Hamas’s lies spread in media unverified, fuel antisemitism

By Abdul Masih —

When Hamas fired a rocket from a cemetery behind the hospital and it malfunctioned and fell on the parking lot killing a dozen Palestinians on Oct. 17, 2023, the Hamas Ministry of Health quickly told the world, and the New York Times parroted, that Israel had bombed the hospital and killed 500.

It was just the sort of war crimes that feed the narrative of Israel committing genocide. It wasn’t until Nov. 26, 2023, a month later, that Human Rights Watch determined it was a lie and exposed the truth. A witness told them that Hamas had moved all shrapnel from the site of the explosion so that its source could not be easily identified.

But by the time the truth came out, anger against Israel had simmered for a month. The anger did not get redirected at lying Hamas because by that time Hamas was telling other lies to outrage the international community. The United Nations pretty much only re-reported what the Hamas Ministry of Health said, and news organizations didn’t bother to fact-check.

Here’s the propaganda Hamas, the U.N. and news organizations have told that eventually got exposed as a lie (unfortunately it galvanizes anti-Israel hatred and no backlash appears, no exoneration of Israel, when Hamas’ propaganda gets made evident):

• Dec. 20, 2024 – Hamas downgrades its war death count, especially numbers of civilians, women and children, after being audited by Andrew Fox of the Henry Jackson Society. The Gaza Health Ministry, under Hamas, “has systematically inflated the death toll by failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children and even including individuals who died before the conflict began,” the report said. Overnight and without apology, the Health Ministry removed 3,400 names and the ratio of women and children casualties went from the outrageous 72%. to 70% combatants.
• May 23, 2025 – 14,000 Gazan babies were in danger of dying within the next 48 hours because of the food shortage, the U.N. announced. After the headlines hit the world press, the U.N. backtracked its statement saying they WANTED to get aid going within 48 hours, not that anyone would die within that time.
• June 1, 2025 – 31 Palestinians killed by Israeli Defense Forces when receiving aid at a humanitarian food distribution center. Featured on CNN, BBC, SkyNews, NPR and Wikipedia. After the blood libel spread around the world, the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation dismissed the lies (why did news agencies not ask GHF before publishing?): “There was no gunfire in the (distribution) center and also not in the surrounding area” and “All aid was distributed today without incident. We have heard that these fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas. They are untrue and fabricated.” On July 5, Hamas threw a ball-bearing grenade at distribution lines killing 12, reported GHF with photos.

• Current controversy – Israel is being accused of waging starvation warfare against Gaza by throttling supplies of humanitarian aid. A disturbing picture of an emaciated boy made the rounds of the media to again inflame international outrage against Israel. The trouble with little Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq is that hunger is not the only problem. He suffers a medical condition that complicates his feeding. A series of photos revealed a picture with his older brother who does not appear to be starving at all.

• Old news – Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that allows homosexuality, but the New York Times downplayed this human rights difference by calling it “pink-washing,” a takeoff of “whitewashing” — an attempt to give a clean face to a bad history. Never mind that Palestinians hang homos and throw the off buildings, the Western media feels it needs to portray Israel as the enemy and ignore the ambitions of radical Islam for world conquest.

The sensation is that if there’s so much smoke, there must be fire. But no, Hamas is blowing lots and lots and lots of smoke. And the U.N. and the media, with their simplistic narrative of people of color (Palestinians) = good guys/ white people (Israelis) = bad guys, are all too eager to spread misinformation. Sadly, much of the misinformation remains uncorrected. Wikipedia, which betrays leftist leanings, continues with the air workers being ambushed by the IDF. So does BBC and other news.

The current outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel started when 2,000 terrorists crossed the border and attacked Israeli civilians at a music festival. They killed at least 1,200 civilians, including 44 Americans, raped and burned bodies, and took 250 hostages. Fifty hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.

Hamas does not want its own state. They want to completely obliterate Israeli and all the Jews. Their chant repeated on campuses in America “From the River to the Sea” can only become a reality with the utter destruction of Israel.

Antisemitism in America has reached a critical mass. Disturbingly, large numbers of Christians are embracing antisemitism, with the likes of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson joining the blame-Israel coalition.

A recent Fresh & Fit podcast with over a million views (it has since been removed) praised Hitler and the Holocaust. “The Holocaust was the only way he can take out a huge population, like a huge amount of Jews, all in one setting,” one guest said. “How do we take them down?” another asked. “Gotta kill the motherfu*ers,” a third chimed in.

After Hamas has shown itself to lie over and over again, you would think the trusted media would learn to double-check what they’re being fed. But no. They just run with the story and don’t worry about being shills for the propagandists.

The New York Times‘s motto is All the News that Fits should be changed, as Thomas Sowell observed, to All the News that Fits the Narrative.

Edieal Pinker of Yale’s School of Management conducted an analysis of The New York Times’s coverage. “I found numerous imbalances in the NYTimes coverage. Namely, reporting on both Israeli military and civilian casualties incurred, post October 7, is sparse. Reporting on Israeli suffering through personal accounts of non-Oct. 7 victims is very limited while reporting of Palestinian personal accounts of suffering is very frequent,” Pinker concluded. “Reporting of Hamas militant casualties is sparse and reporting of Palestinian acts of violence post Oct. 7 is very sparse. Mentions of Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran are much less frequent than mentions of Israel.

“The potential net effect of these imbalances is multi-faceted. The imbalances create great sympathy for the Palestinian people while at the same time diminishing Hamas’ responsibility for their situation and the continuation of the war,” Pinker adds. “Outside of the direct Israeli victims of Oct. 7, there is little relative sympathy for Israelis, little recognition of the costs of the war to Israel, and great responsibility is placed upon Israel for the suffering of the Palestinians and the situation in the region.

“There is a certain irony in this pattern of coverage,” he finishes. “The lion’s share of responsibility for the situation and its resolution is placed on Israel. Yet, at the same time the reporting does not give the reader a full understanding of how the war is being experienced by Israelis.”

@Aizenberg of Honest Reporting has compiled a list of 50 experts who say Israel’s war against Hamas does NOT meet the criteria qualifying it as a “genocide.” Here it is:

Related content: Gazans hate Hamas, the Iranian people love Israel, a terrorism explainer of the Middle East.