The United Nations' contribution to Hamas disinformation and its bias against Israel

@ElentirENG ES 10·25·2023 · 15:45 0

In the war between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, the UN plays a role that is far from independent and objective.

Scandal at the UN: Iran is elected for a vice-presidency of its General Assembly
The UN dedicates more tweets to Elon Musk on Twitter than to Iran for killing 314 people

The disinformation that Hamas is spreading from Gaza

The Gaza Strip has been controlled since 2006 by Hamas terrorists. Due to the conflict it has with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), in the hands of its Fatah rivals, Hamas has created its own Palestinian government in Gaza, distinct from the PNA government in the West Bank. This includes a number of departments that Hamas calls "ministries." In the various conflicts it has had so far with Israel, Hamas has been publishing death tolls in Gaza from a "Ministry of Health" controlled by the terrorist group.

The credibility of these figures released by a terrorist group is zero. Believing that Hamas is capable of murder, torture, kidnapping and rape, but is not capable of lying, shows great naivety on the part of all those who uncritically assume the death toll in Gaza and any other information spread by Hamas.

Two recent examples of this disinformation campaign

A few days ago we saw a very clear example of this disinformation by Hamas. The "Gaza Ministry of Health" controlled by the terrorist group reported that 500 people had died in an Israeli attack against a hospital. Finally, and as already we saw here, that Israeli attack did not exist: what happened was the explosion of a deflected rocket that had been launched by another terrorist group, the Islamic Jihad, from Gaza itself. Hamas's disinformation maneuver was repeated again a few days later, with an alleged Israeli attack on a church that turned out not to be true. This time, behind the hoax was the "Ministry of the Interior" of Gaza, that is, Hamas.

At this point it has already become clear that Hamas systematically lies about the deaths in Gaza to generate a position hostile to Israel among international public opinion. It must be recognized that the disinformation campaign has been having great success due to the irresponsibility of many media outlets, which assume the death tolls published by Hamas are true, as if a terrorist group were a source. valid and reliable. But the media are not the only ones that contribute to spreading Hamas hoaxes: the UN also does so, and it also does so by resorting to tricks to give legitimacy to this data.

UN helps spread false death tolls published by Hamas

Let's look at an example: October 7, the same day of the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published a report announcing that there were deaths and 1,610 injuries in Gaza due to the counterattack Israeli. The text of the report attributed the figure to the Hamas-controlled "Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH), but did not question it. Next to the report was an image with large casualty figures. Gaza figures appeared first, even though the country attacked was Israel, thus giving the impression that Gaza had been the victim of an attack, and not of the Israeli response to an attack.

The bias of the UN when it comes to exposing death data

The UN has resorted to cruder tricks to encourage Hamas disinformation. For example, on October 17, the UN website cited "data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health" to claim that "2,670 people died in Gaza, or an average of 267 per day, or 11 per hour. Around 9,600 people were injured."

Unlike what we have just seen, the UN published the numbers of Israeli deaths and injuries without indicating the averages, which made these data less relevant. Let us keep in mind that rocket fire from Gaza against Israel has not stopped since October 7. Yesterday, air raid sirens sounded 26 times in Israel due to the rocket fire from Gaza.

On the other hand, this information on deaths did not come from the "Palestinian Ministry of Health" (that is, the one controlled by the ANP), but rather was data published by the "Gaza Ministry of Health", controlled by Hamas, according to a Turkish agency that has been exhibiting a clear affinity to that terrorist group.

UN officials celebrate Hamas terror attack

We are not facing an isolated event on the part of the UN. As reported by UN Watch, UN officials celebrated the terrorist attack in Hamas against Israel, something that has barely been reflected in the media. The UN bias against Israel is not new: the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more times than the rest of the countries combined, including several dictatorships. A cruelty whose reason is largely explained by the fact that that Council is usually made up of communist dictatorships and Islamic regimes that violate human rights and are openly hostile to Israel. And not only in Council: in June, the Iranian dictatorship was elected to a vice-presidency of the UN General Assembly.

The UN Secretary General justified this terrorist attack yesterday

Seeing how the UN has benefited Hamas, it is not surprising that yesterday it took another step: the socialist António Guterres, secretary general of the UN, justified Hamas' attacks against Israel, stating that they "did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation." That is to say, that the top leader of the UN assumes the discourse of terrorists to justify their crimes, something scandalous. In response to these very serious statements, the Israeli government has called for Guterres to resign and has suspended visas for UN officials. A more than justified response.

---

Photo: United Nations Photo.