joe Biden announced at a press conference: “I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed, pictures of terrorists beheading children.”
Not for the first time, a US President was lying in front of the whole wide world.
The White House later walked back on Biden’s lies. “A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” the Washington Post reported.
“The president based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s spokesman and media reports from Israel, according to the White House.”
What actually happened
At a time when videos from the world’s remotest corners with a fraction of the media glare that is on Palestine spread widely, the lack of evidence for the “beheaded babies” claims pointed in only one direction: it was a lie. An extremely vicious lie.
Contrary to Hamas’s media portrayal, their Israeli hostages have a vastly different story to tell.
A woman who was held hostage by Hamas fighters in Israel with her two children recounted her interaction with them. She said: “The [Hamas] fighters entered and I said, I have two children here. That’s the first thing I tell them […] They look around then one says to me in English, ‘Don’t worry, I am a Muslim, we will not hurt you.’”
She continued: “It caught me on one side by surprise. On the other hand, it took a lot of pressure off me. I sat down with my kids, and the fighters brought a chair from the dining room. There was an armed fighter with us all the time in the room, and the rest were walking around the house. One of them sees bananas on the counter, and he asks, ‘May I eat one?’ and I say, ‘Yes, you can.’ (laughs)."
So they didn’t hurt her and her children — let alone behead them — and even took her permission before eating her food.
Another footage showed Hamas fighters releasing an Israeli hostage and her babies to safety.
But these stories won’t make any page of The New York Times or The Independent as they doesn’t serve the propaganda narrative that the Israelis and their acolytes in the Western mainstream media are pushing to justify the wholesale massacre of Palestinian citizens with nowhere to run.
Israeli war crimes
As the Israelis began their assault on the Palestinians, their defence minister Yoav Gallant announced a total siege on Gaza, justifying the move — which constitutes a war crime — by calling Palestinians “human animals”.
In a video statement, Gallant announced: “We are putting a complete siege on Gaza. […] No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed.”
The statement hasn’t elicited any condemnation from the “human rights” champions and bastions of liberalism such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
In fact, Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party in the UK, who incidentally, is a “human rights” lawyer justified Israel’s decision to lay siege on the Gazans.
According to a Middle East Eye report, “During the interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Wednesday [11 October], Starmer was asked whether a siege and cutting off water and electricity supplies to the besieged region was a proportionate response to the assault by Palestinian fighters in southern Israel.
“The former human rights lawyer responded: ‘I think that Israel does have that right, it is an ongoing situation. Obviously, everything should be done within international law, but I don't want to step away from the core principles that Israel has the right to defend herself.’”
Meanwhile, the US Senator Lindsey Graham was even more enthusiastic in his support for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Appearing on Fox News, he implored the Israelis to “level” Gaza. “We are in a religious war here, I am with Israel. Whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourselves; level the place,” he said.
So the Israelis are openly talking about and committing a genocide of a people whose land they have stolen and whom they have put in a constantly surveilled open-air prison with no way out. And the world’s most powerful nations are completely on-board with the Israeli plan. Let alone so much as say a word of criticism against the apartheid regime, the US and the UK are providing military support to Israel as it ethnically cleanses Gaza in full media glare.
At the last count, over 2,200 Palestinians have been slaughtered by the Israelis, more than 60 percent of them women and children.
Harrowing images and videos of dead and decapitated children, pregnant mothers, and elderly running for shelter from a barrage of bombs, and levelled multi-storey residential buildings, hospitals, schools, refugee shelters, have been steadily flowing out of besieged Gaza, but somehow Israel is the victim and the world’s landmarks are lighting up with the Israeli flag.
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