Since the beginning of the war, the State of Israel has faced the international media arena, which is a real front in the war. Israeli haters use all the means they have, from pictures and photos of destruction in the Gaza Strip to denial of Hamas acts or the invention of blood libels against IDF soldiers and their conduct of the war. The State of Israel is doing its best to fight back against these rumors and stories, in order to prevent harm to Israel’s stand and support the war in the international arena.
On Thursday, a serious affair took place in the northern Gaza Strip, in which IDF forces began to bring in aid trucks directly. Some of the trucks were transported to population centers, accompanied by IDF soldiers; there began to be pressure, as the needy Gazans began to storm the trucks, and many were killed and wounded by violence and density, or by runaway trucks. At the same time, crowded civilians began to approach IDF forces in a threatening manner, despite explicit instructions that prohibited it. In order to protect themselves, the soldiers fired a restraining order, from which some of the civilians were hit.
Since then, Arab media outlets have started reporting the “Rashid massacre” (named after the road in which the incident took place), and have “loaded” the dead from the crowd density and the turmoil on the IDF’s fire, claiming that the IDF killed over 100 civilians and wounded nearly 700. The report began to gain worldwide resonance, and there was a significant concern that would cause serious damage to Israel, while the Hamas leadership threatened that this would stop negotiations to release the hostages. Such damage was done to Israel in the First Lebanon War on a larger scale (in the Sabra and Shatila massacre), and in Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, and in practice led to the end of both.
This time, however, the IDF acted swiftly and decisively, and published a air-video documentation reflecting the turmoil surrounding the aid trucks, proving that most of the involved were injured. In addition, the IDF published an estimate that the number of killed and wounded was significantly lower than that of the Arab media. This is reminiscent of the effectiveness of the IDF’s action against the previous plot, when a GAP missile hit Al-Ahli Hospital and hurt dozens, and the Arab media claimed the killing of 500 by an IDF bombing, which was refuted by camera footage. Hopefully, the IDF will continue to carry out its work faithfully and block negative efforts against it in the world.
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