Even for the already disastrous mainstream media, recent days have been especially manic. While they search for any excuse to entirely blame Israel for any hunger in Gaza, people on the ground have been posting videos of enormous amounts of aid that the United Nations is not distributing.
Amid all this, where are concrete facts? This is what happens when the media fails to be a trustworthy source of truth: mass confusion, driven by extreme passion. This is how radicalization happens.
Listen now to the latest episode to hear how the New York Times has even been violating its own rules to platform for the world’s most incendiary accusation.
In an effort to provide some clarity and avoid the cacophony of lies, I’ve been attempting to assemble things we can know with either total a very high level of certainty. Here are just a few of them.
Numbers and context
Of course there are people suffering in Gaza. We don’t know how many are facing starvation. And instincts to simply blame Israel for this ignore inconvenient truths about Hamas, other terrorist groups, and the U.N.
Big media and U.N. officials have been screaming “famine” and related terms since the war began with the most evil terrorist massacres in modern history on Oct. 7, 2023. (For example, see my examinations of New York Times stories, front-page stories, and headlines.)
Yet in July1, the Palestinian government itself said that only 66 total people had died from malnutrition throughout the entire war. (In the United States, more than 20,000 people a year die from malnutrition.) So reasonable people who care about facts have every reason to be circumspect when those same groups are now saying, effectively, “Well, this time it’s true.”
Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, says those numbers have been rising recently. The media whitewashes Hamas by using titles like “Gaza officials,” the “Gaza Health Ministry,” and similar terms.
Gazans, in line with the desires of Hamas, have been starving the hostages kidnapped from Israel for nearly two years — those who have not been slaughtered, that is. The same people screaming starvation now have been inflicting starvation on civilians this entire time.
Worldwide, an estimated 21,000 people a day die from “conflict-fuelled hunger,” according to Oxfam. Yes, these include nations that receive aid from the United States and other countries. And millions of people are believed to have been killed, including through food insecurity, as a result of the U.S.-led war on terror. The media all but ignores all this. No Jews, no news.
Pointing fingers
The U.N. has definitely failed to distribute huge amounts of aid. People on the ground have visited sites filled with materials like flour, high-calorie oils, and other staples. These materials are sitting there for the U.N. to distribute.
Many have been there for weeks. This is important to understand, because staples are designed to last. If the food had been delivered to the people who need them, there would not be this widespread hunger now. (Learn more from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
Aid convoys face dangerous terrain. Even obsessively anti-Israel media acknowledge this. The AP reports today that there has been an uptick in the number of aid trucks entering Gaza:
But almost none of it reaches U.N. warehouses for distribution. Instead, nearly all the trucks are stripped of their cargo by crowds that overwhelm them on the roads as they drive from the borders. The crowds are a mix of Palestinians desperate for food and gangs armed with knives, axes or pistols who loot the goods to then hoard or sell.
Videos have absolutely shown terrorists shooting people who were trying to collect aid. Hamas absolutely wants to maintain its death grip over the population, controlling their food supplies. Some brave Palestinians have acknowledged this.
In yet another act of “see no evil, hear no evil,” legacy media like the New York Times try to claim there’s no evidence that Hamas systematically steals aid. Here is proof of how the Times lies about its own coverage. It put out a statement saying, “The Israeli military has not disputed our findings” — even as the Israeli military was openly disputing their findings.
Here’s an Egyptian broadcaster calling out Hamas for stealing aid.
Facing so much U.N. failure and corruption, the United States and Israel worked to bring in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has managed to distribute some aid. The U.N. has assailed the GHF, which threatens U.N. power in the region. If the real goal was to get aid to people, why not welcome any group engaged in the effort, with open arms? And if the U.N. can do such a great job, why has it been failing to get aid to people of Gaza all this time?
Israeli forces have definitely opened fire at some of aid distribution sites. The IDF says warning shots have been necessary to try to keep terrorists and looters away so that people can get the aid. Hamas (“Gaza hospital officials,” etc.) insists, of course, that these forces are shooting at civilians. On this, we can only look at who is claiming what. Some soldiers carry out atrocities in every war, and those allegations must be thoroughly investigated. But Hamas allegations are also obviously untrustworthy. Learn more here:
The U.N. and numerous NGOs in the region regularly echo whatever Hamas wants them to say. This isn’t shocking. These groups are largely filled with local hires who share the same radicalization. And it’s cyclical; the people hired to work at these places agree with their views and methods. One of these is an extremist, far-left Israeli group called B’Tselem, which the media loves to use as an excuse to say all the worst possible things about Israel without evidence.
While America and much for the West turn more anti-Israel and, yes, pro-Hamas, the Arab world is standing up against Hamas. In a first, the Arab League has called for Hamas to step down.
Yes, even all this scratches the surface. There’s always a fog of war, but it’s made much worse by lying mainstream media.
More to come, so be sure to subscribe! Paid subscribers: Send me your questions, feedback, links to fact check and more.
JL
P.S. Catch up on episodes:
I originally wrote May here by mistake; it was July.