National Post (National Edition)

Another vicious Hamas lie

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Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin is the latest pawn in a mostly successful propaganda war waged by Hamas, the terrorist organizati­on that runs Gaza.

In a video released this week by Hamas, a drawn and gaunt 24-year-old Goldberg-Polin, now missing his left hand after being injured in the Oct. 7 attacks, describes the “hell” of being in captivity for 200 days.

It is an appalling abuse by Hamas, compoundin­g the war crime of taking civilian hostages with another one — subjecting them to humiliatin­g and degrading treatment.

No one will be fooled by the exploitati­ve video. Goldberg-Polin's carefully scripted words were almost certainly written by Hamas.

But past attempts by Hamas at controllin­g the narrative around the Israel-Hamas war have been more successful, which raises a troubling question: why are so many willing to readily accept the lies of a terrorist organizati­on?

The use of the term “mass graves” — an evocative phrase that alludes to not just death, but inhuman acts, carnage and evil — is another recent example of Hamas propaganda.

Earlier this week, there was much “shock and horror” that mass graves were found at Nasser and Al-Shifa hospitals in Gaza. Authoritie­s in Gaza quickly blamed Israel for the deaths, and floated allegation­s of torture and executions.

Col. Yamen Abu Suleiman, Hamas's director of civil defence in Khan Younis, said, “There were signs of field executions. We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.”

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said he was “horrified” about the news, and much of the world's media adopted the same attitude.

A lie, it is said, can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

There are mass graves at the two hospital sites but only because Palestinia­ns, unfortunat­ely, had to bury relatives there in large numbers.

The use of mass graves by Palestinia­ns during this war has been well documented. As early as November, Al-Jazeera reported that, “More than 100 bodies of Palestinia­ns previously held at Al-Shifa Hospital by Israeli forces have been finally buried in a mass grave.”

That same month, Reuters reported that more than 100 bodies were being buried in a mass grave in the Al-Shifa hospital compound.

“We are planning to bury them today in a mass grave inside the Al-Shifa medical complex,” Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, told Reuters. “The men are digging right now as we speak.”

The same situation occurred at Nasser Hospital.

The BBC reported in January that, “People had been forced to bury 40 bodies inside the grounds of Nasser Hospital because it was not safe outside.” An investigat­ion by geolocatio­n experts also documented mass burials by Palestinia­ns taking place at these hospitals, and released pictures and videos to prove it.

The group Geoconfirm­ed labelled Al-Jazeera's claim that “civil defence members and paramedics have retrieved 180 bodies buried in this mass grave by the Israeli military” as “disinforma­tion,” concluding that, “This is a known graveyard/mass grave and at least partially dug by Palestinia­ns.”

It added, “This is not the first time claims like this were made. The discovery of graves in Al Shifa, for example, that were also at least partially dug by Palestinia­ns.”

The group's Twitter thread ends with a warning about “making assumption­s and unproven claims,” and with almost a weariness adds, “All this while we should be talking about the important issue: Hundreds of people died and are buried at this place.”

All these Palestinia­n burials took place publicly, and tragic as it is for families to see loved ones buried in a mass grave because of war, it is a far cry from people being executed and then buried in secret which is the implicatio­n from the Gaza reports.

But the dead, the living and the gullible are all grist for the Hamas propaganda mill.

In October, based only on the word of terrorists, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly were quick to jump on the bandwagon that implicated Israel as being behind a missile strike that hit the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. Bombing a hospital was “unthinkabl­e,” said Joly, while Trudeau called it “unacceptab­le.”

The cause was later determined to have been a terrorist rocket that misfired.

It should come as no surprise that Hamas is willing to lie and mislead in a propaganda war that involves its members filming the Oct. 7 attacks, parading hostages around in videos, inflating the war dead, lying about strikes on hospitals and about the graves of their own unfortunat­e dead. This is all intended to portray Hamas as the victim and the face of resistance.

What is strange is that politician­s, as well as large sections of the public and the media, are buying into a narrative crafted by a murderous, amoral, duplicitou­s cult. Last year, Michael Milshtein, a retired Israeli intelligen­ce official and an expert on Palestinia­n media affairs, told The New Yorker that Hamas thinks all westerners are stupid. They may be right.

It's not that Hamas has made truth a casualty of war, it's that it has convinced so many to embrace lies with easy abandon.

WHY ARE SO MANY WILLING TO READILY ACCEPT THE LIES OF A TERRORIST ORGANIZATI­ON?

 ?? AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES ?? Workers at the mass grave found near the Nasser Medical Complex in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Workers at the mass grave found near the Nasser Medical Complex in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

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