How Hamas lies get laundered by the UN and media as truth ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, July 31, 2025

How Hamas lies get laundered by the UN and media as truth

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor, the U.N. human rights office said Tuesday.

Of the 1,054 people killed while trying to get food since late May, 766 were killed while heading to sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. human rights office. The others were killed when gunfire erupted around U.N. convoys or aid sites.

Thameen al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the U.N. rights office, says its figures come from "multiple reliable sources on the ground," including medics, humanitarian and human rights organizations. He said the numbers were still being verified according to the office's strict methodology.

All the OCHA reports I have seen are very careful not to directly blame Israel for deaths, so I wanted to find the original statement. It comes from a UN News article on July 22:

[T]he UN human rights office, OHCHR, announced on Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians have now been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food in the Strip since the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started operating on 27 May.
“As of 21 July, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food,” said OHCHR spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan. “766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organizations’ aid convoys.”
Mr. Al-Kheetan noted that the finding came from “multiple reliable sources on the ground, including medical teams, humanitarian and human rights organizations. It is still being verified in line with our strict methodology.”

Al Kheetan did not say the were killed b y the IDF. He was as careful in his statement as OCHA normally is. But UN News assumed that they were all killed by Israel in its reporting.

UN News articles are not official UN statements, they are news articles filtered through the reporters employed by the UN. AP took the UN News article and didn't distinguish between what OCHA said and what the reporter added.

The OCHA report from the next day emphasizes the normal caution in their reporting:

According to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, between 16 and 23 July, 646 Palestinians were killed, and 3,438 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 23 July 2025, the MoH in Gaza reported that at least 59,219 Palestinians were killed, and 143,045 Palestinians were injured. This includes 8,363 people killed and 31,004 injured since the re-escalation of hostilities on 18 March 2025, according to MoH. The MoH further noted that the number of casualties among people trying to access food supplies has increased to 1,060 fatalities and more than 7,207 injuries since 27 May 2025.

It properly attributes the casualty numbers to the MoH and it carefully does not directly blame Israel.

The UN News reporter editorialized by assuming both the casualty figures are accurate and that there are no other possible reasons for the civilian deaths than Israel. The AP reporter did not distinguish between the actual OCHA statement and the UN News editorializing.

What other explanation is there for casualties? Haaretz reports today:

At least 48 Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded Wednesday while waiting for food at a crossing in the Gaza Strip, according to a hospital that received the casualties.

The IDF said on Thursday that a preliminary probe found no wrongdoing or IDF-related casualties in the incident, but confirmed soldiers opened non-lethal fire as a crowd control measure. Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said the dead and wounded were among crowds massed at Zikim Crossing, the main entry point for humanitarian aid to northern Gaza.

"The forces fired dispersal shots in the area, not at the gathering, in response to a perceived threat," the IDF's statement read. "Initial investigation shows that no casualties were reported as a result of IDF fire; the details of the incident are still being investigated."

An anonymous source in the defense establishment added that "during the gathering, gunshots were heard from within the crowd, and internal friction among Gazans within the gathering. This is in addition to several cases of being run over by aid trucks."

This is not the first time we have seen reports of gunfire within crowds. The idea that a professional army trained not to fire on civilians would kill 48 in a single incident is not reasonable. It is possible that some of the warning shots could have killed one or two accidentally, but 48 is only possible with direct orders to shoot at the crowd, and not only would no IDF commander make such an order, but the soldiers themselves would refuse it - and run to the media to whistle-blow it if they were given such an order without imminent risk to themselves.

But would Hamas put people in the crowds to shoot or stab them and cause chaos that would benefit them by delegitimizing Israel securing aid shipments? Yes, they would, and they have.

The relentless anti-Israel propaganda is based on a combination of ignorance of how a professional army works, willingness to believe and spread anti-Israel propaganda, and old fashioned antisemitism in assuming that Jews are shifty liars. But multiply these factors by thousands of NGO workers and reporters and politicians and the truth is the first casualty.