Hamas Propaganda

A Palestinian pays for goods at a street market in Gaza City, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

"It was all staged."

"There was food in the next room -- the hostages who escaped from tunnels told us this."

"The captors are not starving. Our people are."

"We do not deny the humanitarian need in Gaza. But we ask the world not to fall for Hamas's lies."

"Condemn Hamas and tell them: You want to move forward? Release the hostages."

"In the last week alone, we've brought in 30,000 tons of aid -- 30 tons by air yesterday alone. The UN has almost 800 trucks they could distribute -- and failed to do so."

"So a lot could have been done."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog 

 

"Why are German and international news agencies continuing to use his [photographer working for Turkey's state-operated Anadolu Agency] images when many are clearly biased or staged?"

German newspaper Bild

 

"[Be forewarned of] manipulation attempts through professionally produced press photography."

"All parties involved in this war -- including media and intelligence services -- are using the power of imagery like never before to shape public perception." 

German Journalists' Association

 

 

According to a special report produced by The Press Service of Israel, citing United Nations' own numbers, 85 percent of the aid entering the Gaza Strip by truck since May 19, has been stolen. Black market profiteers and inflation have resulted in much of the international aid taken by force ending up in Gaza markets, at mark-ups making them unaffordable for most Palestinians. The food and medical supplies meant to be distributed freely among Palestinian civilians have instead been forcefully diverted to become pricey goods unavailable to the very people the aid was meant to help. 

"Where is the photographer? Who is standing around him? What do the people depicted in the picture see? Do they see what we suspect, for example a food distribution? Or are they facing photographers?"

"The images also have an additional function. They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Many people don't even remember these pictures."

"Hamas is a master at staging images."

"I assume that many of these pictures with starving and sick children are simply staged or come from other contexts." 

Emeritus history professor and photography expert Gerhard Paul, University of Flensburg, Germany 

The Suddeutsche Zeitung recently published an expose on the use of staged imagery by Hamas to convince international opinion that Israel has embarked on a genocidal program to prevent food and medical aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, suffering under the Israeli Defense Forces' invasion to destroy the terrorist group's capacity to carry on its intentional destruction of Israel. Hamas, infamous for its strategy of installing themselves among the general population, for placing its weapons in schools and hospitals, placing its rocket staging areas in dense population areas, uses civilians for cover.

 

The Hamas propaganda machine rests its case to the international community on the numbers of Palestinian citizens it claims become victims of Israeli bombs; those very citizens of Gaza whom Hamas deliberately places in harm's way, counting on them as sacrificial lambs to the Hamas agenda portrayed as victims of Israel's ruthless bombing campaigns which could readily be halted should Hamas surrender to the forces that engage in stopping it from conducting further carnage in Israel among Israeli citizens.

 

President Herzog, in his press appearance held up the two photographs of Israeli hostages Eviatar David and Rom Breslavsky, emaciated on the verge of death through deliberate withholding of food. While Israel is expected by the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the very population in which the greater majority expressed support for Hamas, for its barbaric savagery during the October 7 invasion that saw 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, Hamas gleefully publishes videos of its sadistic torture of Israeli hostages.

 

 

 

The international press treats these revelations of Palestinian terrorism and the results of their death-cult pledges to destroy Israel and kill all Jews as humdrum non-news, but the very country that is engaged in protecting its population from mass lethal psychopathy is damned and condemned for the condition in which Palestinian Gazans find themselves, while the terrorist group that governed Gaza and which uses its population as a living shield is described as 'resisting their oppressors'. 

 

The photographer whose work is being labelled as deceptive by Bild and Suddeutsche Zeitung regularly posts anti-Israel content on social media, while his photographs staged and otherwise, are published by the BBC and CNN along with other legacy mainstream media. Germany's press circles have revealed the manipulation of war photographs, condemned by The German Journalists' Association. 

 

As for the food appearing in the markets selling at prices inflated up to 300 percent, Palestinian sources within Gaza informed The Press Service of Israel that much of that food originated from international aid, including U.S. shipments for months on end. That food is stamped as humanitarian aid, visible to anyone within Gaza with the wherewithal to make that purchase. 

 

Al-Sahaba market in the Gaza Strip, July 28, 2025.  (photo credit: TPS-IL)

 

 

 

Slandering Israel Comes Easy

"Hundreds of aid trucks have entered Gaza with Israel's approval, but the supplies are standing idle, undelivered."

"The reason? The UN refuses to distribute the aid. Hamas and the UN prevents the aid to reach the civilians in Gaza."

"The world deserves to know the truth."

"But BBC, CNN, Daily Express and The New York Times spread a misleading story using a picture of a sick, disabled child to promote a narrative of mass starvation in Gaza -- playing into the hands of Hamas's propaganda war."

"Without proper disclosure. Without medical context. Without journalistic ethics." 

Israeli Foreign Ministry  

Humanitarian aid packages waiting to be picked up on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing on July 24, 2025. “The UN refuses to distribute the aid,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry says. Photo by  by Amir Levy/Getty Images

 British investigative journalist David Collier wrote an explanation that one of the children used as a shaming condemnation against Israel purportedly failing to ensure that sufficient humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, a child with the surname al-Matouq "suffers from cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder", data extracted from a 2025 medical file.

 

A BBC documentary titled "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone" was discovered by Mr. Collier to have been narrated by the son of a senior Hamas official. That revelation led to embarrassment on the part of the British public broadcaster and a retraction of the documentary. The photograph of the emaciated child saw sensational use by international media testifying to the devastation brought by Israel's war in Gaza and the resulting aid crisis there.

 

Last Thursday, the New York Times digital story was entitled "Gazans are dying of starvation", over the image of the skeletal child. "A horrifying image encapsulating the maelstrom of human misery gripping Gaza" was how the Daily Express captioned the heart-rending photograph of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub Al-Matouq.  

 

Unlike his brother standing by his side, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq suffers from cerebral palsy.

 

And then there is the image of five-year-old Osama al-Rakab, yet another child whose photograph saw use as an illustration of the threat of child malnourishment resulting from Israel's 'blockade' of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. Al Jazeera  featured the little boy's skeletal torso throughout a number of Italian media outlets to extract maximum disgust from news readers, holding Israel responsible for the pitiable condition of the child.

 

Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), divulged that al-Rakab "suffers from a serious genetic illness unrelated to the war", and with his mother and brother had been transported out of Gaza to an airport in Israel destined for treatment abroad. "This is what a modern blood libel looks like: A sick child. A hijacked photo. A lie that spreads faster than truth", wrote the Israeli Foreign Ministry on its X account.

 

A third infant, 11-month-old Sila Barbakh was featured on Israel's official X account, who "isn't starving", but rather "suffers from a pre-existing chronic gastrointestinal illness, unrelated to the war". In none of these pathetic photos of children suffering from dread diseases were they captioned 'for illustrative purposes only', unrelated to Hamas's wildly successful public relations' campaign aimed at the gullible West.  

 

His name is Osama al-Raqab. He has cystic fibrosis, a serious genetic illness. He’s been in Italy receiving treatment since June 12. Israel enabled his medical transfer from Gaza.

 

The Times of London found it useful when featuring tiny Barbakh's suffering from starvation to expand y explaining that the baby weighted a mere "seven-and-a-half pounds". According to data published by the Hamas-operated Gaza Health Ministry, 56 Palestinians had died in July of starvation. About half the total number reputed to have died of starvation since the war began on October 7, 2023 when Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas stormed into southern Israel to launch its campaign of rape, pillage, torture and mass slaughter. 

 

Humanitarian supplies handover was shifted away from the United Nations in May, with an U.S.-backed, Israeli-supported group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), taking the initiative. Civilians in Gaza had then to travel into areas controlled by Israeli military to receive the supplies. That solved the issues involved in Hamas armed operatives taking control of aid-delivery trucks to have the goods they carried stuffed into Hamas warehouses, and withheld from the civilian population. Some of that aid ended up at open-air marketplaces selling for exorbitant prices. Most of it was sidelined for the exclusive use of Hamas operatives.

 

Today, the IDF invited dozens of international journalists to the Kerem Shalom crossing inside Gaza, to see for themselves. Israeli Foreign Ministry

 

Reportedly, GHF distributed close to 90 million meals to civilians while facing significant opposition from Hamas, which had attacked and murdered a dozen Palestinian employees of GHF who had been working with the group to help distribute the aid. According to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Hamas offered bounties to any of their followers who kill American contractors or any Palestinians assisting their endeavours in providing aid.

 

The United Nations has accused Israel of reportedly killing hundreds of Gazans seeking aid in what is  essentially an active war zone. Many more have died resulting from stampedes in the chaos of crowds of Palestinians vying among one another to receive aid. A week ago Israel announced its intention to once again commit to airdrops of humanitarian aid, alongside Arab nations, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Airdrops had been suspended in view of properties being destroyed and civilians being hit by the airdrops.

 

People carrying aid parcels from the privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) walk along the Salah al-Din road near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip (Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images)

 

The New York Times claimed that the "Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war". In response, the Israel Defense Forces released a video showing Hamas militants with rifles "looting an aid truck", while civilians gathered about.  These same images were shared by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American academic, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. Showing Hamas operatives stealing aid during an earlier ceasefire.

 

"Right here before your eyes! But according to NGOs & media, there's still 'no evidence' of theft", charged Alkhatib who has been a vocal critic of Hamas and the Netanyahu government, both. Alkhatib shared a video in another post, showing Hamas police officers who stripped, arrested and beat Palestinians who had gone out to the GHF aid distribution site, and paid the consequences, with the aid they had gathered taken from them, for their pains. 

 

 A truck loaded with food on the Israeli side of the border crossing heads back into Gaza. However, the food is sitting for days or weeks before it can be distributed. The U.N. and aid groups say they face a host of problems that include a shortage of trucks and fuel due to the war, as well as criminal gangs that are looting the supplies.    Maya Levin for NPR

Drama on the High Seas

"It's appropriate that Greta the anti-Semite and her Hamas-supporting friends see exactly who the terror group Hamas is, what atrocious acts they carried out against women, the elderly and children, and who Israel is fighting to defend against."

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz

 

"While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity -- and which included less than a single truckload of aid -- more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks."

"In addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza."

"There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip -- they do not involve Instagram selfies. The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the 'celebrities' will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels."

Israeli Foreign Ministry 

The yacht, carrying 12 people, set off from Catania, Italy on 3 June  Reuters

 

Drama, expressions of foreboding and fear, sinister allegations that Israeli authorities would exercise an agenda of vengeance against a small ship's crew of avowed anti-Israel activists who accuse the Jewish state of 'genocidal' intentions against Palestinians in Gaza as payback for the Palestinian terrorist attack against Israeli civilians and foreign farm workers on October 7, 2023, exploited the occasion for its sympathetic and gullible audience led to believe that those aboard the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel Madleen faced death in their bold attempt to feed 'starving' Palestinians.

 

This theatre of the high seas set out to demonstrate how noble were the yacht's passengers and crew in risking life and limb to show the world how inhumane Israel is in its ongoing battle against Palestinian civilians -- not the Hamas terrorists who have controlled life in Gaza, and continually placed the population in direct and deliberate danger by attacking Israel, and in so doing drawing Israeli return fire -- has been, sacrificing civilians to ferret out the dedicated 'fighters' among them.

 

That the 'fighters' are unadulterated terrorists whose death cult agenda time and again strikes at Israel and its population, is construed instead by its Western supporters as 'freedom fighters' opposing 'occupation'. That Palestinian leaders have time and again in the past 80 years turned down the opportunity to achieve a state of their own through negotiations, which end predictably in their refusal to recognize the State of Israel, and have chosen instead ongoing violent attacks is of no moment to supporters of Hamas. Nothing deters them from their belief of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups as 'liberators'.

 

The Madleen departs for Gaza.   Fabrizio Villa / Getty Images

 

The use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, the openly stated Hamas argument that in their zeal to destroy Israel and retain the entire geographic area 'from the river to the sea' representing Palestinian patrimony, not the historic ancestral Judean land that it is, seems purely incidental to the empathetic activists who swear to break through the internationally legal blockade of Gaza. Hamas itself knows the power of suggestion, that repeating allegations time and again gives them currency, celebrates the death in numbers of Palestinians as 'proof' that Israel has set out to demolish Gaza as a Palestinian entity.

 

The British-flagged yacht Madleen, with its dozen dedicated protesters whose agenda is to embarrass Israel at the presumed potential cost of their lives, exploited their opportunity to advantage drawing the attention of the world to their courageous posturing while openly and dramatically expressing their terror at the presumed end that awaited them as they neared Gaza in the open seas they traversed. Finally, "The show is over", signalled the Israeli Foreign Ministry, as the vessel was detained then hauled by tug to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

 

Israel's Foreign Ministry released this image of Greta Thunberg being offered a pastrami sandwich and a bottle of water after those onboard the Madleen were detained by Israel's military.

Israel Foreign Ministry

 

Greeted by an Israeli naval vessel, and given food and drink, the ministry posted the message that Thunberg was "on her way to Israel, safe and in good spirits". Not so, responded kaffiyeh clad Greta; she and her colleagues were "kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel". Of the dozen aboard, half were French, there was one Spanish national, and one each from Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey.

 

According to the always-reliable Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the interception represented "a blatant act of international piracy and state terrorism", just as the Iranian Republic condemned the intervention as "a form of piracy". Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to have the activist group view a 43-minute video of atrocities Hamas terrorists committed during the October 7 massacre, which the war in Gaza resulted from. 

 

As it happened none of the conscience-driven activists would watch the video, declaring it Israeli 'propaganda'. 

 

Crew members of the "Madleen" are seen with their hands in the air as Israeli forces come aboard, in this image from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

Freedom Flotilla Coalition/Freedom Flotilla Coalition/Telegraph

 

"Unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade are dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts."

"We call on all actors to act responsibly and to channel humanitarian aid through legitimate, co-ordinated mechanisms, not through provocation."

Israeli Foreign Ministry 

A Country in Dire Straits

"We're really not clear on the scale of the destruction at this stage."

"They were talking about a town near Mandalay where 80 percent of the buildings were reportedly collapsed."

"But it wasn't in the news because telecommunications have been slow."

Lauren Ellery, deputy director of programs, Myanmar, International Rescue Committee 

 

"Water, both in quantity and in quality, is immensely lacking in the whole country and most specifically in the regions affected by the earthquake."

"The lack of water is creating an issue in terms of immediate survival, but could also create an issue in terms epidemics in the future that we definitely want to avoid."

Field Coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Mikhael De Souza  

People queue for relief supplies after a strong earthquake near the earthquake's epicenter, in Sagaing, Myanmar, March 31, 2025.  Reuters

"With USAID effectively gutted and critical staff receiving their final notices in the midst of an emergency, the US Government's ability to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and future crises is severely compromised."

"Speed, collaboration, and resources are life and death matters when disaster strikes. The illegal decision to dismantle USAID means the U.S. will be unable to show up like it has in past emergencies."

"The U.S. has already missed the first urgent window to help find survivors. The second wave of crisis is the millions of people displaced who will soon face threats of disease, hunger, and more without access to clean water, food, shelter and other resources."

"The Trump administration must step up and continue the U.S. legacy of providing partnership and leadership right now for the communities who need urgent support."

Abby Maxman, president and CEO, Oxfam America

Rescue teams work to evacuate residents trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Sunday.  Sai Aung Main/AFP/Getty Images

 

Last week's massive earthquake in Myanmar has seen the death toll well past 2,000, according to state media. Rescuers spoke of several hundred Muslim, praying at mosques during Ramadan, were crushed to death when the mosques collapsed. A collapsing monastery crushed 200 Buddhist monks.

"The straight nature [of the fault] means earthquakes can rupture over large areas - and the larger the area of the fault that slips, the larger the earthquake."

"To accommodate all of this motion, [the Indian plate moving beneath the Burma microplate], faults - cracks in the rock - form which allow tectonic plates to 'slither' sideways." 

"There have been six magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes in this region in the last century."

Dr Rebecca Bell, reader in tectonics at Imperial College London

Daw Khin Saw Myint, 72, and her granddaughter are among thousands sleeping outdoors after losing their homes   BBC

Bangkok is an impoverished country, a country embroiled in a civil war, where humanitarian organizations are already challenged in their efforts to respond to the needs of the civilian population. The effects of the earthquake are predicted to exacerbate the outbreak of hunger and disease. 

The 7.7 magnitude quake's epicentre on Friday hit close to Myanmar's second-largest city, Mandalay, damaging the city's airport. The tremor buckled roads while hundreds of buildings along the country's central area collapsed. Power outages have hampered relief efforts, as have shortages of fuel and problematic communications.

 

Search-and-rescue operations have been hampered by a lack of heavy machinery. The result of which has been rescuers without tools using their bare hands to remove rubble in their search for survivors. Daily temperatures in the region register 40 degrees celsius. At Mandalay's collapsed U Hla Thein monastery rescuers were still searching for some 150 of the dead monks.

 

Rescuers face tough conditions to retrieve the bodies of victims, with temperatures reaching nearly 40C  BBC

 

Approximately 700 Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers were trapped and killed when mosques collapsed. According to a member of the Spring Revolution Myanmar Muslim Network, 60 mosques were damaged or destroyed. Several mosques were seen toppling, on videos posted on the Irrawaddy online news site.

 

Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the military government, informed the prime minister of Pakistan that 2,065 people had died in the earthquake, and over 3,900 were injured, while some 270 people remain missing. Numbers that relief agencies expect to rise sharply in reflection of slow access to remote areas where communications are non-operational.

 

According to the World Health Organization, three hospitals were destroyed, with 22 others partly damaged in the region. A number of countries have sent rescue teams to the scene; Israel, Russia, China, India and a few southeast Asian countries. Millions of dollars in aid have been promised by the European Union, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and others. 

Five men are still stuck under this building.    BBC

Palestinian Armed Gangs Looting Humanitarian Aid in Gaza

"This ... highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza."

"⁠The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated: without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive."

Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer, UNRWA

 

"We have been warning a long time ago about the total breakdown of civil order."

"Until four or five months ago, we still had local capacity, people who were escorting the convoy. This has completely gone, which means we are in an environment where local gangs, local families, are struggling among each other to take control of any business or any activities taking place in the south. It has become an impossible environment to operate in."

"But the convoys were looted and there was absolutely nothing to take from the warehouses."

 UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini

 

"It was terrifying."

"But the worst part was we weren't able to deliver the food to the people."

Hazem Isleem, Palestinian truck driver

Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza via an unfamiliar route ordered by Israel, say UNRWA and the World Food Program. CBC

Armed looters ambushed a 100-truck convoy of humanitarian aid being brought into southern Gaza in November. Among the truck drivers was Hazem Isleem whose load of aid was stolen when one of the gunmen broke into his truck, forced him to drive to a field nearby and unload over a ton of flour. By morning of the following day all of the supplies from his truck had been stripped by the gang. And by extension the convoy of just under 100 trucks comprised of UN aid -- meant to feed tens of thousands of Palestinians -- had been stolen.

 

There was nothing new about this, particularly. When humanitarian aid trucks first began entering Gaza to provide aid to Palestinian civilians, Hamas operatives, armed and focused, had comandeered the aid into their possession, stockpiling it for their members and in so doing depriving ordinary Palestinians from food aid meant to be handed out to everyone in need. Following the Hamas example, armed Palestinian thugs formed their own gangs to replicate the actions of the terrorists.

 

Much of the food ended up in open air markets for sale at exorbitant prices; food that was meant to be distributed free of charge to any who needed it, now available at a price for any who could afford to purchase it, in the process enriching those who had taken illegal possession of humanitarian aid for their own profit. Hunger is reported to be widespread in Gaza. 

 

Aid groups in Gaza say the food crisis is continually getting worse and the limited supplies aren’t getting to those who need them. Israel says there is enough food and few people are going hungry.CBC

 

And Israel, conducting a war against terrorist groups which had themselves declared war on Israel by invading southern Israel farming communities and slaughtering 1,200 mostly civilians, enacting horrific scenes of mass rape, mutilation and incinerating entire families in their homes before making off back to Gaza with over 250 infants, elderly, ill people along with a number of Israeli soldiers and foreign farm workers, as hostages, is expected to monitor the humanitarian aid situation to ensure food is delivered to those in aid.

 

In no other conflict has a military responding to aggression against its state and its people been obligated to ensure that the enemy's population is fed; a concern that Hamas itself has spurned, focusing instead on continuing its violence against Israel, complacent in the knowledge that it will always be Israel held to account for those Palestinians that Hamas uses as human shields, not themselves. Palestinian civilians who just incidentally, approve in the vast majority, of the Hamas atrocities committed against Israelis.

 

Armed gangs have taken over from Hamas in the ransacking of humanitarian aid; presumably the stockpiles of aid; medical supplies, food, fuel, that Hamas amassed in their warehouses, closed off from access to the general population represents a surfeit of supplies to keep the terrorists in good health while they continue to bombard Israel with rockets. 

 

 

Truckloads of relief have been piling up at Kerem Shalom, the main border crossing between Israel and southern Gaza while the truckers await a safe window of opportunity to deliver the relief, in fear they will be looted. The initial small-scale efforts on seizing aid now has assumed "systematic, tactical, armed, crime-syndicate looting" by organized groups, according to Georgios Petropoulos, senior UN official based in the southern city of Rafah. "This is just larceny writ large", he commented. 

Well, yes it is; but it is in fact just Palestinians taking advantage of a situation that suits their agenda; sparing little thought for those among them who may be in dire need of aid, yet positioning themselves to deny that aid to the needy, while stockpiling it for their own nefarious purposes of gain through theft. The astronomical prices the gangs demand for the commodities such as flour, oil and other items needed in parts of Gaza represents the incentives the gangs respond to, to the extent that they will shoot to kill anyone who gets in their way.

And while international aid workers take pleasure in accusing Israel of permitting looters to act with impunity, the United Nations will not allow Israeli soldiers to protect the aid convoys. The reason stated, that it would appear to affect their neutrality, is beyond hilarious, given that UNRWA employees consist in part of members of various Palestinian terror groups, Hamas members primarily, some of whom took part in the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed in Israel.

It is true that Israeli forces sought not to intervene by targeting looters other than those affiliated with Hamas or other terror groups. Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military agency that regulates aid to Gaza, noted that Israeli forces now target armed looters attacking convoys. Israeli forces opened fire on looters waylaying trucks in Rafah, forcing their retreat. the UN aid trucks with the pathway cleared, rushed into central Gaza. And then the gangs regrouped and hijacked them on the road, stripping the trucks bare.

 

Trucks pass through as trucks carrying humanitarian aid make their way to the Gaza Strip at the Erez crossing in southern Israel, Oct. 21, 2024. (Janis Laizans/Reuters)

 

 

Surrender or Die

"We will continue the war until the end. It will continue until Hamas is destroyed, until victory."

"Whoever thinks we will stop is detached from reality."

"[Every member of Hamas is] marked for death."

"Surrender or die."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Trucks with humanitarian aid wait to enter the Palestinian side of Rafah on the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip on December 11, 2023. (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP)

Skilled at perpetually extracting compassion from the world community, portraying itself as the champion of Palestinian human rights, Hamas has never hesitated to sacrifice the lives of Palestinians for the greater cause of destroying Israel and accomplishing the mass murder of Jews, for their charter sets out just that very goal it is determined to bring to fruition. And while Hamas trains Palestinian children in Gaza to become the next generation of dedicated shaheeds fully incorporated into holy jihad as their purpose in life for the glory inherent in killing Jews, it portrays itself abroad as both liberator and victim.

 

Palestinians generally have taken great pains to persuade the outside world that they are victims of Israeli aggression, that Jews have committed the greatest of sins in 'occupying' land consecrated to Islam by reinstating their ancient ancestral lands into 20th Century Israel for all future generations of Jews to find haven from a hostile world. Jews have rediscovered anew just how hostile the world is to their presence after an all-too-brief post-Holocaust interregnum from discrimination and persecution. 

 

Palestinian public relations campaigns have convinced the gullible West that Palestinians are invested in the concept of a state of their own alongside that of Israel, that perpetual slogan of a 'two-state' solution to the current state of simmering conflict. But it's really a one-state 'solution' that they hold dear, the prospect of which they shield from the West, but pursue by indoctrinating their young to consider Israel an interloper, illegally and immorally sitting on Palestinian geography, and it is the duty of all Palestinians to 'resist the occupation'.

 

Smoke trails are seen as a salvo of rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel, as seen from southern Israel, December 21, 2023. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

Funding terrorist attacks is a great inducement in support of appealing to Palestinians' sense of nationalism and victimhood. Fatah's campaign is more subtle but it is one of total reclamation of the land and destruction of Israel; Hamas is more upfront about its ambitions, hiding from no outside source its lethal intentions against Israel and Jews living in their ancestral homeland. The savagery of the October 7 incursion into Israel with its planned sadistic rapes, mutilations and mass murder was Hamas showing the world what it is dedicated to: pure terrorism.

 

And show the world it did, in evidence they produced themselves through videos proudly demonstrating their capacity to inflict pain and suffering on the innocent, from babies to the elderly and infirm, from girls and women being repeatedly raped, tortured, mutilated and finally murdered; even dead bodies of old men, of African farm workers, of women are desecrated, driven through the streets of Gaza City, eliciting great whoops of joy at the bodies of dead Israelis, whipping up enthusiasm for striking at the corpses. Incredibly, even the airing of these monstrous atrocities failed to convince the world that Israel's loss is worth mourning.

 

Yet now that Israel is responding, even while Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue bombarding Israel with rockets, the world condemns Israel for the deaths of Palestinians. While Israel warns civilians to remove themselves from harm's way, Hamas orders its civilian population to remain in place, and will even shoot to kill those who waver and intend to move to safety. Western media hang on every statistic that the Hamas Health Ministry publishes of Palestinian death numbers attributed to Israeli bombing in Gaza. Wildly inflated numbers to elicit greater sympathy cannot be validated.

 

Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in this handout picture released on December 21, 2023. Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS

 

That bombing is strategic and meant to  target Hamas infrastructure, including the vast network of tunnels it has built under the Gaza Strip's cities, towns and 'refugee camps'. The tunnels and their shafts are built into and under mosques, hospitals, UNRWA-operated schools, apartment complexes and ordinary houses. In those tunnels, weapons caches are stored, and Hamas operatives find safe haven when they shoot off rockets from depots placed in crowded civilian areas, inviting a response from the IDF. The greater the number of civilian casualties, the lustier the outcry from the press and Western governments, playing right into Hamas's schemes.

The tunnels have been useful in providing hiding places for some of the hundreds of Israeli children, elderly, women and men that the terrorist groups and ordinary Palestinian civilians have taken  hostage. Each time rockets are aimed at Israel, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank cheer and applaud when they reach their goals. Support among the Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, is robust, the majority support Hamas and feel the atrocities of October 7 were justified in the name of 'freedom' for Palestinians. 

Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been playing host and interveners between Israel and Hamas in negotiations for temporary ceasefires when prisoners in Israeli jails can be exchanged for hostages. It is in very fact, Hamas terrorist elites that are giving the orders and calling the shots. All of the commanders of the terrorist groups, in the wake of October 7 made themselves very scarce, going into hiding to preserve their lives, leaving their lower-order operatives to battle with the IDF under their instructions.

Their lives are expendable, those of the civilian population are ultra-disposable, while the commanders shield themselves from repercussions of their wholesale slaughter of Israelis and foreign farm workers on October 7. With pressure on Israel to be 'proportionate', and empathy for the plight of the Palestinians brought upon them by their psychopathic leadership Hamas leaders feel emboldened to dictate acceptable strategic variances from combat for access to humanitarian shipments of aid to the embattled Strip.

 

Armed, masked men reportedly affiliated with Hamas can be seen atop trucks carrying humanitarian aid that arrived in the Gaza Strip via Egypt's Rafah crossing, December 17, 2023. (Screenshot, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

 

When agreement is secured to open border crossings, another opportunity is presented to terrorist leaders to slip out of the Gaza Strip in an escape from the punishment meted out by Israel's military. At the same time, while tractor-trailers stuffed with needed food, water, medical supplies, oil and gas are brought in to relieve the crisis for civilians to endure the conflict, the trucks and their humanitarian goods are commandeered by Hamas operatives for their own use, once more depriving the civilian population of access to life-saving food and medicine.

Drone footage

 

Foreign Volunteers Aiding Ukraine

"You're in the middle of a mission trying to aid people but that kind of mental triage [compulsion to giving immediate aid to victims when other, pressing duties call] was difficult to deal with."

"Russian snipers were taking potshots at volunteers, they're trying to inflict as much pain and terror as they can on international volunteers or Ukrainians."

"People don't understand just how bad it is how dangerous it's been for humanitarians. Well, anybody really. But the [Russians] have been targeting humanitarian workers there incessantly and it's out of hand."

"I will be enlisting when I go back, transporting military casualties, while training to move into a combat role down the line."

"I'm ashamed of ur government and the U.S. government ... I feel that if they aren't willing to step up, then regular people need to. Humanitarian work is necessary and helps the victims enormously, but it isn't helping actually end the war, and I want to contribute to ending it."

"We were less than 30 km from the front line, watching the explosions at night. I got into the thick of it, picking people and animals out of homes, doing everything I could to help."
"If they don't have a higher priority target, [the Russians will] go after you."

Cory Woods, resident of Edmonton, Ukraine volunteer

Volunteers and staff with the Magic Food Army spend their time ensuring Ukrainian soldiers are getting the fuel they need to fight on the front lines. (Supplied)

 

This man from Edmonton responded to his Ukrainian roots by travelling to the east European country where his forbears were born, to do what he could to help his ethnic compatriots suffering deadly assaults from the Russian invasion. Cory Woods, 43, willingly immersed himself within the corps of international volunteers committing themselves to give aid where it was needed, and it was certainly needed. He recalled in his first foray in the country how he and his colleagues witnessed a Russian rocket hurl into a southern Ukraine apartment building.

Their first impulse was to detour from their original assignment and join rescuers on the scene. But as they neared the scene of the impact, they had the assurance that other rescuers were responding: "As we got closer, we saw an immense response by emergency workers", he explained, leaving his group free to continue with their mission. It was only one ordeal of many they were exposed to, given the reality that Russian troops stationed nearby felt no qualms about targeting humanitarian aid workers.

He had travelled earlier in the year to the Kherson region with the intention of bringing help to the Ukrainians who were inundated by flooding following the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam, which was believed to have been deliberately destroyed by Russian forces. Much of his time spent there was in small inflatable boats, ferrying supplies to or rescuing stranded Ukrainian civilians,while they were vulnerable to enemy fire. They were also under constant danger from shellfire, he explained.

U.S. officials were quoted by the New York Times as putting the number of Ukrainian deaths at 70,000, with 120,000 others injured as a result of Moscow's 'special military operation'. As for the number of civilian deaths, the UN reported 9,177. Ukraine has made it a policy never to release the toll of its war dead, treating it as a state secret, a state forced into a defensive conflict and hoping to inflict serious losses on the violent belligerents intent on destroying their country.

 

Albertan Cory Woods (second from right) with soldiers and fellow aid workers in Kherson region earlier this summer. Photo courtesy of Cory Woods.

 

Russia, on the other hand, is estimated to have lost 120,000 of its military. However, given the size of its military and its population -- both far larger than Ukraine's, the impact clearly is somewhat less, even though it's an unforgivably staggering loss of human life all around. Working along two battlefields, Woods spent four months in Ukraine before returning home to Alberta in late July. Despite how terrifying his experience was at times, he plans to return, this time in a military role.

He feels his previous experience in emergency evacuations should be put to use and plans to continue helping to transport wounded Ukrainian troops from the front line, at some time in late September. His intention ultimately is to take up arms, however, frustrated over what he feels is the slow pace of international military aid to Ukraine, driving him to make that personal decision. Four Canadian volunteers fighting alongside Ukrainians have been killed in action. A Russian artillery strike near Bakhmut killed 27-year-old Calgarian Kyle Porter.

Woods' profession is that of a chef and that was what he first brought to bear when he travelled to Ukraine; his initial work in the war was to prepare food for troops fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region. "We were less than 30 km from the front line, watching the explosions at night." He had felt safer, he said on the Ukrainian army base than he had in Kyiv where missile strikes hit randomly, anywhere, any time. Once further west in the Kherson region, that changed.

He and other volunteers traversed flooded areas littered with explosive mines and dead animals along the Dnipro River, at times no more distant than 1.5 km from Russian positions. Russian troops on the opposite bank of the Dnipro were regularly bombarding Kherson city, liberated by Ukrainian forces last November. More recently in the counteroffensive, the Ukrainian military lays claim to having secured a foothold on the Russian-occupied side of the Dnipro in their intention to push the invaders back from Kherson.

Rescuers from the State Emergency Service help evacuate a local resident from a flooded area in the town of Kherson in this photo from on June 11. The flood was triggered by damage to the Kakhovka dam. Photo by GENYA SAVILOV /AFP via Getty Images

"They [Ukrainians] were always in incredibly better spirits than I would have been in ... it impacted me how these people were thinking of everyone else, even though they'd lost everything, how resilient and grateful they are."

Cory Woods, Edmonton Chef

An image from social media shows a large fire and billowing smoke in the Pskov region of Russia on August 29, 2023, following a Ukrainian drone raid on an airport where four military aircraft were damaged [File: Ostorozhno Novosti via AP Photo]

Fundamentally, Deadly Hostile

"We are shocked and appalled at the violence, carried out against our staff in Afghanistan who are dedicated humanitarians, committed to improving the lives and well-being of millions of children across the country."
"[Save the Children has been active since 1976 in Afghanistan] providing life-saving health, education, nutrition and child protection programs that have helped millions of children."
Carolyn Miles, president, Save the Children

An Afghan army soldier takes a position Wednesday near the Save the Children office in Jalalabad.CNN

Well, guess what! The Taliban don't much care. They do care that there are foreign elements in Afghanistan and they dedicate themselves to attacks against foreigners be they politicians or charitable humanitarian volunteers. They have never personally asked foreigners to enter their country and they take huge umbrage at their entry for whatever reasons for any purpose whatever. All the more so when arrogant non-Muslims enter the country in a charitable act of transforming it into what the Taliban will not permit.

And if the Taliban are not implicated in specific attacks, there are others who can and will be, from al-Qaeda operatives to Islamic State militias proud to 'protect' Afghanistan from the corrupting influence of foreign missions. This time it was the NGO Save the Children. A week ago it was foreign guests at an upscale hotel. That attack at the Kabul Intercontinental was spread out over a thirteen-hour period before Afghan security forces managed to dispatch the terrorists and rescue most of the hotel guests, absent the 22 who died.

This time the Jalalabad Save the Children attack left four dead, among them two NGO staffers, a security guard and a member of the Afghan military.These attacks are always well coordinated and this one was no exception, with a suicide bomber detonating his explosives vest at the NGO offices, and the siege was over in less than a day, counting the original eight hours of fighting followed by a two-hour re-ignition, leaving 26 wounded along with the four dead and four attackers killed by the military.

Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Taliban; none of them mind the opportunities the presence of the hated interloper gives them to become martyrs; it is what Islam demands of its faithful and the reward in Paradise is passionately sought-after.

Afghan security forces inspect the site of the attack on Save the Children’s office in Jalalabad on Wednesday. Photograph: Noorullah Shirzada/AFP/Getty Images

"Humanitarian organizations provide life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable men, women and children in Afghanistan. Aid workers and their premises and assets, should never be a target", moaned UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, as though unaware that his sentiments are pro forma redundant. "Increased violence has made operating in Afghanistan difficult for many organizations", added Monica Zanarelli, head of delegation in Afghanistan for the International Committee of the Rd Cross.

In fact, deadly attacks take place regularly all over Afghanistan. Mostly targeting the national police and the Afghan military. The Islamist jihadi groups do take especial care to make it known to any foreign elements in Afghanistan that they are not held in appreciative fond esteem but venomous contempt for their presence. A presence now in abeyance for fear of further violent attacks and loss of life among the humanitarian actors. A result which must be accorded a win for the jihadis proud of their mission and prepared to continue until the last man.

Unfortunately, there will never be a 'last man'. Every time one jihadi is put to rest, twice the number invariably rise to take  his place. Their Islamist ardour is unquenchable, their dedication to eventual conquest unshakable but by one little victory after another, laying their winning sacrifices at the feet of a devouring god who will be appeased only with the wholesale conversion and surrender to Islam of the world's population by a conquering army of Islamist warriors.

Afghan army soldiers take positions near the global charity's office Wednesday.   CNN

Fond Hope

"We [Israel] faced a dilemma [with civil war raging across the border]."
"The decision was made by our commanders  and our government to allow them [conflict-wounded Syrians] to enter the country and to give them full medical treatment."
Dr. Noam Fink, chief medical officer, Israeli military, northern command

"So far the strategy [to permit Syrian rebels and wounded civilians to enter Israel for medical treatment] is working."
"It is an intelligent policy. It is not only altruistic [in purpose]."
Amos Harel, military affairs analyst, Haaretz newspaper

"It [Israel] is not the monster they [Syrian propaganda] told us it was."
"People have started looking at it differently [from the perspective of its humanitarian initiatives to aid those in dire medical need]."
Shadi Martini, Syrian director, Multifaith Alliance

Israeli soldiers give initial medical treatment to wounded Syrians in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on 18 January 2017 REUTERS

It was in 2013 that wounded Syrians began arriving at the border fence Israel had erected at the Golan Heights at the outbreak of civil war in Syria. The medical condition of these fighting men requiring immediate treatment presented Israel with few options in responding, other than humanitarian. At the same time, it was realized that this could be a way in which Israel could assure Syrians that they were not viewed as enemies, though clearly Syrians did consider Israel just that.

In the realization that Syrian medical facilities had been savagely reduced in the towns and villages close to the Israeli border, scarcely capable of functioning, since the Syrian regime made such facilities the focus of special targeting, an estimated four thousand wounded in the war along with desperately ill Syrians have been treated by Israel.

In an area  where an estimated 200,000 people live, with an additional 400 displaced families living in tent encampments along the border, Israel is equipping new clinics in the area. According to Israeli analysts, cash, ammunition and intelligence assets make their way through the Golan Heights fence, with the Wall Street Journal quoting local Syrian rebels affirming receipt of cash for salaries and weapons.

Israel does, of course, maintain a distance from becoming involved in the Syrian conflict for the past six years. Where it has intervened is when convoys of weapons have been driven toward Lebanon to supply Hezbollah fighting in Syria for Bashar al-Assad. Alternately, when errant Syrian government fire has hit the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Israel has responded in retaliation.

Israel has not committed to taking in Syrian refugees for temporary settlement relief, though accepting a large group of orphaned children was considered, but never followed through on, given the formal state of war between Syria and Israel. It was the Israeli general public's distress over the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Syria that appears to have motivated their military to launch aid across the border.

Truckloads of humanitarian supplies such as flour, generators, fuel, construction materials, shoes, baby formula, antibiotics, even vehicles and mules have been transported across the security fence from Israel into Syria. This is a project by the Israeli military named Operation Good Neighbour initiated in 2016. For the humanitarian effort to succeed it took cooperation between Israel and Syrian doctors and village leaders.

Syrian border villages falling to the regime's forces or to Iran-linked Shiite militias, or to anti-Israeli militias linked to Sunni al-Qaeda or ISIL forces would spell security disaster for Israel. With Israel's concern to keep the area free of such threats comes the decision to aid Syrian rebels.

Israeli army medics tend to an injured Syrian in the occupied Golan Heights. (IDF)

"The aid creates a positive awareness of Israel on the Syrian side", Colonel Barak  Hiram, commanding officer of the 474 Golan Brigade stated. It represents an initiative that might result in the "first seeds" of an agreement for the future between Syria and Israel.

The supplies ferried through to the Syrians in an effort to reduce their humanitarian plight are donated by Israeli and foreign nongovernmental groups, with the government of Israel paying for the medical treatment itself. Israel has become a staging area as well for Syrian aid groups operating abroad facilitated by the Israeli military, enabled to ship goods into Syria through Israeli ports.

Perhaps it should be recalled that Israel also regularly treats Palestinians from the  West Bank and Gaza. In particular it should be a reminder that such assistance does not necessarily result in relaxed relations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Among the Palestinian Authority leadership whose family members have sought emergency surgeries to be undertaken in Israel, there is no let-up of inciting deadly terror attacks against Israeli targets.

Hamas whose charter specifically aims at the obliteration of Israel and whose leadership celebrates every Palestinian terrorist killing of Jews as a celebratory victory, sees no reason to relax its lethal vendetta against Israel, despite its own leaders' families receiving advanced medical care in Israeli hospitals at the hands of Israeli doctors. It is folly to believe that what does not work with Palestinians may work with Syrians.

This is without doubt well understood by the Israeli leadership. But to lead is to demonstrate moral and ethical leadership in a democracy and the very reasons given for responding to the desperate need of Syrians as a humanitarian responsibility is reason enough to offer it and provide it, and hope that perhaps by some miracle of human nature, those acts of compassion will bear the fruit of conciliation not through weakness but through strength of character.

A Syrian man, four women and two children, who were injured by shrapnel during the fighting in Syria, were brought to Israel for treatment. Among the wounded was a 3-year-old girl who suffered a serious head wound. The girl was evacuated with her mother by helicopter to Rambam Hospital in Haifa, and the rest of the wounded were taken to hospitals in the north by IDF medical teams. Photo: IDF