Gary Willigis a member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.
Like a house of cards, the artifice of lies built by Hamas and its supporters has begun to crumble.
A few weeks ago, statistician Abraham Wyner published a report in Tablet Magazine conclusively proving that Hamas is lying about the casualty figures in Gaza. The deaths reported by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry rose in a ridiculously linear fashion on a day-by-day basis that is virtually impossible in a real war. In addition, given Hamas’s acknowledgment that at least 6,000 of its fighters have been killed, its claim that 70% of the casualties in Gaza have been women and children is impossible unless male civilians are being miraculously spared. The extent of this lie is apparent when the true casualty numbers for terrorists and combatants killed in Gaza are taken into account, over 13,000.
Yesterday, former Al Jazeera director Yasser Abu Hilala admitted that the accusations that IDF soldiers raped women during the recent operation at the al-Shifa Hospital were fabricated.
"It was revealed through Hamas investigations that the story of the rape of women in Shifa Hospital was fabricated," Hilala wrote, adding that "The woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood!"
Anti-Israel forces have made up rape allegations against Israel whole-cloth in order to distract from and excuse the well-documented mass rapes committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and the reports that the hostages still held in Gaza face constant sexual assaults and abuse from their captors.
However, the same day that the rape allegations against Israel collapsed, the constant stream of lies against Israel bore fruit as the Biden Administration caved to the pressure from those who spread these lies and refused to use its veto power against a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire during the month of Ramadan.
This resolution is merely declarative and creates no legal obligations, but it will still make everything worse. Hamas will be further convinced that its strategy of intentionally causing the deaths of its own people and constantly lying to inflate the number of civilian deaths is working and should continue, and it will be encouraged to dig in its heels and refuse any deal to see the hostages released in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. It will be seen as further evidence of Israel’s wrongdoing by those around the world who support Hamas’s genocidal goals, giving a tailwind to the antisemites making life more dangerous for Jews everywhere.
Ironically, hours after this shameful betrayal at the UN, the American government stated that it knows the accusations of Israeli war crimes are lies. Addressing Israel’s compliance with an executive order signed by President Biden last month mandating that recipients of US military aid demonstrate that they are complying with international law, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that “We have not found them (the Israelis) to be in violation, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
Indeed, contrary to the claims of “genocide” by those who want to commit a genocide against the Jews, the civilians to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza has been historically low. Even if Hamas’s overall casualty statistics are by and large accurate, and there is little reason to believe they are, the ratio is three civilians for every combatant killed. Israel's figures are 1.4 to 1. According to the UN, the average in all wars is nine civilians for every combatant killed. The real figures are probably even lower.
The IDF has accomplished this despite not only the complexities of fighting in an urban environment, but of fighting an enemy that deliberately uses human shields, shoots its own people whenever they refuse to be used as human shields, and has built hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath Gaza, leading to the collapse of many buildings when the tunnels are destroyed.
The world, the media, and the Biden Administration should have learned their lesson after the Ahli Baptist Hospital incident, where it was quickly proven that Hamas and its supporters were lying through their teeth when they claimed that Israel had killed 500 innocent people in a bombing of the hospital and that contrary to their claims, the blast was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket and the death toll was many times less than originally reported.
But then, they should have learned from the fake civilian casualty figures of the 2009 and 2014 Gaza conflicts. They should have learned from the fake ‘Jenin massacre’ of 2002. Lies about Israel are always believed no matter how obviously false they are.
The UN is a den of scum and villainy, where any anti-Israel declaration or resolution is guaranteed to receive an automatic majority no matter how absurd. The UN has failed to condemn Hamas even once since October 7, with Russia and China vetoing even ceasefire resolutions if these resolutions include any condemnation of Hamas or tie a prospective ceasefire to Hamas releasing its hostages.
UN officials have on multiple occasions denied that Israel even has the right to defend itself, giving Hamas the right to murder every last Israeli child. Giving such an organization any legitimacy by allowing it to pass resolutions giving fuel to the anti-Israel fire is a betrayal in and of itself.
An old adage attributed to Mark Twain and Winston Churchill states, “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” It takes courage to stand up to lies that have spread around the world. The Jewish people have been forced to have this courage for millennia when faced with the lies of the blood libel, well poisonings, the Protocols of the Elders of Ziyon, and many more. It has happened many times throughout history that the whole world was wrong and the Jews were right.
Does the Biden Administration have the courage to stand up to the lies of genocidal madmen and their cheerleaders? Based on yesterday’s vote, it doesn’t look like it. Spooked by low poll numbers and the threat of a voter revolt in Michigan that could cost Biden the election, the administration has rhetorically lost its moral fiber in the first months of 2024, calling Israel’s efforts to defend itself against Hamas’s vow to wipe out its entire population “over the top,” repeatedly citing Hamas’s casualty figures despite knowing they were false, and demanding that Israel allow Hamas to live to massacre another day by stopping the war without crushing the last of Hamas’s military strength in Rafah.
The Canadian government has already caved to pressure from the liars, announcing an end to arms exports to Israel that drew cheers from antisemites around the world. So far, Biden has shown enough backbone to not go that far and completely throw Israel to the Nazi wolves of Hamas. But his administration has grown far too afraid of the extremists and antisemites in the Democratic base, and has shown no signs of the courage to stand up to them and call out their hatred and their lies.
Biden would in fact improve his chances of reelection if he stood up to the anti-Israel and antisemitic mob and allowed his policy to be guided by truth and not by lies. A President who displays courage inspires trust, and it would be far better or him to go into November having backed an Israeli victory over the forces of evil than having forced Israel to allow evil to endure through cowardice.
Even if his election chances did require him to turn against Israel, a true leader, a moral leader, would place doing the right thing over political expediency and refrain from doing so.