Has the West been taken in by Hamas’ lies and anti Israeli narrative?

[OpheliaWasntMad]

https://nypost.com/2026/09/21/opinion/journalist-admits-anti-israel-narrative-driving-protests-is-based-on-hamas-lies/

This journalist admits that his reporting from Gaza was not accurate because he was afraid of retaliation from Hamas.
Why have so many believed every report from Gaza journalists?

I see all your points and you have argued them very well.

I just feel they are not the propaganda that the OP is talking about . This is not direct information that has come out of Gaza over the past few years that has come via biased/Hamas influenced journalists that has been used "dupe" the West into supporting Palestinians.

Propaganda is not just lies - it’s also about what isnt said ( eg missing out Hamas’ role in Palestinian suffering ) That omission is something that happens again and again and it leads to a very distorted narrative .
I do think we should support innocent Palestinian civilians but I don’t believe the “evil Israel” narrative.

( to be fair - I worded this thread very badly and in hindsight I should have worded it differently)

I wonder why no international musician made a 'whole song' about Kfir and Ariel Bibas?

Both slaughtered and mutilated with Palestinian bare hands after being kidnapped from their home and having suffered up to a month in captivity, their bodies held hostage for almost a year and half before being paraded in mislabelled coffins in front of cheering families, dancing Palestinian children and a massive professional level propaganda poster of the Israeli PM depicted as a vampire that they managed to rustle up during a 'genocide'.

Naama Abu Rashed, Mila Cohen, Arbel ,Omer and Shachar Siman Tov or Yazen Zakaria Abu Jamaa, all 6 and under, or any of the other kids slaughtered by Palestinians?

I guess Palestinian kids are given a higher victim status than Israeli victims who are the wrong faces for a music video?

Oh like the 'famine' you mean?

Or the 'dog rape' allegations which were printed as fact in the NY Times?

Perhaps, maybe the OP could clarify.

The one that always gets me was the poster behind the Bibas family during that coffin handover. This is the quote- that Hamas put on their poster for the world to see-

"The War Criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi Army Killed them with Missiles from a Zionist Warplane.”

It always strikes me how much of that sentiment is now mainstream.

' war criminal ' yes probably, not antisemitic to say imo

' nazi army ' can't tell you how many times I've had Holocaust Inversion deleted on here. It comes up on almost every thread. It's Hamas propaganda.

' zionist ' used as a slur, which far removes it from its original meaning and twists it into something awful.

Overall sentiment- total blame for Israel, no accountability for Hamas. Even though it was Hamas who stole those babies. Their deaths are fully on Hamas conscience.

So I.guess overall I do see the West repeating Hamas propaganda. Maybe they don't know Hamas are saying these things? Maybe they do?

Overall I.do find it quite possible to criticize Israel without using Hamas propaganda pieces so I think it can be done. I just think theres a lot of sloganeering sometimes, with no attempt to apply nuance or think deeply behind the things that are being said. Not by you, but I do see on here.

Turbo fascists in the Israeli government are total victims in all this.

There are some murderous extremists in the Israeli government. I definitely don’t consider them amongst the victims.
The victims are the ordinary Israeli citizens and the ordinary Palestinian citizens.

The autopsies from the Bibas family were shared with international forensic experts.

The independent verification by international specialists concluded that:

• No Blast Injuries: The remains showed absolutely no signs of trauma consistent with shrapnel, blasts, or building collapses. This completely disproved Hamas's public psychological warfare claims that the family died in an Israeli airstrike.
• Evidence of Homicide: The physical evidence aligned with deliberate manual trauma, demonstrating that the children had been directly and brutally executed by their captors while being held in captivity.

That testifies to the disgusting level of antisemitism globally and sums up this conflict totally IMO.

That Israel had to get independent international verification of the cause of death of Israeli victims of Islamic terrorists because the terrorists (who actually filmed themselves kidnapping them and committing other horrific atrocities) were deemed more believable than a Western ally because they're the only Jewish State!

On that we can agree

Wrong. They shared it. It wasn’t verified by anyone outside of Israel.

No, the autopsy findings from the Bibas children were not independently verified or published by international agencies. 1, 2]
When the remains of 4-year-old Ariel and 10-month-old Kfir Bibas were returned to Israel in February 2025, the autopsies were conducted exclusively by Israel’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) in Tel Aviv.

Lack of Third-Party Public Verification: Major global news outlets (such as the BBC) noted at the time that they had not seen or independently verified the forensic files. No independent international body or agency has released a public, third-party report confirming the specific details of the autopsy.

Im not sure there is any point replying to posters who think it’s ok to deface or tear down posters of babies kidnapped by Hamas.

Or those who think Macklemore is a victim in a similar way to the Israeli hostages and Hind Rajab 🙄

Well if google AI says so it must be true. Totally fine to pull down hostage posters in that case.

1. Deir Yassin and Givat Shaul were a perfect example of how Jews and Muslims could live happily side by side. When a group of Yemeni Jews wanted some land, the residents of Deir Yassin sold them the land and helped them develop it. The only road to Deir Yassin went through the village of Givat Shaul. They helped each other with harvest and attended each others weddings. Deir Yassins biggest mistakes was rejecting the protection from the Arab militia simply wanting to live in peace with their Jewish neighbours. This gave the opportunity to the terrorist groups, the Lehi and the Irgun, helped by the so called legitimate Haganah, to slaughter the entire village. What is ironic is Israel’s proven lies about children being thrown into ovens on Oct 7th is actually an event that happened to Abdul Raouf al Shareef at the Deir Yassin slaughter. The Arab revolt was nothing to do with Deir Yassin, it happened when the Palestinians realised what Zionism actually meant for them.
2. This is actually one of my favourite lies. Israel accepted the partition plan but the Palestinians rejected it. The problem is, we have Ben Gurions letters and stated intentions. He publicly declared that after partition Israel would build up an army and take over the whole of Palestine. That was in 1947.
3. The Ashkenazi wanted to import Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews to act as cheap labour. They called them oriental Jews. To this day, despite the Ashkenazi constantly saying they are less than half the population of Israeli society, every single Israeli prime minister has been Ashkenazi.
4. The ICJ has ruled that there are grounds for it to be a plausible genocide which means everyone should act to prevent it. They have told Israel it has to preserve any evidence it might be a genocide. Israels response, they have sent in bulldozers to clean up any evidence like bodies under the rubble.

Ok.
In the case you mentioned there it is clear that it is Hamas propaganda. Just like the "uniforms " they wore during the handovers of the hostages. It's blatant and overt and the source is clear.
Maybe I am misunderstanding the thread I thought it was more journalists reporting lies as facts under pressure from Hamas.

The World Health Organization declared famine in Gaza not Hamas using internationally accepted markers.

The "dog rape" allegations came from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and New York Times. (I put that in quotations because I would be sceptical of those claims).

No - I didn’t explain myself very clearly from the outset. The fact that journalists in Gaza ( and the civilians they interview) can be threatened by Hamas is just one aspect of the way it is hard to get at the truth.
I do think Hamas has been successful in deflecting all the criticism away from Hamas and towards Israel.
But I accept that my original post wasnt clear.

I've just seen Ed Miliband speaking. He doesn't seem to think that there has been a problem with people listening to Hamas propaganda. He says the millions of people who were moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people were right. I mean we all know that, it was obvious from the moment Israel announced their intention to starve an entire population on the 9th of Oct 2023 and has been obvious everyday since what the right thing is. Let's just hope that Labour filters out the noise of pro Israel propaganda and finally take appropriate action.

Ok I get you better now.
I do see where you are coming from . I understand Hamas have deflected blame and criticism away from their own actions and in the wake of Oct 7th I might have agreed with you. However over the past couple of years we have seen so much suffering that I would not put the blame solely on Hamas for. So much has been destruction and death caused by Israel that has not been in the pursuit of the terrorists (not to be twee but Hind Rajab does come to mind here)

Plus here in the West hearing the words of the politicians who wish to rain death and even the Israeli supermodel who said recently "To tell you I'm not sad for every child in the world who cries? I'm sad. But I also understand that this child, if we don't act, will grow up to be a terrorist."

So while Hamas have deflected attention away from their actions Israel have not helped their case with theirs.

Hi. I'd appreciate if you didn't attempt to summerise my posts that you yourself said you were unable to understand. Your self proclaimed lack of ability to comprehend my posts is unfortunately leading to you completely missing the point and misrepresenting my posts. Thanks 🙂

So Israel lied about sharing and verifying the autopsy reports, like they lie about everything right? Letter to the UN;

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/request-for-emergency-security-council-meeting-the-case-of-the-bibas-family-letter-from-israel-s-2025-111/

They should have shared them with the BBC and Al Jazeera, who could have been trusted to keep them confidential, just to satisfy Jew haters, right?

There's also this -

Following the repatriation of his family's bodies, Yarden Bibas and his extended family took immediate legal and public actions to halt the exploitation and dissemination of the graphic forensic findings.

Through their legal counsel, Dana Pugach, the family executed several measures:

• Issued Cease-and-Desist Orders: The family issued formal cease-and-desist warnings directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and top military commanders. This legal action demanded that government officials and state bodies immediately refrain from publicly detailing or publishing information regarding the manner of the deaths.
• Demanded Media Restrictions: The family issued a public directive requesting that news organizations and media outlets stop printing or broadcasting speculative and graphic medical data. They explicitly stated: "Yarden and the family want the world to know this was murder, without delving into any specifics."
• Publicly Rebuked Political Explanations: The family publicly criticized Netanyahu and other politicians after the Prime Minister described the alleged details of the forensic report in a speech. Yarden's sister, Ofri Bibas, condemned the state's actions as "abuse for its own sake" and stated that the family must not be pressured into allowing the tragedy to be weaponized for public or political purposes.

Yarden Bibas's position remains that while the world should acknowledge his wife and children were murdered by their captors, the intimate, traumatic medical specifics belong exclusively to the family and must remain private.

I guess Yarden Bibas is lying about his wife and children's deaths as well?

So can we take it you believe Hamas?

“So while Hamas have deflected attention away from their actions Israel have not helped their case with theirs.“
I would change this to
“So while Hamas have deflected attention away from their actions extremists in Israel have not helped their case with theirs.”

Not all Israelis are extremists just as not all Palestinians are Hamas.

But otherwise I do agree.

That is true.

The Bibas children are Jews. They don't matter to some. All children should matter, they are all innocent.

The whole conflict is awful and the pathetic Westerners with their binary logic doesn't help.