This is what evil genius looks like: Palestinian propaganda and psychological warfare.
Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad last week both released videos of the Israeli hostages that they are holding in terror tunnels in Gaza. Hamas showed the arm of a well-fed terrorist offering an emaciated Evyatar David a can of lentils after David crossed off the number of days he hadn’t eaten on a “Prisoner’s Chart” stuck to the tunnel walls.
The terrorists then filmed the skeletal and visibly weak David digging what he was told was his own grave. The 24-year-old, a former surfer and musician, was one of the scores of hostages abducted from the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023, during the Palestinian invasion of Israel from Gaza, when 1,200 were murdered, thousands wounded, and 251 abducted.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an organization whose name says a lot, showed an equally emaciated 21-year-old hostage, Rom Braslavski, also kidnapped from the Supernova festival. In the video, Braslavski is weeping, with barely enough strength to move, begging for food.
The video clips are part of a slick, sick PR campaign by the terrorist organizations. They were preceded by an intensive media campaign spreading the blood libel that Israel was deliberately starving Gazan children.
Despite the allegations of famine, The New York Times, Guardian, BBC, et al, apparently could not find an example of a starving child to photograph and instead opted for illustrative photos of children pathetically underweight due to illness and genetic conditions.
Kudos to the German Bild, which this week exposed that the photos of crowds of Gazans with empty pots, seemingly reaching out to receive food – were, in fact, carefully staged. Weaponizing pictures like this gives a different meaning to a photoshoot.
The New York Post bravely did the right thing and published the harrowing image of Evyatar David on its front page. Even Sodom had one righteous person. For most of the media, David’s plight spoiled the Palestinian narrative.
As Iranian activist Elica Le Bon shared on social media , Hamas is, “showing us more than hypocrisy, they’re proving their ideological domination. ‘The entire world is so subverted by us that we can even show you real starvation, torture, and evil, and nobody will care. Your people are now our people. Your free thinkers have become our zombified allies. The worldview of ordinary people has been irrevocably distorted, and Jews and Israelis have been thoroughly, totally, and completely dehumanized, just as we planned all along.’
“This image was Hamas’s message to the Western world: ‘We haven’t just taken Israelis captive, we’ve taken your minds hostage, too. We own you. We’ve won.’ And they’re not wrong.”
Hamas can afford to keep the hostages – after all, it doesn’t cost much when they’re not feeding them. And holding hostages – 20 of them probably alive and the bodies of another 30 – works.
France, UK, Canada gift Hamas with Palestinian state declaration
FRENCH PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Canadian Premier Mark Carney are among those who are threatening/promising to declare a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.
For France and Britain, it will be a continuation of a tradition of disastrous meddling in the Middle East in the style of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing up the region. And Canada knows a thing or two about trampling on the rights and lands of indigenous people.
Absurdly, Starmer said he’d announce Palestinian statehood if Israel didn’t agree to a ceasefire – i.e., surrender to Hamas’s demands. He might just as well recognize the Islamic State and be done with it. Hamas doesn’t seek a Palestinian state; it wants a caliphate, which would include Israel.
For their own twisted reasons, based largely on domestic considerations, Macron, Starmer, Carney, et al, believe the best response to the Hamas mega-atrocity of October 7, 2023, and consequent war is to create the first-ever Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital.
This requires splitting the Israeli capital and handing Judaism’s holiest sites to the Palestinians. Then, according to this plan, Israelis and Palestinians, divided only by different religions, different languages, and different cultures – and Palestinian vows to erase the Jewish people from the Jewish state – would live side by side in peace and harmony. The flying pig, by the way, is both kosher and halal.
British journalist Nicole Lampert Brockman has revealed that as far back as April, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy signed a memorandum of understanding “to guide and enhance the bilateral partnership of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Palestinian Government.”
The UK already recognizes a Palestinian government, but doesn’t hold it accountable because it lost control of Gaza in 2006. Hence, Britain is recognizing an instantly failed, corrupt, and warring state.
Small wonder that in an interview with Al-Jazeera, Qatar-based Hamas official Ghazi Hamad boasted: “The initiative by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of October 7.”
Hamad’s comments were picked up by the Daily Mail, among a few others, but did not get the broad attention they deserved. Why? Well, first ask yourself why a senior Hamas official is still allowed to live a comfortable life in Qatar? Pressure on Israel can’t bring about the release of the hostages and the end of the war as long as terrorist leaders are living freely in Qatar, Turkey, and elsewhere.
The Daily Mail also picked up on a UN report revealing that a whopping 86% of the aid entering Gaza is being stolen “either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza.” Israel is not preventing aid; Hamas terrorists – the “armed actors” – are.
In an encouraging step, several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar are demanding that Hamas be disarmed and excluded from power in Gaza. But they want to see the Palestinian Authority return there, instead.
There is a reason, however, that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 20th year of his “four-year” term, doesn’t dare hold elections. He knows Hamas would win. Even if Hamas were banned from participating, there are no guarantees it wouldn’t seize power in Gaza and PA-controlled areas.
Incidentally, even though more than 145 UN member states already recognize a State of Palestine, the UN preserves the status of Palestinians as “perpetual refugees,” with a UN body (UNRWA) dedicated to their needs. Only Palestinians can claim to have their own state and to be eternal refugees in it.
And it doesn’t come cheap to the foreign taxpayer. The UK this year donated nearly $135 million to UNRWA, while last year Canada gave $65 million, and France nearly $44 million.
If they weren’t genocidal jihadists, I might almost feel sorry for the Houthis in Yemen. They must be feeling frustrated. They’re as evil as Hamas but lack the genius touch. The Houthis have created a famine in Yemen, which, according to UN figures, currently includes 1.5 million facing emergency-level food insecurity (and close to 5 million at crisis level.)
But the only photos of it you’re likely to have seen recently are the pictures falsely labeled as coming from Gaza.
Houthis are holding hostages and continue to threaten international shipping, and they’re still launching rockets and killer drones at Israel. But they have failed to learn from their Hamas brothers how to leverage this to get the world to blame Israel and demand Israel supply food and aid – or else. “Or else,” in this case, meaning being rewarded at the UN by a declaration of independence for the areas under their control.
The Houthis should seek tips from the Hamas PR team on how to get The New York Times, Guardian, CNN, BBC, and other mainstream media to promote their aims while demonizing Israel. Hamas has turned it into an art form.
And let me point out that a full ceasefire in Gaza will not necessarily mean an end to the Houthi rockets, piracy, and terrorism. Today, they say the rockets are in solidarity with Gaza, but there is nothing stopping them – or more to the point, nobody stopping them – from tomorrow declaring the rockets to be in support of “al-Aqsa.” The UN and international media constantly use the Arabic name for the Temple Mount, thus whittling away at Jewish ties to Jerusalem and encouraging the jihadist cause.
The two-state solution is being artificially resuscitated while the Palestinian-held hostages are being starved to death. Those leaders involved will eventually discover that virtue signaling is not a sound diplomatic strategy.