Even though a widely reported allegation from Hamas on Sunday that Israel Defense Force troops massacred aid-seeking Gazans has now been debunked, a similar allegation by the terror organization on Tuesday is also getting uncritical attention. 

“I’m not in Gaza, so I can’t tell what the IDF is or isn’t doing, but highlighting humanitarian suffering, and especially the plight of children, is central to the Hamas strategy,” an Arab world watcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, tells the Sun.

Unable to make advances on the battlefield, Mr. Halevi adds, Hamas is utilizing the world press and a far-left Islamist coalition as a force multiplier. “Regrettably, the willing media is cooperating, and is increasingly part of this propaganda machine,” he says.

Al Jazeera posted on Sunday a video clipping that allegedly depicted 31 Gazanas killed by IDF fire near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution center. The video was widely referenced in headlines on CNN and other American press outlets, while European and Middle Eastern media and wire services around the world also repeated the Hamas allegation. 

One of those was the British Broadcasting Corporation, which for two days had the video clip on a loop. The effect was to discredit the GHF, an American-backed, Israeli-secured aid distribution mechanism designed to bypass Hamas control over donated food, medicine, and other necessities. On Tuesday the BBC used its website to walk back its earlier heated reporting. 

“While verifying the clip,” the BBC now writes, “a local journalist who filmed another video of the same scene confirmed to us that the events pictured are unrelated to any distribution site, and occurred yesterday evening” — hours after the GHF operation was done for the day. 

On Tuesday, Hamas published a new allegation, claiming that 27 Gazans died near a GHF aid distribution site. Unlike the IDF’s now-verified denial that any incident occurred on Sunday, it acknowledges there was one on Tuesday. 

Several Gazans endangered troops stationed 550 yards from the GHF distribution site, an IDF spokesman, Brigadier General Effie Defrin, told reporters. As they strayed off of a designated line for aid seekers, soldiers shot in the air, and later at the approaching crowd. He acknowledged reports of casualties, but said the numbers are unknown. 

Press outlets completely ignored the IDF’s denial that the Sunday incident never happened, preferring instead to report the Hamas allegations. European officials rushed to judgment, and Canada announced Tuesday it would investigate IDF troops on allegations of crimes against humanity. 

“I am appalled by the reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza yesterday,” the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement Monday. Israel, he added, must “agree to and facilitate humanitarian aid.”

Israel doesn’t block aid to Gaza, “Hamas does,” General Defrin said. The Israeli and American versions of what’s happening, though, are often ignored. On Sunday the GHF posted a video of Gazans patiently waiting for food at the exact Rafah location where the alleged deadly incident took place. Press outlets, though, failed to report that version, preferring Al Jazeera’s incendiary video instead. 

We “didn’t give proper weight to Israel’s denial, and gave improper certitude about what was known about any Israeli role in the shootings,” the Washington Post wrote on X as it deleted an earlier posting, which approvingly cited the allegation from the Hamas health ministry that 31 people died in the incident. 

A week since launching its operation, the GHF has distributed nearly seven million meals to needy Palestinians. While the UN and affiliated bodies have long complained of difficulties in getting aid to Gazans, they maintain the American-backed  system violates “neutrality,” and blame Israel for denying aid to Gazans.

Ignoring the press corrections following the incorrect Sunday reporting, Mr. Guterres leaped on Hamas’s new allegation that 27 “martyrs” were killed by the IDF Tuesday. “Once again we are witnessing unthinkable loss of life in Gaza,” he said. 

Hamas is ratcheting up its accusations. The GHF “has led to the martyrdom of no fewer than 75 Palestinian civilians over the past week while attempting to reach aid distribution points,” a Hamas political bureau member, Bassem Naim, said in a statement, which was dutifully reported by Western press outlets.

Until now, Hamas had confiscated aid from the UN, and used it to maintain its brutal oppression of the Gaza population. By pushing lies and half-truths, it is attempting to discredit the American-Israeli operation. Many in the press are dutifully reporting the terror organization’s accounts.

“We’re going to look into reports before we confirm them from this podium,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Tuesday in response to a question about the Tuesday Hamas allegation. “I suggest that journalists who actually care about truth do the same to reduce the amount of misinformation that’s going around the globe.”