The group is facing criticism for the ‘chaos’ reportedly unfolding at its aid distribution sites.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at recent reporting about violence targeting Palestinian aid-seekers in Gaza and cover more media misses.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Comes Under Fire
This week, the Wall Street Journal is out with an article that attempts to explain “Why Israel’s Chaotic New Food Program in Gaza Has Turned So Deadly.”
That new food program is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an operation backed by the U.S. and Israel that launched in May to distribute aid to Palestinians in Gaza across four access sites.
Reporters for the outlet, who visited a GHF aid site, report seeing “thousands of hungry Palestinians amassed . . . outside a barbed-wire fence surrounding the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid center here.”
“American security contractors tried to keep control, but scores of men pushed through barricades and snatched boxes of food awaiting distribution. Others sprinted in behind them. Men on speeding motorcycles raced past the pedestrians to grab whatever food they could. Gunshots rang out—it wasn’t clear from where. Within about 15 minutes, all the food was gone,” the outlet reported, adding that similarly “chaotic scenes” have “plagued” the new food-distribution system.
The reporters suggest two reasons why GHF’s efforts has been “so beset with problems”: its reliance on the Israeli military to provide security, and the fact that the demand for food “far outstrips GHF’s current capacity, resulting in overwhelming numbers of people fighting to get their hands on scarce rations.”
IDF soldiers told the Journal that shots are fired around crowds to ward them off, but also at times directly at people who move in their direction.
The new system, if imperfect, was created in an effort to remove a key source of revenue from Hamas terrorists by establishing an aid distribution network outside of the group’s control.
In fact, a new report from the Washington Post indicates Hamas is facing “financial and administrative crisis as revenue dries up” — in large part because Hamas can no longer divert and resell aid.
Chapin Fay, a spokesman for GHF, tells NR the group “completely disagrees” with the WSJ’s characterization of its aid distribution efforts as “chaotic” and “deadly.”
And in fact, he argues, much of the public perception of the GHF in America has been influenced by misleading or outright false reporting that relies upon propaganda from Hamas as fact.
Fay, speaking to NR from Israel after having visited GHF’s sites in Gaza over the past week, said the operations he witnessed were “very smooth, unlike what you read about.”
“The part that is chaotic is the rush for aid,” he said, acknowledging there can be injuries among the aid-seekers who are desperately trying to grab what food they can.
“But there really is not a lot of chaos,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal and other outlets, relying upon figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, report “hundreds of people have died and hundreds more have been wounded trying to get food from the four GHF sites.”
But Fay contends there has been “little to no violence on our sites,” aside from a terrorist grenade attack that injured two GHF workers several weeks ago, and a trampling incident last week that left 20 Palestinians dead. GHF said shortly after the trampling that it had “credible reason” to believe that armed men affiliated with Hamas were responsible for the incident
In terms of reported violence against aid-seekers, Fay says GHF’s security workers “do not shoot at people.”
“What we are seeing is not what is being reported. It’s a war zone. The IDF is continuing active operations all up and down Gaza and they’re responsible for the routes and outside of our sites. But on our sites, it’s not as it’s being reported.”
“We have one singular mission, which is to feed people in Gaza, and when the IDF and/or Israel makes that more difficult, we have called them out in the past.”
Fay called attention to a pattern seen with Hamas trying to incite violence at their sites, after which the Gaza Health Ministry puts out statistics that are “at best, inflated, and at worst, just false, and tries to blame Israel, and now us, for that.”
This happened last month, when media outlets including CNN, CBS, and ABC uncritically amplified Hamas’s claims that Israeli forces opened fire near an aid distribution center, killing dozens and injuring hundreds of others.
According to officials from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 31 people were killed and 170 wounded when Israeli forces opened fire on civilians massing near an aid site run by GHF.
Israel immediately denied it was behind the attack and released drone footage of unidentified masked men shooting unarmed civilians near the aid center.
“Findings from an initial inquiry indicate that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false,” the IDF said in a statement.
“The IDF is cooperating with the GHF and international aid organizations in order to enable the distribution of aid to the Gazan residents — and not to Hamas.”
The IDF did acknowledge firing warning shots in an effort to maintain order at the aid site, but says no one was hit.
Meanwhile, Seth Mandel, writing for Commentary, cites several recent examples of what he calls the media’s “war” on GHF.
The Associated Press published an investigation into violence at GHF distribution points. That investigation relied on unverified sources to claim that GHF contractors were shooting at or near crowds of Palestinians approaching aid sites. The AP cited the sound of gunfire on video as evidence. But after reviewing footage, GHF said “at no point were civilians under fire at a GHF distribution site. The gunfire heard in the video was confirmed to have originated from the IDF, who was outside the immediate vicinity of the GHF distribution site. It was not directed at individuals, and no one was shot or injured.”
Then Reuters reported that GHF proposed “humanitarian transit areas” for Palestinians in Gaza. It claimed the group proposed a multi-billion-dollar plan to build relocation camps for Palestinians in Gaza. Reuters later retracted its claim.
Meanwhile, MSNBC was forced to issue an on-air correction on Morning Joe after Middle East correspondent Matt Bradley wrongly claimed Palestinians were killed while waiting for GHF aid.
Bradley spoke about GHF’s “controversial aid sites” and said, “We’re still seeing massive numbers of casualties every single day. And actually, a lot of those folks are killed, and have been killed, waiting in line for much-needed food being distributed by a U.S.-backed organization that has attracted a lot of criticism and a lot of scrutiny.”
“This effort just had its bloodiest day two days ago, when around 60 people were shot dead while waiting in line,” he claimed.
However, Bradley was left to issue a correction the next day: “Yesterday we reported on the deaths of around 60 people who were fatally shot while waiting for food in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. We should clarify that those people were waiting for food rations that were arriving from U.N. convoys, not those that were distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).”
GHF says it has delivered more than 80 million free meals directly to the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, other aid from the U.N. and other humanitarian groups has been looted by Hamas or criminal gangs.
GHF, for its part, has called for collaboration with the UN.
“GHF was never meant to meet the needs of the population alone,” Fay told reporters on Monday. “It is not enough. That is why we have routinely and from the beginning pushed for the U.N. and others to operate alongside us in Gaza.
He refuted “false reports” that the U.N. is not allowed to operate in Gaza and that just four GHF sites have replaced 400 U.N. access points.
“That is just not true,” he said. “The World Food Program themselves acknowledged there are no restrictions on the aid they can bring in. They and others have tens of thousands of pallets of aid sitting inside Gaza rotting just out of reach of those who need it. You don’t see this on the news. The media isn’t reporting it.”
Headline Fail of the Week
After David Litt, a former speechwriter for former President Barack Obama, wrote last week that people should consider reconciling with their conservative family members who they have shunned over politics, a New York magazine writer argued, “It’s okay to go no contact with your MAGA relatives.”
Politics writer Sarah Jones wrote for The Intelligencer that neutrality in relationships “doesn’t exist.”
“Sometimes the act of knowing a person leaves you with no choice but to move on without them. If my parents liked Alligator Alcatraz, I’d no longer speak to them,” she wrote. “If they were rude to my LGBT friends, I’d block their numbers. Though shunning won’t work as a political strategy, there are still natural consequences for the way we speak and behave.”
Media Misses
• PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger said she “can’t make any sense of an argument that we are somehow biased in any way.” In response, Fox News, offered several examples, including Sesame Street‘s promoting Pride Month on PBS last month, and a PBS movie called Real Boy, which followed a transgender-identifying teen as he “navigates adolescence, sobriety, and physical and emotional ramifications of his changing gender identity.” Meanwhile, a PBS Newshour segment “promoted transgender treatments for children such as puberty blockers while shrugging off Republican criticisms,” according to Fox News.
• Former MSNBC host Joy Reid is claiming Trump supporters would “let their daughters be destroyed” to make the president “happy.” Trump voters, she said, are “dedicated to him personally.” “They care more about him being happy than them being happy. They care more about him having what he wants than them having what they want. They will give up their health care. They will let their daughters be destroyed. They will let their families be destroyed. They will do — there’s nothing he can do. He can drown them in . . . Texas. He can take away their FEMA. He can do anything he wants to them. There’s nothing you can do about . . . it’s a cult.”
• A BBC report finds BBC Gaza breached editorial guidelines on accuracy with a documentary about the lives of children in Gaza by failing to disclose that a child narrator was the son of a Hamas official. The review found that three members of the independent production company knew of the father’s position but no one within the BBC knew at the time. The report finds the independent production company, Hoyo Films, bears most of the responsibility, but that the BBC was not “sufficiently proactive” with initial editorial checks.