The worst case

Hamas deployed its great weapon and it was effective. But only because the press was a willing weapon in their hands.

President Joe Biden said he believed Hamas caused the explosion at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza. “I’m not suggesting that Hamas deliberately did it,” he said. They “gotta learn how to shoot straight.” Well let me suggest the worst case: Hamas blew up a Baptist hospital in Gaza on purpose, and claimed Israel did it. They staged a huge explosion and then arranged the bodies for the drooling propaganda-hungry press to see. Those media outlets bravely parroted the lines fed them by the Gaza “Ministry of Health,” an Orwellian agency that pumps out lies faster than an Oklahoma oil gusher. That’s the worst case. Now prove it wrong.

Israel has video, drone footage, radar and other, likely classified intelligence offering solid evidence that (a) they were not flying missions near the hospital at the time of the explosion, and (b) that Hamas was launching rockets at the exact time in and in the exact direction of the hospital.

It didn’t take long for the Hamas-fed version to spread to all U.S. (and foreign) major news outlets. Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett posted on X/Twitter “SHAME ON YOU.”

When the same media realized that they were peddling lies, they didn’t issue a retraction, they simply reported the correct version, with the added nuance, “U.S. officials say.” Or they resorted to the mealy-mouthed “Hamas and Israel trade blame.”

In order to maintain such a wall of sustained and intentional ignorance, the underlying presumptions of these people (news doesn’t write itself, my friend) must be that Israel has some motivation to bomb a hospital where hundreds of civilians are seeking refuge and is likely a storehouse for high explosive. This is the same motivation that says Israel wants all Gazans to suffer and die. Tracing that mindset, put plainly, that Israeli is an illegitimate colonial power running an apartheid state and deserves to perish.

There is another mindset, the one of Hamas. If you’ve ever had the time to read the Hamas covenant, it’s eye-opening. There is no nuance there; no passive language about “Israelis were killed.” It is a radical, Islamist extremist organization with the goal to remove Israel forcibly by slaughtering Jews and destroying Jewish-aligned organizations. It derives its authority from Allah. This means death is a noble exchange—dying in the cause of Allah is a way to paradise, and killing otherwise innocent Muslims is an acceptable practice in order to advance its goals.

Hamas and its ancestral parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, has never shrunk from sacrificing its own people, rewarding suicide bombers, and encouraging the use of human shields, forcing Israel to go through echelons of children to get to the savages. They don’t consider that cowardly. Former Israeli PM Golda Meir famously said,

“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

The preening media who, over and over again, spread the lies and propaganda of Hamas, without hesitation of thought to the consequences, don’t seem to be able to grasp this mindset. They are very quick to question Israeli motives, and even conclusions of U.S. intelligence (whom they regularly, without skepticism, believe and quote when it comes to things like Trump and Russia) if it contradicts the reflexive report of the Hamas version. Hamas knows this and cultivates it as a weapon. The weaponized press is the terror group’s greatest asset.

Look at the results of the latest propaganda coup. President Biden’s summit with the Jordanian king, Egyptian president and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas was scuttled. Protesters raged at the U.S. Capitol and at U.S. embassies around the world. “Cease Fire” banners flew in the galleries of Congress. Pressure on Israel (which is used to this) amped up, while efforts to tone down the violence were quashed.

Hamas deployed its great weapon and it was effective. But only because the press was a willing weapon in their hands.

The worst case might not be a hundred percent true. Hamas may not have intentionally blew up the hospital. But when it blew up, whether they did it on purpose or not (and let there be no doubt, they’re capable of blowing it up on purpose), they used this awful act to advance their objective, spreading lies.

But I’m willing to believe the worst case may be true. Hamas pulled the trigger, blew up the hospital, staged the rubble and the (very real) dead bodies of their own people, and blamed Israel so that others would be incited to kill more innocent Jews.

Folks, that’s evil.