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Fake Massacres, Skewed Stats & Misleading Claims: The 25 Lies The Media Told You About The October 7 War

An Israeli military tank prepares to move atop a truck, after US President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Oct. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The media has been rife with misinformation and libels about Israel’s conduct during the war that was triggered two years ago by the Hamas-led massacres in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

HonestReporting has worked day and night to combat these anti-Israel lies as they spread through mainstream discourse, shaping a context-free narrative that promotes Israel as the sole aggressor and whitewashes Hamas’ terrorism.

While some lies quickly emerged in the mainstream media and then evaporated after a couple of days, others have persisted in one form or another.

Regardless of their longevity, each lie serves as a building block for the anti-Israel narrative that cast Israel’s defensive war as a crime against humanity and has sought to turn the Jewish State into a pariah within the international community.

The following are the top 25 lies promoted by the mainstream media since October 7:

Lie #1: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Truth: The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza goes back almost as far as the beginning of Israel’s war against Hamas.

However, all these claims (whether by Amnesty International, scholar Omer Bartov, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, or the UN Commission of Inquiry) fail to meet the legal bar for determining genocide: That the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from Israel’s actions in Gaza is genocidal intent.

Those who claim that Israel is committing a genocide appear to pre-determine that conclusion and then attempt to twist the evidence and legal definition of genocide to find Israel guilty of this heinous crime.

Lie #2: Israel is responsible for famine/starvation in Gaza.

Truth: Throughout the war in Gaza, the media and aid organizations have forecast an imminent famine in the Gaza Strip, intent on finding Israel guilty of starving Palestinians in Gaza.

However, despite the imminent and alarmist nature of these forecasts, famine was never declared in any part of the Gaza Strip until August 2025, and there was no evidence of mass starvation in the enclave.

In an August 2025 report, the UN-backed body that monitors hunger declared famine in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City and its environs. However, analysts have noted several questionable aspects of the report’s methodology and analysis, which call into question its conclusions.

For a full takedown of the famine report, see here.

Lie #3: Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. On October 7, it had a population of 9 million.

Truth: On October 7, 2023, the Gaza Strip had a population of 2 million people. At the size of 141 square miles, the Gaza Strip does not even crack the top 200 most populated areas on Earth.

Lie #4: After warning them to leave northern Gaza, Israel bombed Palestinians fleeing to the south.

Truth: In October 2023, some media outlets echoed Hamas’ claim that Israel was bombing Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza, publishing images that showed explosions amid convoys heading south.

Analysts noted that there was no evidence for an Israeli airstrike on the convoys and that the explosions could have been caused by IEDs planted by Hamas (in an effort to deter civilians from fleeing the combat zone) or faulty fuel containers that were being transported by those heading south.

Lie #5: Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital and killed 500 people.

Truth: On October 17, 2023, an explosion occurred at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. The media initially reported on Hamas’ claim that the hospital had been bombed and hundreds of people had been killed.

In reality, a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket hit the hospital’s parking lot, causing minimal damage to the hospital itself and tragically killing some Palestinians who had taken refuge in the area of the rocket’s impact.

Lie #6: Israel targets Palestinian journalists.

Truth: Since the beginning of the war, various media rights organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), have claimed that Israel is targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

It is true that, according to the CPJ, nearly 200 journalists and media workers have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war. However, an analysis of these names shows that roughly 40% of those killed had an affiliation with terror groups (including working for terror-run media organizations) and that several had participated in active combat against Israel.

With the embedding of Hamas forces in civilian areas, it is tragic but inevitable that civilians (including journalists) will be killed during military activities. This is not, however, evidence of intentional targeting of journalists.

Lie #7: 500 trucks are needed to meet Gaza’s pre-war levels of aid.

Truth: The claim by the United Nations and aid organizations that prior to October 7, 500 trucks entered Gaza daily, and that number is needed to meet the needs of Gaza’s civilian population, is misleading.

Before October 7, an average of 500 trucks entered Gaza daily, but the vast majority of them carried commercial goods, agricultural products, textiles, and construction materials. Only 100 trucks contained humanitarian aid, which is roughly the same number of trucks that have entered Gaza daily for most of the war.

Lie #8: Israel’s evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa Hospital as a base is not compelling.

Truth: Contrary to media claims, the IDF has provided considerable evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa Hospital for terror purposes.

This evidence includes testimonies from captured terrorists, intercepts of communications discussing Hamas’ use of Al-Shifa, the discovery of weapons and military gear in the hospital area, the unearthing of a terror tunnel beneath the hospital, and video footage showing hostages being brought to the hospital on October 7.

Lie #9: UNRWA is not a problematic aid organization and is one of the key humanitarian resources in the Gaza Strip.

Truth: Despite media and UN denials, there is incontrovertible evidence that the UN aid organization for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, plays a problematic role in the Gaza Strip.

1,200 UNRWA employees are members of either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the organization’s schools teach antisemitism and promote anti-Israeli violence, and the globally-funded agency turns a blind eye to the placement of terror infrastructure and weaponry near its facilities. Even underneath UNRWA’s headquarters, there was a Hamas command center, of which the body claimed blissful ignorance.

Lie #10: Israel slaughtered Palestinian civilians waiting for aid during the “Flour Massacre.”

Truth: On February 29, 2024, scores of Palestinians died while waiting for aid to arrive in Gaza City. The media initially echoed Hamas’ claim that they had been killed in a targeted Israeli strike.

In reality, the vast majority of those who died were either crushed by the crowd during the chaos that erupted upon the arrival of the aid trucks, or were run over by the trucks themselves. Roughly 10 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire when they rushed toward nearby IDF positions.

Lie #11: During the Israeli operation in Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, Israeli forces raped Palestinian women and brutally murdered other civilians.

Truth: This lie was perpetrated by a Gazan woman named Jamila al-Hessi during an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic’s top news presenter.

Less than 24 hours after the interview, al-Hessi’s claim was denounced by both a former director of Al Jazeera and Hamas itself. Al-Hessi admitted to spreading this lie to “arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood.”

Lie #12: Mass graves outside two Gazan hospitals are evidence of Israeli executions and desecration of bodies.

Truth: In late April 2024, mass graves were unearthed outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Analysts noted that the graves had actually been dug before the arrival of Israeli forces, to bury those who had died in the hospitals but could not be interred in a formal cemetery. It is possible that newer bodies were added during the battles between Israeli forces and Hamas, but they were most likely buried by fellow Palestinians.

Despite claims by some that bodies had been found with their hands tied behind their backs, no independent evidence was ever provided for this claim.

In addition, while Israeli forces did dig up some graves while searching for Israeli hostages, the IDF re-interred any bodies that had been temporarily removed and did not destroy any identifying markers or desecrate the graves.

Lie #13: The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health provides accurate casualty figures.

Truth: Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the media and the United Nations have sought to convince people that the casualty figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health are accurate.

However, there are several indications that the Ministry of Health and its claim of 70% of casualties being women and children are unreliable.

Examples of this unreliability include unverifiable and anonymous “media reports” in the Ministry’s figures, the low proportion of non-combatant men among casualties, and discrepancies between the figures for one day and the next.

For an example of the last point, between December 2 and December 5, 2023, the number of women and children’s deaths surpassed the total number of deaths, an absurd statistical anomaly.

Lie #14: The ICJ ruled that there is “plausible” evidence for genocide in Gaza and that Israel must cease its operations in Rafah.

Truth: In December 2023, South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) claiming that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, the ICJ issued its initial ruling on the matter. As clarified by Joan Donoghue, the Court’s former President, there was no finding of “plausible genocide” in Gaza, only that the Palestinians “had a plausible right to be protected from genocide.”

In May 2024, the ICJ issued a decision on Israeli military activity in southern Gaza, ruling that Israel would have to cease any military activity that “may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

This was not a blanket restriction on Israeli military activity, and Israel’s war against Hamas was allowed to continue in the enclave’s south.

Lie #15: Israel purposefully bombed a refugee camp in Rafah and caused a tent fire that killed tens of civilians.

Truth: In late May 2024, Israel targeted two senior Hamas commanders who were hiding near a civilian population but outside of a designated safe zone.

Based on Israeli and US reports, it is likely that shrapnel from the targeted strike hit something flammable (either munitions or a fuel container) that ignited and led to the lethal fire that swept through the tents. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented, this was a “tragic accident.”

Lie #16: Israel massacred more than 200 Palestinians while rescuing four Israeli hostages in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Truth: On June 8, 2024, Israeli security forces rescued four hostages (Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv, and Andrey Kozlov) from civilian homes where they were being held in the Nuseirat refugee camp. During the rescue operation, local Hamas forces attacked the rescue team and hostages as they attempted to escape, leading to a firefight in the middle of a civilian area.

There was no independent evidence to back Hamas’ claim that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed during the rescue operation or that the majority of those killed were civilians and not combatants who took part in the firefight.

Lie #17: Studies in The Lancet prove that many more Palestinians have been killed than is claimed by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

Truth: In July 2024, The Lancet published a non-peer-reviewed correspondence that claimed that the number of dead in Gaza could be as high as 186,000. This faulty analysis reached this number by taking Hamas’ questionable casualty count (at the time, 37,000) and then multiplying it by five on the baseless assumption that there will be five times as many indirect deaths as those actively killed during the war.

The pushback to the piece was so great that one of the authors had to admit that it was not a scientifically-based analysis but was “purely illustrative” of what could be.

In January 2025, The Lancet published an article purporting to prove that the Gaza Ministry of Health’s casualty count was an under-reporting of reality.

However, this study came under scrutiny due to several flaws, including that its algorithm comparing social media-reported deaths to other casualty lists was faulty in 30% of cases, that the three casualty lists that were used by the study were intertwined (thus skewing the results), and that the authors disregarded analytic models that showed the estimated casualty figures to be lower.

Lie #18: Ismail Haniyeh was a moderating and pragmatic voice within Hamas that Israel silenced when it assassinated him in July 2024.

Truth: Contrary to how he was depicted in media reports at the time of his death, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was not a moderate.

Haniyeh was a cold-blooded terrorist who celebrated the October 7 attacks, called for “resistance” (i.e. terrorist) activities across Israel, and encouraged the death of Palestinian civilians for the greater cause of fighting Israel and ultimately destroying the Jewish state.

Lie #19: As shown in a New York Times essay, Israeli forces are purposefully targeting children.

Truth: The New York Times published a guest essay entitled “65 Doctors, Nurses, and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.” Written by medical personnel who had served in Gaza, the piece claimed that they had seen evidence for Israel intentionally targeting children by shooting them in the head.

However, several military, medical, and forensics experts called into question certain aspects of the piece, including x-ray images that purported to show 5.56 caliber bullets lodged in the skulls of these children, but which did not appear to comport with the impact of a bullet of that size. For example, there were no exit wounds, skull fractures, or changes in the bullet’s shape.

In addition, there is no evidence that the bullets were fired from an Israeli gun rather than one operated by a Palestinian terrorist. To further cast doubt on the piece, one of its authors responded to the criticism by falsely claiming that Hamas does not use human shields but that Israel does.

Lie #20: Israel forces burned Kamal Adwan Hospital in December 2024.

Truth: During a counter-terror operation at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, which saw the arrest of 240 Hamas and Islamic Jihad members and the confiscation of a considerable amount of weaponry, a fire broke out in an empty part of the hospital and was quickly contained.

An initial IDF investigation determined that there was no connection between the fire and Israeli forces operating in the area.

Lie #21: Unless aid workers got to them immediately, 14,000 babies would die in the next 48 hours.

Truth: This absurd claim was put forward by the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, in May 2025 during an interview with the BBC.

When pressed on it, Fletcher provided no evidence for his claim except for asserting that they have capable teams on the ground.

It was further discovered that Fletcher’s claim was a misrepresentation of an IPC report that projected that 14,000 Gazan children could experience acute malnutrition between April 2025 and March 2026.

Lie #22: Israel is planning on interning 600,000 Palestinians in camps in southern Gaza.

Truth: In July 2025, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced plans to build a “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza that would house 600,000 Palestinian civilians from the Al-Mawasi area who would have better access to humanitarian aid. To guarantee the civilian nature of this city, all people would be processed to ensure that they had no affiliation with Hamas. At no time did Katz use the word “camp” when discussing this plan.

According to Israeli reports at the time, Katz’s idea was a contingency plan for aiding civilians while fighting Hamas, but no work had been started on it.

Lie #23: Images of malnourished children are evidence for widespread starvation in Gaza.

Truth: In late July 2025, various media organizations published photos of emaciated and malnourished children, passing them off as evidence of widespread starvation in Gaza.

However, many of these children who were showcased suffered from pre-existing conditions, some of which (such as muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy) have a heightened risk of malnutrition even in times of peace.

In some instances, photos of malnourished children included their well-nourished siblings standing in the background.

While the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is certainly tragic, images of malnourished children with pre-existing conditions are not evidence for widespread starvation.

Lie #24: Israel is preventing aid from entering Gaza.

Truth: Aside from the first two weeks of the war and a two-month blockade in 2025 that was an attempt to force Hamas to surrender, Israel has allowed for the continuous entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.

In fact, between the beginning of the war and the end of August 2025, over two million tons of aid were facilitated into the Gaza Strip. This is one of the largest humanitarian operations during a war in modern history.

Any delay in Gazans receiving this aid is due to the inherent difficulties in delivering it in combat zones, Hamas stealing aid, the UN refusing to pick up the aid, and the refusal of the UN to use Israeli-approved routes.

Lie #25: Israel is massacring Gazans as they seek aid from GHF sites.

Truth: When Israel restarted delivering aid to Gaza in May 2025, both it and the United States backed a new aid organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), that would deliver aid to Palestinian civilians while ensuring that Hamas could not get its hands on it.

While it has delivered millions of meals to Palestinians, it has been maligned by the media, the UN, and other aid agencies.

One of the chief libels about the GHF is that Israel routinely massacres those who are seeking aid. While the IDF does sometimes fire warning shots at those who stray from the designated paths near the aid centers, and sometimes have fired on those who get too close to their positions in unfortunate situations, many cases of reported massacres have proven to be unfounded or have been misreported instances of fire not related to the aid site.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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Christians are displaying menorahs in their windows post-Bondi Beach attack. Why some Jews object

In the wake of Sunday’s attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, some non-Jews are placing menorahs in their windows as a visible show of support for their Jewish neighbors.

“My family is not Jewish. Our house is decorated for Christmas. Tonight we are adding a menorah in the front window,” one Threads user posted and received 17,000 likes. “We stand with our Jewish neighbors. 🕎 #hanukkah”

That was one of several viral posts shared by non-Jews lighting hanukkiot after the Bondi Beach attack, which left 15 people dead, including a Chabad rabbi, a Holocaust survivor, and a 10-year-old girl.

The practice, however, has also exposed a divide between Jews who welcome the gesture as an expression of solidarity and those who view it as a form of appropriation.

“Lighting a menorah is a closed practice and is not meant to be done by someone outside of our community,” one user replied to a non-Jew posting about her Hanukkah candles.

“We love you for this! You’re a mensch,” another commented in support.

An act of solidarity

In November 2023, Adam Kulbersh founded Project Menorah, an initiative that encourages non-Jews to display menorahs in their windows as a way to fight antisemitism. The practice gained traction in the aftermath of Oct. 7, he said, drawing thousands of participants across 16 countries and all 50 U.S. states.

After Sunday’s attack at Bondi Beach, Kulbersh, who is Jewish, said he noticed another surge in social media activity around the idea.

“This happens in a cyclical way, where non-Jews in many cases underestimate the amount of antisemitism that’s out there, and then it spikes, and they go, Oh, right, these are our friends and neighbors, and we can’t close our eyes,” he said in an interview with the Forward.

The idea for Project Menorah grew out of Kulbersh’s personal experience. When his then 6-year-old son, Jack, asked to put up Hanukkah decorations at their Los Angeles home, Kulbersh hesitated, worried that a visibly Jewish display could make them a target.

He mentioned the concern to a non-Jewish neighbor, who responded by offering to place a menorah in her window to show the family they weren’t alone.

Moved by the gesture, Kulbersh went all out with “flashy” Hanukkah decorations that year. Soon after, he launched Project Menorah to encourage other non-Jews to follow his neighbor’s example.

“I thought, This is an answer,” Kulbersh said. “We don’t need to wait for governments to solve all the problems. This is something neighbors can do for neighbors.”

It wasn’t the first time menorah displays had been proposed as a means of fighting hate: In Billings, Montana in 1993, neo-Nazis threw a brick through a 6-year-old Jewish boy’s bedroom window, which was displaying a menorah. In response, thousands of residents taped paper menorahs to their windows in solidarity — and the neo-Nazis retreated from town.

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A ‘closed practice’?

The idea of non-Jews displaying menorahs, however, has elicited a different response from some Jews who take offense.

“I understand that the gentiles who are lighting their own menorahs as a show of solidarity mean well but that’s not for y’all to be doing. Judaism is a closed practice,” one user posted. “Get the circumcision first, then we’ll talk.”

The term “closed practice” reflects the fact that Judaism is a non-proselytizing religion and does not encourage people to adopt it casually. Unlike Christianity, which generally welcomes anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, Jewish identity is not defined solely by belief. Becoming Jewish requires a formal and demanding conversion process, typically involving extensive study and approval by a rabbinic court.

The backlash may also reflect anxiety about increased adoption of Jewish rituals and symbols by messianic Jews and Christians. These practices tend to put off Jews who believe groups are co-opting Jewish rituals without fully appreciating their history and meanings — from “Jesus mezuzahs,” to Christian Passover seders and shofar blowing, to observing a “Jewish Sabbath,” aka Shabbat.

But for others, it’s possible to distinguish between those who combine Jewish symbols with Christian symbols, and well-meaning non-Jews want to express support.

For its part, Project Menorah offers paper cut-outs of menorahs on its website, not instructions for actually observing the holiday.

“If people want to light an actual menorah and put it in their window, great, and if they want to say a prayer that works with their religious beliefs, great,” he said. “But I’m not encouraging anyone who’s not Jewish to participate in the Jewish ritual, the Jewish prayers.”

He added that when he started the initiative, he consulted rabbis about the practice. As is often the case when asking a group of Jews about anything, he said, opinions varied.

But the majority, he said, agreed that “when the house is on fire, we don’t question the people who want to help put the fire out.”

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The post Christians are displaying menorahs in their windows post-Bondi Beach attack. Why some Jews object appeared first on The Forward.

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My religion was ‘None of the above,’ until Oct. 7 and now Bondi

Judaism is on fire — or really, being Jewish is on fire. The mass murder of Jews on Bondi Beach during a Hanukah celebration was only the most recent example. But the reaction that surprised me the most was how unsurprised I was watching the news reports on Sunday morning. Like too many, I have become anesthetized to mass shootings in general and those targeted toward Jews in particular.

Antisemitism is raging across the world like a global pandemic, except the contagion this time is not a virus, it’s hate — and the fire is burning out of control. It shows up on our news platforms, our social media feeds, even, perhaps especially, in the polite company of dinner parties and faculty lounges. Jewish worshippers shot in a Manchester synagogue, an Israeli tourist viciously beaten on a busy Manhattan street while onlookers casually walked by, two Israeli embassy staff members murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C. are just a few recent examples.

Space doesn’t allow a full accounting of all the Jewish hate crimes in the last few years. But this much is true: Jewish hate is old, truly biblical, but it’s become increasingly hot in the aftermath of the war in Gaza that, parenthetically, was initiated by a heinous attack against the Jewish people. Though obvious, sometimes, especially as it relates to this conflict, the obvious needs restating. And now, for reasons that are beyond baffling, who started the war seems beside the point.

Until recently, I could feel removed from this global phenomenon, given the ambiguity of my own religious identity. Despite my last name and appearance, for most of my life, I didn’t identify as Jewish. Instead, I was the confused product of a Baptist mother from Selma, Alabama and a Jewish father who escaped Nazi Germany just in time. Both my parents turned away from their religions, my mother because of the silence of churches in the South in the face of racial injustice and my father as protection against Jewish persecution that didn’t end when World War II did.

Growing up, my religious identity was None of the Above, a designation that made me feel as though I was aimlessly wandering around a non-denominational desert.

As I grew older, the subject of my religious identity made me immediately uncomfortable, whether as a topic of conversation at a dinner party or as a simple question on a form. At times it elicited a visceral response — flushing, a bit of nausea, a bead of sweat on my back — not just because I didn’t have a ready answer, but because it made me feel disconnected from the rest of society. I would have rather been asked anything else: Who did you vote for or How much money do you make?

The question What religion are you? felt like an interrogation, a bright light shone in my face. While most people could respond to the question with a one-word answer, that was never going to be an option for me. And that made me feel like an outsider, a person that could not fit neatly into a religious box, akin to the children in military families who stumble when asked, Where did you grow up? 

Everywhere, nowhere.

Because not having a religion to call my own never sat well with me, I went on a decade-long journey, one that went here and there, ending only when I spent the time to, once and for all, put the matter to bed. After thousands of hours of research, discussion, and a significant amount of rumination, I’ve decided to embrace my Judaism, to run into the burning building, as it were, when the convenient choice would have been to run away from it, an easy choice for someone that had spent his whole life undifferentiated when it came to religion.

Which brings me to today, to where I am now, to where we all are now.

Oct. 7 happened to occur in the midst of my grappling with my own religious identity. But even if that was still a bit murky then, I felt rage nonetheless when anti-Israel protests ignited in many Middle Eastern and Western capitals, all before one IDF plane was in the air. As I watched these images from the comfort of my living room, I thought of my father and his family, the knocks on the door in the middle of the night, the trains, and yes, the burning furnaces. As ever, societal opinions that surround Israel and Jewishness today have become conflated, manifesting as antisemitism when it might simply have been disagreement with the Israeli prosecution of the war in Gaza.

This country finds itself in a rare situation where extremists on the Right and the Left have merged into an unholy antisemitic coalition, exemplified by Progressives yelling and screaming about “genocide” without having a clue what that word really means and voting overwhelmingly to elect a New York City Mayor who refuses to walk back his call to “globalize the intifada.”

Meanwhile on the Right, Tucker Carlson, who has a podcast that goes out to 16.7 million followers on X, recently gave Nick Fuentes two hours to spew antisemitic rhetoric, including his comments that with regard to his enemies in the conservative movement, “I see Jewishness as the common denominator,” and that Jews are a “stateless people,” certainly true if Fuentes had his way.

Not to be left out, Carlson helpfully added that the United States gets nothing out of the relationship with Israel. Given that Israel is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, a part of the world not known for stability, I would argue that support of Israel is not just in the interest of the “Jews” (the monolith that Carlson and his ilk view them/us) but rather in America’s interest. Carlson obviously sees the geopolitics differently, arguing recently that Israel was not “strategically important” to the United States and, in fact, a “strategic liability.” For his part, President Trump defended Carlson, saying, “You can’t tell him who to interview,” without commenting directly on what was actually said in the interview.

For a confused maybe/maybe not a Jew like me, Oct. 7 provided an impetus to reassess my faith. So I did. But after hundreds of hours of research and thousands of miles of travel, I realized my Judaism didn’t start on Oct. 8, 2023 — it began in 1320 when the progenitor of my family, Juda Weill, was born. Juda was then followed by generations of Jewish family members, mostly rabbis and including the famous composer Kurt Weill, until the German Weills were either murdered by the Nazis, or for the lucky ones, dispersed all over the world. My grandfather, fresh off the horrors of Buchenwald, made it to America with my father, grandmother, and uncle.

Then — at nearly age 60! — I learned that my mother converted to Judaism, and the path toward my own Judaism was set, when all that was left was to walk along it and pick up the breadcrumbs along the way.

What did I find at the end of that road?

A burning building. And what did I do as I looked at that place on fire, whether in Australia, Europe, or on the streets of American cities?

I ran in, because that’s what we all must do, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and everyone else of any religious identity.

If any of us wonder what we would have done, Jews or Gentiles, during the early days of the Nazi regime, we are doing it now.

The post My religion was ‘None of the above,’ until Oct. 7 and now Bondi appeared first on The Forward.

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France 24, Mother Jones Receive UN Award for Work Built on Word of Discredited Ex-Contractor Who Lied About Israel

Anthony Aguilar, a former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who previously served as a US Army Green Beret. Photo: Screenshot

The UN press corps on Friday gave an award to news outlets France 24 and Mother Jones for their reporting based on the testimony of Anthony Aguilar, a US Army veteran and former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who has made discredited claims against Israel.

France 24 and Mother Jones were awarded the Bronze medal in the Ricardo Ortega Memorial Prize category at the UN Correspondents Gala Awards, an event hosted by the UN Correspondents Association at the global body’s headquarters in New York City. The award is for broadcast coverage of the UN, its agencies, and field operations.

According to France 24, its journalists were the first to interview Aguilar on camera on the morning of July 23, 2025. Aguilar claimed he witnessed human rights abuses perpetrated by the Israeli military and others at sites run by the GHF, which until the Gaza ceasefire went into place was an Israel- and US-backed program that delivered aid directly to Palestinians, with the goal of blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terrorist activities and selling the remainder at inflated prices.

France 24 and Mother Jones both published a story based on Aguilar’s testimony.

However, it was revealed last year that Aguilar’s most explosive claim, about the death of a Gazan boy, was false and that he was fired by the GHF for his conduct and pushing misinformation.

Aguilar claimed he witnessed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shoot a child — Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamdene, known as Abboud — as the GHF was distributing humanitarian aid on May 28.

After Aguilar made his claim, he rapidly rose to prominence, presenting himself as a whistleblower exposing supposed Israeli war crimes. His story gained traction internationally, going viral on social media. He subsequently embarked on an extensive media tour, in which he accused Israel of indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians as part of an attempt to “annihilate” and “disappear” the civilian population in Gaza.

However, Aguilar, who erroneously labeled the boy in question as “Amir,” gave inconsistent accounts of the alleged incident in separate interviews to different media outlets, calling into question the veracity of his narrative.

The GHF launched its own investigation at the end of July, ultimately locating Abboud alive with his mother at an aid distribution site on Aug. 23. The organization confirmed his identity using facial recognition software and biometric testing.

Abboud was escorted in disguise to an undisclosed safe location by the GHF team for his safety, according to The Daily Wire, which noted that the spreading of Aguilar’s false tale put the boy’s life in danger, as his alleged death was a powerful piece of propaganda for Hamas.

Fox News Digital reported that Abboud and his mother were safely extracted from the Gaza Strip in September.

In footage obtained by both news outlets, the boy can be seen playfully interacting with a GHF representative and appearing excited ahead of their planned extraction.

During the summer, as Aguilar’s claims were receiving widespread media attention, the GHF released a chain of text messages showing that Aguilar was terminated for his conduct. It also held a press conference to present evidence showing that Aguilar “falsified documents” and “presented misleading videos to push his false narrative.”

There was no apparent mention of the revelations about Aguilar’s narrative when the award was given out on Friday.

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