While the world is mostly focused on Iran, it’s important to remember the war in Gaza continues. On Sunday, Israeli security forces recovered the bodies of three more hostages — 71-year-old Ofra Keidar, 21-year-old Yonatan Samerano, and 19-year-old Staff Sergeant Shay Levinson. They had been murdered and their bodies held hostage since October 7, 2023 — the day Hamas, Iran’s proxy, launched its war on Israel.

For 625 days, their remains were held as trophies to be traded in a grotesque negotiation tactic. Many struggle to grasp the depravity of using corpses as bargaining chips. But this failure to understand the nature of Israel’s enemies has led to Israel being vilified, even as it defends itself against those sworn to its destruction.

The global narrative shifted with shocking speed away from the atrocities of October 7, 2023, to a focus on what Israel would do in response to the darkest day in its history.

The massacre of 1,200 people and abduction of over 250 became a footnote, while the suffering of Gazan civilians — a significant number of whom either took part in or celebrated the massacre — became the world’s main concern.

Israel found itself fighting not just a regional war on seven fronts, but also an information war in which not a single bullet was fired, yet the potential damage was even greater.

From the outset, as always with wars involving Israel, the first casualty was truth.

On October 17, 2023, headlines screamed of an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, supposedly killing more than 500 people. The claim came from Hamas’ health ministry, within minutes of the explosion at the site.

This Hamas-produced story was instantly broadcast by media giants like The New York Times and the BBC.

But no one asked how 500 deaths could possibly be confirmed that quickly amidst the chaos of war. It later emerged that the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that hit the hospital carpark, killing dozens, not hundreds. The media outlets issued corrections, but the lie had already circled the globe.

Nevertheless, that single incident set the tone for what would follow: a readiness to accept at face value the claims of a terror group that just days earlier raped, mutilated, and burned Israeli families alive.

On November 15, 2023, a BBC anchor falsely claimed that Israel was targeting medical teams and Arabic speakers in Gaza. The BBC later apologized — but once again, the damage was done.

In March 2024, Al Jazeera aired a video in which a woman accused the IDF of raping and murdering women at Shifa Hospital. She later admitted she had lied. The video was quietly deleted — but only after the lie went global.

In May of this year, Tom Fletcher, the UN’s chief aid officer, claimed 14,000 babies would be dead within 48 hours without aid. He later admitted it was false, saying that he should have been more “precise” with his language. He later claimed 10,000 aid trucks were waiting to be allowed into Gaza — another lie in which he was not “precise” with his language. Perhaps choosing truth over deception might help him to be more “precise.”

These weren’t innocent mistakes. They were reckless or deliberate lies designed to shape the narrative. Israel stands falsely accused of genocide, of deliberately targeting civilians, of starving Gaza — despite facilitating more than 1.7 million tons of aid since the war began.

Some media commentators have now berated Israel for not providing the exact civilian casualty count, as if any army could do so in an active warzone where terrorists deliberately hide behind civilians, in homes, schools, and hospitals. The British and American armies certainly couldn’t when they operated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recently, as the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating — bypassing Hamas and corrupt UN aid channels — Israel was accused of firing on hungry Gazans. In fact, video showed Hamas operatives shooting at civilians trying to reach food, resulting in clashes with rival local Palestinian gunmen. A recently released IDF recorded conversation with a Gazan civilian verifies this.

These are just some examples of many, but the problem is when false stories spread — be it fabricated massacres, manipulated death tolls, or bogus claims of Israel targeting civilians — they embed themselves in public consciousness. Retractions, if they come at all, are too little, too late. The lie has already done its job. The truth becomes irrelevant.

No one denies that Israel, like any country, can and does make mistakes during war, as do some soldiers. Yet to refuse to preference the integrity of a democracy fighting for its existence over the savagery and deceptions of a genocidal death cult fighting to destroy that democracy is both foolish and shameful.

Fake news is not a joke — it has real consequences, and as we have seen in Washington D.C., and in Boulder, Colorado, people are dying because of it.

Ofra, Yonatan and Shay, after a period of unbearable pain for their families, will finally be buried in Israel. But what we cannot bury is truth. Because without it, this war — and its lies — will never end.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

The post The War in Gaza Continues: Food, Lies, and Video Tapes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.