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?

What does that letter to the UN have to do with Israel sharing details about the autopsy. I feel so sorry for Yarden Bibas but how does he know any more about the details of his family's tragic death other than what he was told by Israel.

I think he's knows a lot more than has been released.

Do you believe Hamas then?

A simple yes or no will do.

I don't know who to believe. What I know is logic. The Bibas family were Hamas' most high profile hostages. Hamas knew that and so did Israel. I suppose it is possible that some rogue Hamas guards disobeyed orders and enacted their own sick form of revenge. The point is though, no independent third party has verified the results of the autopsy so we are expected to believe the official Israeli narrative.

Was it logical to invade Israel on Oct 7th?

You are applying logic to Islamic extremist terrorists?

What makes you even consider that Hamas might not have murdered them though or that it was some 'rogue guards'?

Do you think they're not capable of monstrous depravity like killing babies and children, rape, mutilation, dismembering etc, or do you think it was only the civilians who took part who did that?

You don't think the very act of taking a baby and toddler hostage (along with several other children) showed them for the monsters they are. You must believe that because they filmed themselves doing it, right?

The Bibas family were actually kidnapped by the Mujahideen Brigades.

The Mujahideen Brigades are the armed wing of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement. They are a relatively small, hardline militant group operating primarily out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank (such as Jenin).

Origins and History

• Splintering from Fatah: The movement was founded around October 2000 / 2001 during the early stages of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. It initially formed as a breakaway faction from Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
• Rejection of Peace Processes: The founders were predominantly former Fatah members and Palestinian Authority security forces who vehemently rejected the Oslo peace accords and any diplomatic compromise with Israel.
• Leadership Transitions: The group was founded by Omar Abu Sharia, who died in 2007 from injuries sustained in an earlier Israeli airstrike. Leadership then passed to his brother, Dr. As'ad Abu Sharia, who served as Secretary-General until he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in June 2025.

Ideology
While they emerged from Fatah—a historically nationalist and secular political movement—the Mujahideen Brigades underwent a massive ideological shift.

• Salafi-Jihadi Orientation: Unlike their secular origins, the group adopted a strict Salafi-Jihadi Islamist ideology. Analysts and research databases consider their ideological platform to be more extreme than Hamas's.
• Total Armed Resistance: They reject any form of normalization or two-state solution. Their primary objective is the total destruction of the state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state across the entirety of historic Palestine.
• Pan-Islamic Rhetoric: Their messaging heavily employs pan-Islamic, jihadist framework rather than just localized Palestinian nationalism, emphasizing holy war (Jihad) as a religious duty.

The Mujahideen Brigades (Kataeb al-Mujahideen) have been directly implicated in multiple war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of mass violence, most notably during and after the October 7, 2023, attacks.

While they operated quietly for many years as a smaller faction specializing in rocket fire and guerrilla warfare, forensic tracking and post-ceasefire military intelligence have revealed their central involvement in several high-profile atrocities:

1. The Nir Oz Kibbutz Massacre and Kidnappings
On October 7, 2023, the Mujahideen Brigades acted as a core partner under Hamas’s joint operations umbrella. Led by senior operative Mohammed Hassan Mohammed Awad, cell members raided the border community of Kibbutz Nir Oz multiple times.

• The Bibas Family Kidnapping and Murder: The group was directly responsible for the abduction and transport of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas. Intelligence and subsequent autopsy findings confirmed that the group held the mother and children in captivity until manually executing them in November 2023.
• Abduction and Concealment of U.S. Citizens: Awad’s cell orchestrated the kidnappings of elderly Israeli-American couple Gad Haggai and Judi Weinstein-Haggai, who were shot during their morning walk on October The Mujahideen Brigades dragged their bodies into Gaza, where a senior member of the group, Ali Saadi Wasfi al-Agha, was later identified as the individual responsible for burying their remains in secret captivity.

2. Music Festival Abductions and Foreign National Executions Under the command of regional leader Ahmed Hussein Mohammed Kafina, the Mujahideen Brigades targeted civilians fleeing the northwestern Negev.

• Abduction of Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or: Kafina and his underlings spearheaded the physical abduction of festival-goers Noa Argamani and her partner Avinatan Or from the Supernova music festival.
• Murder of Thai Agricultural Laborers: Kafina also directed the abduction of Sudthisak Rinthalak, a 43-year-old Thai farm worker who was executed at Kibbutz Be'eri before his body was dragged into the Gaza Strip as a bargaining chip.

3. Propaganda and Desecration of Remains
Following the initial attacks, the Mujahideen Brigades extensively used their digital channels to boast about atrocities. The group published graphic photographs and videos of their fighters desecrating and posing with the bodies of murdered soldiers and civilians inside captured military bases and kibbutzim.

4. Post-October 7 Mass Casualty Attacks
The group has continued to claim responsibility for direct terrorist attacks inside Israel:

• The Beersheba Bus Station Attack: On October 6, 2024, the group's "Dahem" unit claimed full responsibility for a coordinated shooting and stabbing operation inside the central bus station of Beersheba. The attack killed two Israelis and wounded 24 others, which the group openly celebrated in a public manifesto as a "heroic operation".

Throughout their history, the Mujahideen Brigades have similarly engaged in indiscriminate rocket fire aimed at Israeli civilian population centres and the deployment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) along the Gaza border.

TBH I can't even think about what Shiri experienced before she was murdered by sub humans like that. I just hope they didn't make her watch what they did to her babies. Although No 3 up there doesn't give me much hope.

The fact a woman in the West, who is under the misapprehension she has even a shred of morality while constantly demonising Israel, is debating whether she believes they were murdered by people like the above makes me want to vomit.

I know you're too cowardly to say you believe Hamas btw.

Can I also ask why you believe the civilian deaths reported by Hamas, and on SM, were all caused by Israel, without 3rd party verification of their autopsy reports?

No non conflict related deaths have been recorded in Gaza since Oct 7th so at least 15,000 of them will be interesting. Together with the ones from misfired rockets, booby traps, landmines, executions and caught in crossfire.

Do you think it'll say that on their autopsy reports?

A good example of how well the propaganda machine has worked the other way. And a few Hamas supporter accusations thrown in for good measure.

Are you saying the Bibas story is an example of Israeli propaganda?

AnyfoolcanknowThepointistounderstand posted this:

The independent verification by international specialists concluded that:

That didn’t happen. Yet she posted it as a fact. Which would suggest that she believes it to be true. It is not.

I'm genuinely shocked that anyone would seek to portray any part of the Bibas family story as Israeli propaganda, rather than what it is- a very stark, awful example of Hamas' unimaginable cruelty.

Wow, a lot of words being put in my mouth there but I'll let it go. You do realise that this is not a Hollywood movie with goodies and baddies. This is the real world and as much as Hamas are depraved monsters, so are the IDF. As I said, I do not know who is lying and anything else would be pure speculation. You do realise though, even a depraved monster, in the real world, can make logical decisions. I just cannot understand why Hamas would go to all the effort of taking the hostages and bringing them back to Gaza to then murder on a whim their most valuable negotiating asset. Nothing to do with whether or not they are amoral enough to kill babies as I'm sure they are. The other point is, we know the IDF employs the Hannibal Directive and we know Yoav Gallant publicly stated it was used on October 7th. If the decision was made to neutralise this negotiating asset, I would hardly expect the IDF to admit that is what happened to the world, or the Israeli people. So to conclude, are Hamas capable of murdering babies, absolutely, but then so are the IDF,

Well there's a precedent for that. In every other instance where Israel has 'mowed the grass' in Israel, Hamas released figures for the number of victims and those figures were later independently verified as correct so there is no reason to believe anything different this time.

Nothing shocks me any more with the way some on the pro Palestinian side accept what Hamas or Hamas linked media or those employed by Hamas run organisations say unquestioningly. Yet assume every atrocity committed against Israelis is suspect and not really to be believed.

The figures are generally considered to be about right, but not the way they were presented, as though all the deaths were civilian - completely ignoring all the Hamas fighters that are amongst the dead!

And even then - just because Hamas figures appear to have been correct in one way, that doesn't automatically make everything they say believable. They are terrorists to most of us so not the sort of people to assume they are telling the truth.

Youve spent too much time on here and its turned you into a cynic. Me too.
I do believe the vast, vast majority of people see the Bibas story for what it is. This is just a very, very niche area of the internet, perhaps we give it too much headspace.

A joint investigation published in August 2025 by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call revealed that figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicated approximately 83% of Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians.

https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-percent-civilians-militants/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war

Of course Israel spokespersons keep banging on about the most moral army in the world and that the kill ratio was one to one. Well that is a lie.

Absolutely and as I typed out the that post, I had the same thought.

Later edited my first sentence to reflect the fact that I don't really think most of those on the pro Palestinian side accept what Hamas say unquestioningly.

Only some of them with more extreme views where the Palestinian side can do no wrong whereas the Israel side can do no right.

Nevertheless the more time I spend on this board the more cynical I get so I have started to spend less time on here.

I wholeheartedly agree that the vast, vast majority of people see the Bibas story for what it is.

Even if I accepted that figure and I have no idea how reliable it is as your sources are biased, that still doesn't tell us how many were killed by Israel and how many by Hamas and how many just caught up in the general fighting with no way to attribute which side was more responsible.

Wars in heavily populated urban areas always do lead to a catastrophic loss of life unfortunately. Hamas knew this when they attacked Israel. Israel knew this when they decided to retaliate.

Of course it is. Every innocent person dragged into this inhumane situation is a victim. It is a very harsh example of unimaginable cruelty and horror.
Nobody can dismiss this.
We must also acknowledge the cruelty towards the children in Palestine who lost limbs, died and or lost their loved ones.
These tragic cases should never be used as propaganda. They are a heartbreaking reminder of how fragile our existence is.

Actually it is generally believed the figures are actually much worse because it doesn't count the bodies buried under the rubble which the ICJ has told Israel to preserve as evidence but Israel are currently ignoring the instructions and 'cleaning' the areas with bulldozers to hide the evidence.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/un-human-rights-chief-says-recovery-of-remains-in-gaza-three-years-later-adds-to-palestinian-trauma/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/7/israels-removal-of-gaza-rubble-risk-to-war-crimes-evidence-un

I'm surprised you have any sympathy for Yarden Bibas. You said that all Israeli's are complicit in the actions of the Israeli government, which includes the entire Bibas family. In fact going by your logic if the Israeli government did deliberately kill Shiri Bibas and her children then they are responsible for their own deaths.

So here we have someone saying-

"If the decision was made to neutralise this negotiating asset, I would hardly expect the IDF to admit that is what happened to the world, or the Israeli people. So to conclude, are Hamas capable of murdering babies, absolutely, but then so are the IDF,"

'The 'negotiating asset' in this case is the Bibas family.

'If the decision was made to neutralize this asset' means If the Israelis decided to kill the Bibas family themselves, through the invocation of the Hannibal directive, then we wouldn't to be told the truth about that, because Israel lies.

So this post is very directly questioning whether it was indeed Israel that killed the Bibas family. Because Israel is as capable of killing babies as Hamas.

This is literally the Hamas propaganda, from the poster behind the Bibas coffin, exactly the same content. On a mainly female UK website.

This is what I took the thread to be about.

And this is what I mean by this thread being an example of how some in the West have been taken in by Hamas propaganda.

I never said any such thing. I made a sociopolitical point about how people living in a democracy have not just a right but a duty to police the actions of their government if that government were engaging in an activity that is not only immoral but illegal. It was specifically about the implementation of the Disengagement 710 plan. If you would like me to explain the concept further I can try but it would probably be better on the relevant thread. I have total sympathy for Yarden Bibas. He has lost his whole family in a truly horrendous manner. Whatever the actual circumstances of their deaths are, Hamas are responsible for kidnapping them in the first place.

The conclusion you came to (or lets be honest, started with) was that because not enough people protested, every single Israeli citizen is respoinsible for the Israeli government. The Bibas family - including childred - are Israeli citizens, and you're saying that the Israeli government was responsible for their murder. Ergo...

That you for all the information.

I truly hope posters actually read it.