This week was the best of times for propaganda and the worst of times for facts. Because media told the tale of aid distribution in Gaza from the perspective of Hamas.
On Tuesday (May 26), many outlets parroted Hamas propaganda that Israel fired “on a crowd” of desperate Palestinians, killing three (or was it even more, as some media reported?), at a new aid distribution center operated by a foundation backed by the United States and Israel. Americans and Israelis confirmed that Israeli forces fired warning shots as Gazans stormed the site, and no one died.
On Wednesday (May 27), media reported that “it was not clear” who fired at crowds of Palestinians who broke into a UN aid warehouse, and that two people “died.” This, as thousands of Palestinians rushed a UN World Food Programme warehouse full of flour sacks, and the terrorists apparently opened direct fire on the crowd, resulting in deaths and injuries.
Despite conflicting reports and confusion emanating from inside Gaza, the media chose a side.
Parroting Hamas
In the first incident, Israel and the American foundation operating the new aid center issued statements clarifying that the media narrative was false. But it did not matter for The Independent, The Washington Post, or Sky News:
IDF soldiers fired warning shots in the air to restore order near the Gaza aid distribution center.
But @washingtonpost is so desperate to portray the Israeli-backed distribution of food to Palestinians as an abject failure that it falsely claims Israel opened fire on a crowd. pic.twitter.com/Qgsaq2ZCpU
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 29, 2025
Hamas is doing everything it can to discredit the new Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme in Gaza.
Including spreading lies that people were killed yesterday at an aid distribution center.
No surprise that @independent would parrot the falsehoods of the Hamas Media Center. pic.twitter.com/3PR5cE0lk1
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 28, 2025
On social media, the narrative took another turn: activists cropped a photo of Palestinians waiting in line, to draw an antisemitic comparison between Israel and the Nazis:
Haters like @owenjonesjourno are using a cropped image to claim Palestinians are in “fenced cages,” or worse, making comparisons to Nazi concentration camps.
Let’s zoom out and take a look at the real picture. 👇
Manipulating images =👎 https://t.co/NeV0Qz8pIC pic.twitter.com/MWZf838n1K
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 28, 2025
In the second incident, media completely omitted an official statement by Israel’s Foreign Ministry that blamed Hamas for opening fire at Palestinians seeking aid in the WFP warehouse:
This is Hamas’s warehouse in central Gaza — full of food, kept away from the civilians.
People stormed in. Hamas opened fire.pic.twitter.com/3eik0sdMsX
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) May 28, 2025
Related Reading: ‘14,000 Babies Will Die’: How the UN Invented a Blood Libel — and the Media Ran With It
Media Incompetence
The sudden incompetence of media outlets to verify facts, speak to eyewitnesses, or even name Hamas as the possible perpetrator is beyond the pale. AP, for example, had reporters on the ground in the first incident, and their story quoted Palestinians who saw what had happened. But no eyewitness was interviewed for their story about the second incident, which omitted Israel’s claim that Hamas fired into the crowd.
Other outlets, like Reuters, CNN, The Guardian, and the BBC, either used the vague adjective “deadly” to describe the second incident, or resorted to the passive voice that shilled for the active doers of the shooting — Hamas terrorists:
This orchestrated propaganda effort is not journalism. It’s full-on, unabashed activism in the service of Hamas and those who seek to tarnish aid efforts for Gazans that the terror group can’t loot.
Take, for example, The New York Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief Patrick Kingsley, who said he was “not surprised” by the UN criticism of the new Israeli-U.S. aid scheme. Sadly, he was quoted just below a paragraph that covers for Hamas:
Hamas opens fire at crowds of Palestinians while it loots flour from a warehouse, but that detail doesn’t register with @nytimes. https://t.co/01W40OGJnf pic.twitter.com/sIvjo7LvOD
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 29, 2025
The tale of these two incidents exposes a disturbing truth: reporters and editors in once-respected news outlets think they can get away with biased reporting whose display this week, only one day apart, was all too obvious.
But why should we be surprised? As Charles Dickens already noted, such times reflect the age of foolishness and the season of darkness.
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