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NYTimes Picks Sides, Trusts Anti-Semitic UN in ‘Deadly Aid Deliveries in Gaza

Lauren Jackson started off Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times newsletter “The Morning” with anti-Israel bias: “Deadly Aid Deliveries in Gaza — Israel’s troops have repeatedly shot near food distribution sites.” Jackson previously covered the United Nations, and knee-jerk favoritism for her old beat, and distrust of anything said by Israel, is peppered throughout the report. On top of that, according to her resume on LinkedIn, Jackson worked for the United Nations as a research fellow in 2016.

Jackson’s piece was shot through with hostility toward the Israel point of view, stacked with loaded assumptions with dubious sourcing from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, and made extremely dubious claims with no evidence that Israeli Defense Forces attacked Gazans scrambling for food at aid centers.

The subhead provided the flavor: “Israel’s decision to change how food is distributed in Gaza hasn’t just been disruptive — it has been deadly.”

The war has decimated farmland that once grew wheat and olives, and without crops or food shipments, Gaza has become the “hungriest place on Earth,” according to the U.N. As the first cardboard boxes of food arrived, people sprinted, scaled barriers and joined surging crowds to get them. And Israeli troops stationed near the aid sites have repeatedly opened fire. Nearly 50 people have been killed and dozens wounded, according to Red Cross officials.

Jackson “explains” things through the lens of the Israeli-hostile United Nations.

Aid groups say their work has been unsafe and constrained: Israel has targeted aid convoys and facilities that it erroneously determined to be a threat and repeatedly blocked deliveries. At the same time, Israel said some aid workers had ties to Hamas. And it claimed that Hamas had diverted many of the supplies. (That couldn’t be verified by The Times, and the U.N. said it was exaggerated.)

Well if the U.N. says so! The U.N. has admitted that aid workers had ties to Hamas – it’s not just something “Israel said.”

So last week, Israel implemented a new system. It transferred the responsibility to a private group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which pays American contractors to deliver food. Israel conceived of the plan and said the process would be “neutral” and “independent,” but the group’s leader said he didn’t think that was possible, so he resigned.

Let’s pause to consider the wonder of one war combatant providing food to the other — an enemy that would wipe Israel off the map if they could.

Hungry Palestinians have walked for miles and gathered before dawn at the distribution sites. The crowds have panicked and shoved in the dark for a chance to get one of the limited cardboard boxes of food. Israeli soldiers stationed near the sites have repeatedly opened fire. The circumstances are contested, but the Red Cross reported that at least 27 people were killed yesterday morning and at least 21 people were killed in a shooting on Sunday.

It was as if only Hamas and the Red Cross were to be taken at face value, not Israel’s explanations.

In response to one shooting, the military said the troops had fired near “a few” people who it said had strayed from the designated route to a food site and who did not respond to warning shots. The statement said these people had “posed a threat” to soldiers, though a military spokeswoman declined to explain the nature of the threat.

One of the causes of the “chaos,” according to Jackson, was to blame Israel’s military strategy, and again she took the word of the operationally anti-Semitic United Nations.

Military strategy: Israel says the new system is needed to stop Hamas stealing, stockpiling and selling food, all of which could help the group, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, sustain its power. The U.N. claims Israel may have another goal — displacing people from northern Gaza by concentrating aid sites in the south.

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