What the hell is going on?

Hamas snipers using American equipment, "BBC Verify" just verifies its disturbing biases, a new documentary about the Palestinian "Mandela" and more.

Joshua Hoffman

Mar 10, 2024

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You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Editor’s Note: “What the hell is going on?” is a weekly series in which we bring you the most bizarre, outlandish, and surreal developments from around the Jewish world during the past week.

The notorious UNRWA published a social media post, writing: “Babies in Gaza slowly perishing under the world’s gaze.” And: “The lives of of thousands babies and children depend on urgent action being taken now.”

Naturally, they made no mention of Kfir Bibas, who was kidnapped by Hamas when he was just 10 months old.

Then Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, stood up in front of the UN in New York and said: “Excellencies, UNRWA is facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them. Part of this campaign involves inundating donors with misinformation designed to foster distrust and tarnish the reputation of the Agency.”

As one person responded: “Never in history has an agency mandated to be humanitarian been more infested with murderous terrorists.”1

The Democrats are terrified after tens of thousands of people in Michigan voted “uncommitted” in last week’s primary, instead of for President Joe Biden. His vice president, Kamala Harris, then called for “an immediate ceasefire” in the Israel-Hamas war, and Biden added that IDF entry into Rafah in southern Gaza would be a “red line.”

In other words: Palestinian lives are more important than Israeli lives, and a few hundred thousand Muslims and Arabs in Michigan are more important than Israel being able to destroy the genocidal terror group Hamas’ governing and military apparatus in Gaza and — ironically — pave a better future for both Palestinians and Israelis.

As the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, put it: “Biden should just flush away a 75-year-old highly successful and reciprocal relationship with America’s most important ally that is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, so he can pick up 100,000 Jew haters in Michigan and perhaps a bunch of Klansmen.”2

On social media, a woman asked, “So what is the correct protocol for what to say when you interact with people from Israel? I just dropped my daughter off at a birthday party and had to talk to the Israeli mom of one of her friends.”3

As Zionist activist Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll reacted: “We’re at that point of societal development when a woman asks the internet how to behave like a decent human being.”4

The BBC launched “BBC Verify” last year — a unit comprising of 60 journalists to help fact-check, verify, and counter disinformation.

Last week, “BBC Verify” looked at the reported 100-plus Palestinian deaths that occurred during the chaos surrounding an aid convoy in northern Gaza. This latest iteration of “BBC Verify” story rested heavily on one key eyewitness: a Palestinian “journalist” named Mahmoud Awadeyah, who works for Al Quds Today (a quasi-journalism website) and the Tasnim News Agency (an Iranian news agency set up and controlled by the IRGC).5

In January 2023, as seven Israelis lay dead following a terror attack outside of a synagogue, Awadeyah posted on Facebook: “A state of rejoicing, exuberance, mosques confirmed with exuberance. Revenge for the fetuses.”

His profiles across social media are also full of pro-terrorism imagery and support:

Meanwhile, 102 food trucks have entered Gaza every day, on average, during the last few weeks, according to Israel National Radio. That is 50-percent more trucks than before the war.

What great fact-checking, verifying, and countering disinformation by the BBC.

Telescopic sights from an American company with official distributors in Iran were found on snipers’ rifles seized from Gaza. The company, Element Optics, claimed the sights are Chinese rip-offs.6

What’s that saying? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire?

Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman was advised not to leave a London theater after a performance, due to pro-Palestinian rallies in the area.

Security had already been increased at the Criterion Theatre in the capital’s West End area due to threats against the actress, who has been outspoken against antisemitism and expressed support for Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Oberman wrote: “Another Saturday post matinee and I have been asked not to step out the theatre because of all the demonstrations and marches going on. London 2024 — ridiculous isn’t it.”7

By the order of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in advance of Ramadan, a bill to confiscate terrorist funds was removed from the agenda of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.

In response, the sponsor of the law, Member of Knesset Zvi Sukot, said: “We’ve learned nothing from October 7th. We are delaying passing a law to fight terrorism for fear of hurting the terrorists’ feelings in Ramadan. It’s absurd.”

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed the co-director of a new documentary called “Tomorrow’s Freedom” about the story of Marwan Barghouti, who is currently sitting in an Israeli prison serving five life terms for planning three terror attacks during the Second Intifada that killed five Israelis.

According to Israeli Channel 13, Barghouti has recently been placed in solitary confinement because he was using his contacts and influence to encourage the outbreak of a third intifada in the West Bank. Naturally, though, Barghouti is at the top of Hamas’ list of Palestinian criminals who the terror group wants Israel to release as part of a hostage deal.

“To many Palestinians,” wrote Amanpour, “he’s their Mandela.”8

Please, Christiane, tell us more.

A journalist from The Guardian “asked colleagues about starvation in Gaza. They said there is no precedent for what is happening.”

To which one person responded: “It’s true. There really is no precedent for a government desperately trying (but actually failing) to starve its own population by stealing all their food to garner pity. The only weapon Hamas has left is its total lack of morals. If they had any, they would be gone in 24 hours.”9

Google fired an employee who exploded at the company’s CEO in Israel, Barak Regev, during a conference in New York.

The employee, an engineer for Google’s cloud platform, shouted that he “refuses to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.”

Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the war in Gaza has “ruptured any sense of a shared humanity.”

From my vantage point, when I woke up just before 7:00 in the morning on October 7th to rockets being fired indiscriminately at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities — my shared humanity flew out the window, because some 3,000 Palestinians (who represent hundreds of thousands and even millions of more Palestinians) made it clear that we do not agree on the idea of shared humanity.

It should also be noted that Spoljaric previously served as a senior adviser for UNRWA, which might explain why the Red Cross has effectively sided with Hamas (of which UNRWA employees hundreds of operatives) during this war. But sure, keep aimlessly preaching about “shared humanity” why don’t you?

In an interview on Saturday, Joe Biden said Benjamin Netanyahu is “doing Israel more harm than good.”

I am not particularly a fan of Netanyahu, but let’s be clear about something: Biden’s administration has been giving Israel bad advice about how to fight this war. In one meeting, Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi told the Americans that there would be even more casualties if the military took the advice of U.S. generals sent to advise Israel on the operation in Gaza.

So, Joe, if we are already on the subject of who’s doing more harm than good…

Speaking of the Biden administration, their obsessive compulsive disorder with the Palestinians drove them to start airdropping humanitarian aid in Gaza.

In one Palestinian report, the aid fell on people and injured them. In another one, five people were killed and several other people injured by humanitarian aid packages.

Then, Biden lectured Israel that “humanitarian aid can’t be a bargaining chip” — but surely Israeli hostages (including a one-year-old child and another six with American citizenship) can be.