The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday that Palestinian gunmen had opened fire on civilians in Gaza waiting for aid, and that its troops had nothing to do with what Hamas and anti-Israel media sources had called a “massacre.”
Al Jazeera reported: “‘Massacre’: Israel forces attack crowds waiting for aid in Gaza, killing 21.” It added:
At least 21 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of people waiting for aid in Gaza City in the same area that was targeted hours earlier, [Hamas] government officials said.
The [Hamas-controlled] Ministry of Health in Gaza described the late Thursday attack as a “new, premeditated massacre” and said more than 150 people were wounded.
The IDF conducted its own investigation of the incident, and issued a statement rejecting Hamas’s claims:
On Thursday, 14 March 2024, the IDF facilitated the passage of a convoy of 31 humanitarian aid trucks containing food and supplies intended for distribution to civilians in the northern Gaza Strip.
Approximately one hour before the arrival of the convoy to the humanitarian corridor, armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians were awaiting the arrival of the aid convoy. As aid trucks were entering, the Palestinian gunmen continued to shoot as the crowd of Gazans began looting the trucks. Additionally, a number of Gazan civilians were run over by the trucks.
An intensive preliminary review conducted overnight by the IDF found that the IDF did not open fire at the at the aid convoy in Kuwait Square. A review of our operational systems and IDF forces on the ground found that no tank fire, air-strike or gunfire was carried out toward the Gazan civilians at the aid convoy.
The IDF is continuing to review the incident.
While the IDF continues its humanitarian effort to supply food and humanitarian aid to the civilians of the Gaza Strip, Hamas terrorists continue to harm Gazan civilians who are seeking food – and Hamas is blaming Israel for it.
As a result, on the first Friday of the month of Ramadan, a smear campaign was created with the aim of spreading baseless misinformation for the sake of instigating violence in other arenas.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has been known to fabricate claims of atrocities, notably in the supposed Israeli attack on a hospital in Gaza earlier in the war. That turned out to have been the result of an errant Palestinian rocket, and to have hit the hospital parking lot, not the hospital itself, killing roughly 50 people — not 500, as the ministry claimed.
Recently, an expert accused the ministry of fabricating death statistics that are often repeated by the media.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
