The best news this week is something you probably didn’t hear about: a Trump administration-backed aid effort reopened in the Gaza Strip, and delivered more than 1.4 million meals in one day, and no one was shot.
That is why you didn’t hear about it.
When Palestinian terrorists can invent or exaggerate claims of Israeli or American atrocities in the Middle East, the media run sensational stories. When things go well: silence.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been a great success. After its first week in operation, it had delivered seven million meals to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who were deeply grateful for the assistance.
Moreover, the GHF delivered the aid without going through the corrupt United Nations, which is under the thumb of Hamas. Nor was the aid stolen by Hamas to feed its terrorists, or to be sold on the black market.
That is why both the United Nations and Hamas were outraged, and spread false allegations that Israeli soldiers are killing Palestinian civilians at the aid sites. They want the GHF shut down as soon as possible.
They failed — at least for now. They could not overcome images and videos of Palestinians cheering for America, and President Donald Trump, as they arrived at the aid sides.
They could not suppress stories of Palestinians who were simply shocked that the American aid was free, after nearly two years of being forced by Hamas to pay for international aid that the United Nations should have been delivering them for free.
GHF’s opponents could still succeed. Beyond state-controlled media in Iran, or the Arab world, the Western media played up Hamas’s false claims, as if its “health ministry” had not lied to the world throughout the war.
Journalists repeated the fake news because many also want to see Israel lose. Perhaps many also carry deep prejudices against Jews that let them imagine Israeli soldiers luring starving Palestinians to their deaths.
The entire narrative was absurd: if Israeli soldiers really were murdering dozens of Palestinians at American aid sites, why would thousands of Palestinians keep flocking there?
The residents of Gaza know the truth.
GHF stopped making the headlines by the end of the week, and the project was suspended Friday for security reasons, due to high demand that led to overcrowding . The world should hope it reopens as soon as possible.
That is because GHF has begun to undermine Hamas’s control of the Palestinian population in Gaza.
For too long, Hamas has diverted international aid to build its tunnels, enrich its leaders, and starve the population.
The United Nations has been terrorism’s silent partner. Rather than standing for lofty ideals of cooperation and peace, the United Nations and its agencies have perpetuated the conflict and the hatred that fuels it.
Now that there is an alternative to both Hamas and the United Nations, real progress is possible. Palestinians can sustain themselves while the IDF destroys Hamas’s infrastructure, and Hamas loses its ability to govern.
The heroism of many of the GHF personnel should not go unnoticed. They are not trained soldiers. They are idealistic people, many of them Christian, with experience in humanitarian efforts, but rarely so close to war.
They have seemed taken aback by the lies told about what they are doing. But if they can persist, the truth of what they are doing in Gaza will be impossible to deny.
They will have reshaped the Middle East — for peace.
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 Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
