The far-reaching consequences of Thursday’s Gaza aid disaster
Deadly incident will likely complicate both war aims — dismantling Hamas and returning the hostages — exacerbate friction on other fronts, boost global calls for permanent ceasefire
From early on in Israel’s vital war to dismantle Hamas and ensure it could not rise again to commit further October 7 atrocities, the United States, Israel’s key supportive ally, implored the government to do its best to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid was brought into the Gaza warzone and to give thought to alternative civil governance for the Strip to replace Hamas.
Both of those concerns were also shared by Israel’s own security authorities.
It is far from certain that even the most assiduous efforts by an Israeli leadership to address those two issues could have prevented Thursday morning’s deaths of many Gazans in the chaos and crush surrounding a convoy of aid trucks. But with Israel widely regarded, and regarding itself, as the only non-Hamas address for mid-war Gaza, it is Israel that the international community — relentless enemies and broad supporters alike — considers to be ultimately responsible for the incident.
The very nature of the disaster, involving large crowds desperately converging on precious supplies whose only route into Gaza is via Israeli inspection points, underlines why the finger of blame is being pointed at Israel. And never mind Israel’s claim that much more aid has been made available than the UN has proved able to distribute; that the desperation for food and supplies is largely a consequence of a still partly potent Hamas commandeering aid; and that the deaths on Thursday were almost all a consequence of a stampede around the trucks and of people being run over, with Gazan gunmen also firing at the scene.
On October 17, a Hamas claim that an Israeli airstrike had struck Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital, killing hundreds, was initially widely reported, and may still be widely believed among Israel’s detractors, but was credibly and fairly rapidly debunked, with the blast shown to have been the result of a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket. The specifics and context of Thursday’s incident are more complex and potentially much more far-reaching.
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Watch:
Here’s some good advice. Regardless of what Hamas claims. No matter what the media breathlessly reports as though they are the Hamas political campaign. Always wait 48-72 hrs before concluding anything. By then the truth will have been revealed. No matter, the media will shrug, brush themselves off and… well we all now the routine by now..
Hamas has been proven over and over again to be highly proficient cereal liars. The western media (and a large portion of their readers) has proven over and over again to be highly gullible. They never learn, never tire of having the football yanked out aka Lucy on The Peanuts style. From the poisoned well of Palestinian disinformation the lies are life sustaining. “If it bleeds its leads” didn’t just pop out of thin air.
In fact, we now know what happened thanks to the report by Paul Adams of the BBC, who has reported what Palestinian eyewitnesses told him. It seems that after the convoy of aid trucks passed an IDF-manned checkpoint, a large group of Gazans approached the Israelis in a threatening manner. The IDF used live fire — a brief volley that may have killed a few, but certainly not dozens of Gazans. At the same time, Gazans started to besiege the trucks, grabbing at their piled-up contents, or trying to pull themselves up onto the trucks so as to be able to then toss bags of flour and other food items to their cronies on the ground who were running beside the trucks. Some of those on the ground running beside the trucks stumbled and fell, while some who had managed to clamber onto the trucks fell off, as well. And among them, several dozen were run over by the trucks, and killed or wounded in that way. Hamas’ claim of “104 killed” by the IDF is sheer fantasy. From the videos released by Hamas, fewer than a dozen people appear to have died. That should surprise no one. Hamas has in the past issued claims of casualties that have turned out to be ten times the real number, most notably about the so-called “Massacre at Jenin,” where the terror group’s claim of “500 civilians” killed was later proved to be “52 Palestinians killed,” of whom a least 45 were terrorists, and the claim made about “500 civilians killed” after an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, which turned out be 10 to 50 killed, not by an Israeli airstrike, but by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, that landed not on the hospital but on the parking lot next to it.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/03/hamas-claim-that-idf-killed-100-civilians-in-attack-on-aid-trucks-doesnt-hold-up-to-scrutiny