Did a Hamas Official Really Say 50 of the 62 Gazans Killed Were Members of the Organization?

And if he did say that, is it actually a big a deal?

Hamas is being blamed for the violence on the border of Israel and Gaza earlier this week. I haven’t seen any documentation of Hamas holding guns to the heads of the Israeli snipers, forcing them to shoot humans.

Wednesday’s headlines would have us believe that 50 of the 62 people killed during the “border violence” and that Hamas gave proof for this.

While the claim does stem from an actual statement made by an actual Hamas official, the statement comes from an 11 second clip posted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Twitter. The same IDF who also tweeted this horrendous graphic during the massacre:

The 11 second clip shows Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil, a Hamas official, saying “In the last round of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas,” according to the in-video translation. The IDF then translates the brief statement even further, this time into Zionist, “Hamas official, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil is clear about terrorist involvement in the riots.”

First of all, Al-Bardawil’s statement, according to the translation, does not appear to be communicating a statistic. An “if/then” statement such as this sounds more like an estimate, or a hypothetical. But even still, saying that 50 of the 62 Gazans killed during the “border violence” is like saying 50 of the 62 people present at such and such event were Democrats. Those 50 Democrats don’t necessarily hold office, they may be virtually unknown to anyone but their friends and neighbors, and it’s possible they don’t even vote. Or maybe they don’t even know what it means to be a Democrat. We don’t know.

The widely shared Times of Israel article mentioned above also makes additional suspect claims. The article contains the following image:

Now, I could be wrong here, and please correct me if I am, but I did a reverse image search on that puppy and basically only found references to the Times of Israel article. The article captions the image: "Hamas press release on May 15, 2918, announcing the deaths of 10 of its Interior Ministry members in clashes with the IDF the day prior." So either it came from the future (May 15, 2918 to be exact), or it isn't real.

Terrorism. Gee thanks Google.

Not only did I reverse image search it, but I also checked out Hamas' own press releases and there are none from May 15. 2018 OR 2918.

Do you see what I see? Hamas uses a much different color scheme on their official website than the graphic from Times of Israel. And the graphic from the Times of Israel happens to match the Times of Israel colors quite exceptionally. What am I saying here? I'm just saying they match, infer from that what you will.

Also, in case you were curious, if you toss that graphic into an online Pantone color picker you get this:

If you also toss the logo of the Prime Minster of Israel into the same online Pantone color picker, you get this:

Weird, right?

Also, the logo in the upper right corner is that of "The State of Palestine," not Hamas. I can't find a press release from Palestine with this graphic or even anything relating to the massacre at all.

Like I said, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Let's backtrack and consider what Hamas actually is.

Hamas, in effect, is a political party within Gaza. Straight from the horse’s mouth, Hamas is a Palestinian movement that, “works with the rest of the Palestinian people and with all national and Islamic factions and bodies and people of conscience all over the world on resisting the Israeli occupation as well as liberating the Palestinian land.” Hamas has been the governing authority in the Gaza Strip since 2007.

There is messy, complicated and convincing controversy surrounding Hamas that we’re not going to delve into here. That would take a long time.

So, if we're going to entertain the idea that Hamas is, in fact, responsible for the Israeli murder of 62 people in Gaza, we should also entertain the idea that Hamas would not exist if it weren’t for Israel and that, perhaps, Israel even had a hand in Hamas’ creation.

Let’s see what former U.S. Representative Ron Paul had to say:

Back in 2009, Avner Cohen, a retired Israeli official who worked in Gaza for 20 years, made a startling admission to the Wall Street Journal: “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

Cohen also shares that, instead of attempting to stop the growth of Gaza’s Islamists, Israel actually tolerated and propped them up to counteract Yasser Arafat, just has Ron Paul noted in the video above.

Does this sort of thing sound familiar? It reeks of U.S. regime change strategy, which always and overwhelmingly results in death and suffering for many. Or maybe it's just me.

So now we have Israel claiming to fight a (democratically elected) terror group that they themselves helped create, that uses destructive and horrible weapons such as children and ropes.

Never mind the fact that artists have gathered peacefully at the border and that UN Resolution 194 stipulated right of return, the mere presence of masses of Palestinians is so threatening to Israel that their snipers can justify shooting both clearly marked press and clearly marked (and also Canadian) medics in addition to thousands of Palestinians.

Even if you believe Hamas is purely a terrorist organization and that 50 of the 62 human lives lost during the massacre were members or supporters of the group, that does not justify their execution, without hesitation. Israel violated international law, as they have done for years, with little to no push back from the rest of the world.

If the IDF is to be believed, these people were fighting with such horrifying weapons like rope, kites, rocks, and disabled people against an actual military complete with snipers, protective gear, and drones that drop tear gas.

If Israel is so clearly defending itself, why is the US blocking the UN investigation into the deaths in Gaza? Why deport the senior Human Rights Watch Official right now?

The harder Israel pushes Palestine, the harder Palestine will push back. The more Israel tries to cover its tracks, the more guilty and delusional it looks.

In conclusion: Nothing written here is antisemitic.

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