RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/07/how-the-media-echoes-hamas-propaganda/

Israel has come to be the most demonized nation on Earth. Its actions in Gaza are continually vilified as ‘genocidal’. Last month’s air strikes against Iran were denounced as ‘unprovoked’ and ‘illegal’. In the one-sided narrative that is now dominant in the West, the Jewish State is the aggressor, while the terror groups and regimes that attack it are cast as innocent victims. Natasha Hausdorff – barrister and legal director at the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust – joined Brendan O’Neill on his podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show, to debunk the lies we are constantly told about Israel. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the whole thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: How degraded has the debate become around Israel right now?

Natasha Hausdorff: It’s been deteriorating extremely rapidly – but this is perhaps unsurprising. For decades, we have had a media that, for the most part, propagates the lies of terrorist organisations. This has come to a head in everything we have seen being reported, in particular out of Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas. Ultimately, it is misinformation that has been informing – or perhaps disinforming – public debate.

O’Neill: What did you think when you saw a very large crowd of privileged Britons chanting ‘death to the IDF’?

Hausdorff: Let’s be clear that this was essentially calling for death to Jews. It is simply an evolution of ‘From the river to the sea’, which we’ve heard from 7 October onwards.

I saw a distinct lack of pretense to this sort of unbridled Jew hate. Glastonbury has been a very unwelcome place for Jews and Israelis for years. It was reported that there was even a Hitler flag being displayed on some of the tents. This is deeply, deeply concerning – but likely only the tip of the iceberg. There are many people who have been swept up in all this because they think it’s the fashionable thing. Apparently, it’s the way that you demonstrate your moral credentials these days – by siding with internationally proscribed terrorist organisations and saying things like ‘up Hamas’ and ‘up Hezbollah’.

O’Neill: What’s your response to the claim Israel is guilty of genocide?

Hausdorff: Not only is it grotesque, it has no basis in reality whatsoever. But it is being advanced with a very particular purpose. I remember being on SABC – the South African version of the BBC – just after South Africa had brought its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). My counterpart said, ‘Isn’t it marvelous now we can finally use Israel and genocide in the same sentence, and nobody can tell us otherwise?’.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hey-new-york-times-are-we-really-still-touting-gaza-health-ministry-propaganda/?utm_source=recirc-

This is from the Newspaper of Record today, reporting on Trump administration pressure for a ceasefire between Israel, i.e., our ally, and Hamas, i.e., the jihadist Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood designated for three decades as a foreign terrorist organization under federal law:

Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Almost all of the roughly two million Palestinian residents of in Gaza have been displaced at one point during the war, many of them repeatedly, and hunger is widespread.

Sigh.

Just to clarify:

That “Gaza health ministry” is Hamas. If its flacks are moving their lips, they are lying. This is not merely because they are liars. It is doctrinal. In Hamas-dominated schools, Palestinians children are taught the prophet Mohammed’s instruction that “War is deceit.” In warfare against Jews and other infidels, Islamic scripture encourages misdirection, ploys, and broken agreements — indeed, much of the Koran details the military conquests of the first Muslims, and deception was a feature, not a bug. (Muslims are hardly unique in this regard, Mohammed was speaking a timeless military truth. The important point here is that Hamas considers itself engaged in a jihadist war for the destruction of Israel; its statements are in furtherance of the jihad and, perforce, tend to be lies.)
The “Gaza health ministry,” i.e., Hamas, does not distinguish between “civilians” and combatants in totaling deaths because sharia supremacist ideology does not see things that way. First, “citizen” is a Western concept. Sharia societies are not free societies; they have the sharia authority and its subjects (not citizens), most of whom are Muslim; the only obligation of the ruler and the ruled is to adhere to sharia law. Second, to be sure, sharia does distinguish between combatants and other subjects; combatants are esteemed in life and venerated in death, after which Allah is believed to richly reward them. Nevertheless, insofar as the execution of the jihad is concerned, it is the duty of all Muslims — combatants and noncombatants alike — to die if that advances the cause of Allah. In Hamas’s jihad against Israel, Western garment rending about “civilian casualties” is more valuable to the cause than Hamas’s combatant operations because (as we’re seeing yet again) the former yield concessions from the Jewish state that are manifestly more valuable than whatever (increasingly little) is achieved by the latter.
Two million Palestinians have been displaced at one time or another because (a) Hamas atrociously attacked Israel on October 7, requiring Israel to respond by attacking Hamas in its Gaza stronghold, the former safe haven from which it planned, trained, recruited, and raised funds for its eliminationist jihad against Israel; (b) as a terrorist organization that specializes in war crimes, Hamas both hides among and targets civilian infrastructure; (c) Israel encouraged Gazan noncombatants to relocate in the lead-up to its combat operations against Gazan military targets to avoid killing noncombatants – honoring the spirit of international law even though Israel well knew the consequences of this approach: more casualties for its own soldiers while Hamas jihadists evaded attack, and a lengthier war; and (d) if the noncombatants had not been displaced, if Israel had simply attacked targets of military value shielded by noncombatants (which the law of war permits), the Timeswould say that Israel had intentionally “mass-murdered civilians” and committed “war crimes” (which, of course, is what commentators of the Islamist-leftist alliance say anyway).
Hunger is less widespread than the Times would have you believe because Israel is delivering millions of meals to Gazans. To the extent there is and has been hunger, it is because the billions in humanitarian aid that Israel and the West send to Gaza is stolen by Hamas. Historically speaking, some degree of hunger is a tragic fact of life in war-torn territories – it is a big part of why populations are displaced. Yet, the hunger problem in Gaza has been ameliorated because Israel has substantially defanged Hamas – since the terrorist organization has been severely weakened as a fighting and ruling force, Israel has been able to get humanitarian aid directly to the Gazan population, without diversion by Hamas.

Hope that helps.