…it was a lie. A complete, total, 100% lie.
But since attacking Israel has become an international sport, it has already spread around the world, and cannot be everyone “knows” it.
How can I be so sure it is a lie?
I’ll let the invaluable Brendan O’Neill of spiked-online.com tell you. Here, from his latest article, are the specifics (the bold print is mine):
1 June 2025. Make a note of that date. For there is a good chance it will be recorded as a day of infamy. As a day when the Jews were once again libelled as the slayers of innocents. As a day when the intellectual classes mimicked their benighted forebears of the medieval era and falsely accused the Jewish nation of spilling blood for sport. For many it was just an ordinary Sunday – but for those who will come to write the history of our times, it will stand out as a day of frenzied hearsay in which Jews were once again branded demons and bloodlusters.
Reports of a massacre in Gaza came early that day. It took place in Rafah, we were told, at one of the distribution centres overseen by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-Israel group that’s providing aid to Gaza’s needy. With depthless cruelty, IDF troops opened fire on the half-starved Palestinians queuing for meals. Thirty-one souls were slaughtered in the ‘aid-centre attack’, as the BBC swiftly called it. A venomous fury spread through the internet. No one can deny it now, people cried: Israel is ‘replicating’ Nazi tactics. Just as the Nazis told Jews they were being put on trains for a better life, so the New Nazis promise Palestinians food as ‘a pretext for slaughter’.
There was one problem with these breathless accounts of a wicked massacre: it seems no such thing took place. Last night, the BBC backtracked. It said it has now studied the ‘graphic video’ of the ‘aid-centre massacre’ and has ruled that it is ‘incorrect’. We were told the ‘massacre’ took place early in the morning, yet the ‘direction of the shadows’ in the clip point to an event that took place ‘after 7pm local time’. More devastatingly, the Beeb geolocated the clip and found that it was filmed in a part of Khan Younis that is 4.5km from the nearest aid-distribution centre. A journalist in Gaza confirmed it: the events in the viral clip are ‘unrelated to any aid-distribution site’.
That enough for you? Not for me. Here’s a little more:
If what the BBC is now saying is correct, then we have just witnessed something truly horrifying. We have watched as an untruth spread with uncommon speed to every corner of the Earth. We have seen a serious calumny be taken as good coin by newsmakers and influencers. Worse, we’ve witnessed an eruption of bigotry. Reports of an ‘aid-centre massacre’ unleashed untold Jew hatred. Across social media, the cry went up: they’re demons, they’re Nazis, they claim to be the ‘Chosen People’ and yet they use food to tempt innocents into the path of murder. All were in agreement: the Jewish nation is the most evil nation.
For the BBC to now say it was ‘incorrect’ is the worst case of ‘too little, too late’ I’ve ever seen.
This is what Israel has to deal with. Every day of every week of every month of every year with no end in sight.
And don’t expect the BBC, or any of the countless others reporting this lie, to behave the next time a lie that reflects negatively on Israel is put out for them. They eat this up like candy.
I suppose that, after almost 58 centuries, Jew hatred shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But it still hurts. It still results in violence against Jews. And I have zero expectation that it will end in my lifetime. Or yours. Or anyone’s.
