Juno News - New report disproves Gaza genocide claims

00:00:00.000 We were talking earlier on in the show about the by-election underway in Toronto St. Paul's.

00:00:14.040 Now this is a part of the country that has a significant Jewish population, which is one of

00:00:18.840 the reasons the Liberals have done some things that I think are more readily described as pandering

00:00:23.880 to collect votes. Some cynics among us might even say that the Liberals' decision to finally

00:00:29.000 classify the IRGC as a terrorist organization was involved in trying to whip up votes in

00:00:35.560 the by-election because they've previously declined to do this. And only now in the middle

00:00:39.480 of the by-election did they all of a sudden say, well, on second thought, maybe, maybe

00:00:43.000 the IRGC is a terrorist organization and we can call them that very clearly. Now, if you

00:00:49.340 look at the polls, I don't think Jewish voters in Canada are all that convinced by this because

00:00:54.560 they've seen tremendous hostility towards them and towards certainly Israel for the last,

00:01:01.120 I mean, the last several decades, but certainly since October 7th. I wanted to talk about this.

00:01:06.960 Some of the misinformation we've seen on the Israel file, a lot of it peddled in the legacy

00:01:13.120 media, picked up unquestionably by politicians who accuse Israel of things like genocide and war crimes

00:01:19.040 without providing any evidence. And one of the claims they use in support of that is that Israel

00:01:23.920 is starving the people of Gaza, that there is a quote-unquote famine underway. Well, if you look

00:01:29.600 at the facts on that, they simply do not support that conclusion. There was a great piece in the

00:01:35.200 National Post written by Mike Fegelman of Honest Reporting Canada. His colleague, the assistant

00:01:40.240 director of the organization, Robert Walker, is back with us now. Robert, good to have you on the show.

00:01:45.200 Thanks for coming on today. Thank you for having me, Andrew. So let's just talk about what the claims

00:01:50.480 are, because this is something that's been quite pervasive, really going back to, I think, Israel's

00:01:55.040 first moves against Gaza right after October 7th. Well, that would be against Hamas specifically,

00:02:02.000 of course, but that is exactly the allegation that anti-Israel detractors making, that Israel's been

00:02:08.480 carrying out this kind of indiscriminate attacks and starving the Gazan population. It's complete 0.95

00:02:14.160 nonsense. A lot of this really does come from, you know, doctored images and photos and video

00:02:21.680 footage and so on. But a lot of it also comes from a report back in March from an agency which claimed

00:02:27.920 that there was going to be imminent famine in Gaza. Now, this was not based on actual first-hand

00:02:33.440 evidence. This was based on a lot of assumptions. Now, assumptions are, you know, sometimes all you can

00:02:39.360 work with. But what happened in this particular situation was that they really over-promised and

00:02:44.400 under-delivered. In other words, they really made maximal claims based on minimal evidence. And then,

00:02:49.120 of course, you know, those who were paying attention more closely pointed out that there was actually no

00:02:53.440 famine. There was more food aid coming into Gaza post-October 7th about one and a half times as much

00:02:58.800 than was coming in pre-October 7th. So we're talking just about a vicious, scurrilous lie that was being

00:03:05.280 peddled and then being uncritically regurgitated by a lot of the mainstream media, politicians,

00:03:10.800 and so on and so forth throughout the world. But then what happened about three weeks ago,

00:03:15.840 the same body came out with a report basically backtracking and said, you know, there's no

00:03:21.280 evidence of famine. And again, nobody paying attention would be surprised by that. There's no

00:03:26.160 shortage of footage online you can find of bustling markets in Gaza. You know, if Israel was trying to 0.99

00:03:32.400 carry out a famine, it was the worst attempt possible. There's simply no evidence to suggest

00:03:37.760 that. But not only is there a huge amount of food coming into Gaza, there's also, you know,

00:03:43.040 a tremendous amount of food being produced in Gaza, something along the lines of 2 million PETA

00:03:47.520 being created, you know, every single day within Gaza, something like 75% of the greenhouses 0.91

00:03:54.080 in Gaza are still functioning. That's according to none other than the United Nations. So I think that

00:03:59.600 those who have been claiming for months that there is some kind of a, you know, shortage of food in

00:04:04.000 Gaza really ought to have egg on their faces. Yeah. And when Israel, just to do, you know, 1.00

00:04:08.720 the brief history on this, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza close to 20 years ago, they left

00:04:14.320 an incredibly, incredibly vibrant and robust system there so that Gaza and Gazans could produce food,

00:04:21.440 including many of those greenhouses you just mentioned. And, you know, if they weren't using those,

00:04:26.080 that's up to Hamas, which we know has, you know, previously put its citizens in the line of fire, 0.60

00:04:30.160 literally and figuratively as propaganda tools. And so, I mean, my view on this early on was that

00:04:36.240 if there is starvation taking place, it's because Hamas is blocking aid. But now it seems like there

00:04:41.520 isn't even this starvation taking place en masse. The food is there. In fact, there's not only sufficient

00:04:47.520 food, there's far more than sufficient food. There was a recent report actually by a couple professors at

00:04:53.200 Columbia University who really crunched the numbers, both in terms of how much food is coming

00:04:58.000 in and what's being disseminated, how much is being grown and so on. And they identify that there's

00:05:02.800 actually more than enough food that's coming in. So there's definitely not a shortage. If there's

00:05:07.280 any criticism at all, it's really on the, you know, perspective of how much is actually being

00:05:13.040 distributed. Now, that's not up to Israel, of course, right? That's up to agencies connected to the

00:05:18.880 United Nations like none other than UNRWA, which you and I as Canadian taxpayers are helping to foot

00:05:23.840 the bill of. This is, of course, organizations which help to fement ongoing terrorism, the disgraced

00:05:28.480 United Nations agency. Right now, there are something along the lines of 4,000 pallets of aid

00:05:34.960 sitting in Gaza that have been delivered into Gaza, but at a weight distribution. And that's because of

00:05:40.640 the incompetence or the deliberate malfeasance on the part of UNRWA. It's not for me to say whether

00:05:47.040 they're doing this intentionally as a public relations, you know, you know, war on Israel.

00:05:52.320 This is just complete and utter incompetence, again, paid for by you and I as Canadian taxpayers.

00:05:57.120 But either way, it's irrelevant. There is more than enough food coming in. And to the degree that

00:06:01.840 there is any kind of a shortage, it is not on, you know, how much is food is actually being delivered,

00:06:07.680 but what is actually being sent into Gaza. And again, the finger, as you said, has to be pointed,

00:06:13.840 not just at Hamas or the Islamic, you know, jihadist terrorist organization running Gaza,

00:06:18.640 but really the organizations that are being funded in part by Canadian taxpayers like UNRWA.

00:06:24.080 So I think that we as Canadians should be outraged to be very upset that our taxpayer funds are going

00:06:32.640 to an organization that is helping to perpetuate not just any kind of, you know, humanitarian issue

00:06:39.440 that may be present in Gaza. Again, I reiterate once again, that there is no famine in Gaza,

00:06:44.560 but to the degree that there is any kind of shortage in Gaza. But furthermore, that there,

00:06:49.360 you know, this is the agency that really in no small part helps to perpetuate the misinformation

00:06:54.000 and ultimately the conflict that is happening. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And, you know,

00:06:58.960 one of the challenges here is that Hamas has always weaponized humanitarian aid and humanitarian

00:07:06.000 channels for its aims. I mean, we recall very many years ago when these so-called flotillas were

00:07:12.160 coming in of, you know, people that were trying to, you know, support Hamas basically under the guise

00:07:16.160 of supporting the people of Gaza. And despite this, Israel has always ensured those humanitarian

00:07:21.760 channels were there. And Israel has, you know, a number of programs, not just to bring resources into

00:07:26.160 Gaza, but to pull people out and get them health care and surgery. So like none of this is new, 0.65

00:07:30.400 but of course, in the era of propaganda against Israel, there's no credit for doing the right

00:07:35.280 thing. Not just that. I mean, listen, that Hamas actively bombs the, some of these humanitarian

00:07:42.000 crossings. I was in Israel about five weeks ago and in Southern Israel, you know, on the,

00:07:48.160 near the boundary with Gaza. And one of the days we heard these loud bangs. And it turns out later on

00:07:53.600 that what had happened was actually Hamas had fired mortar shells, killing four Israeli soldiers,

00:07:59.120 uh, specifically at a crossing, which had been sending humanitarian aid into Gaza. And as I said,

00:08:04.960 four soldiers were killed as a result. So, uh, you know, Hamas does this because it works. 0.98

00:08:10.320 When I say it works is because not only do they use their own people as cannon fodder, 0.54

00:08:15.440 but they know that there is a very eager, enthusiastic, even, uh, you know, body around the

00:08:21.840 world, the humanity, quote unquote, humanitarian, so-called humanitarian organizations, 0.97

00:08:26.000 useful idiots marching in the streets, politicians and so on, who will take what Hamas is saying at 0.98

00:08:31.120 face value, uh, and then essentially use that weaponized propaganda to their benefit. So 1.00

00:08:36.960 Hamas does this not because they're idiots, quite the opposite, because they're very intelligent and 1.00

00:08:41.120 they know very, very cleverly how to manipulate public opinion. And ultimately, I think it's up to 1.00

00:08:46.560 us as, uh, you know, as Canadians, uh, to be able to push back aggressively on that, because that's the

00:08:52.000 kind of disinformation that creates discord in our streets, uh, that creates pressure for more

00:08:57.120 Canadian taxpayer dollars to go funding groups like UNRWA, which helped to perpetuate the war,

00:09:03.040 and ultimately, which helped create, uh, conditions which only perpetuate suffering on all sides. So

00:09:08.320 we as Canadians should be royally angry and very frustrated and upset, uh, as to how we as a

00:09:13.600 collective society are being manipulated by Hamas. I mean, it's just obscene. Robert Walker, 0.94

00:09:18.160 assistant director of Honest Reporting Canada. Thanks for coming on, Robert. Good to talk to you.

00:09:22.160 Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:09:25.360 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 30, 2024

New report disproves Gaza genocide claims

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