Fact-check: Netanyahu lies about Gaza in Congress speech
10 Min Read
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said many things before the US Congress on Wednesday, all of which are distortions of reality and do not hold up to scrutiny.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to a joint meeting of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, as House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., and Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., listen. (AP)
"A criminal's speech filled with lies and a mockery of the [people's] intelligence," was how Benjamin Netanyahu's address to US Congress was described by a member of Hamas' political bureau.
The Israeli Prime Minister's speech was rife with false claims regarding the Israeli war on Gaza, and also featured several jabs at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had requested the issuance of arrest warrants against him and his Security Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in the Strip.
Among Netanyahu's claims concerned food aid deliveries to Gaza, the protection of Palestinian civilians, and the mediated negotiations with the Palestinian Resistance, all of which Al Mayadeen has compared with information and testimonies currently available to the public.
Food aid deliveries to Gaza
Netanyahu slammed the ICC for "shamefully" accusing "Israel" of deliberately starving the people of Gaza, saying it was "complete nonsense" and a "complete fabrication," and claiming that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) allowed over 40,000 aid trucks, the equivalent of half a million tons of food, into the Gaza Strip.
He failed to mention, however, how the IOF deliberately blocks aid deliveries into the Gaza Strip, or how they deliberately damage the goods.
According to the UN, 28,018 food trucks entered Gaza throughout the 10 months of the war. "Israel" then seized the Rafah crossing, through which most food deliveries enter Gaza, leaving the Palestinian population reliant solely on the Karem Abu Salem crossing, which exponentially reduced the number of food trucks allowed to enter the Strip.
In February, five months into the war, UNRWA revealed that "Israel" blocked a food shipment meant for 1.1 million people in Gaza.
"A food shipment for 1.1 million people is stuck at an Israeli port due to recent restrictions from Israeli authorities. 1,049 containers of rice, flour, chickpeas, sugar & cooking oil are stuck as families in Gaza face hunger and starvation," the organization wrote in a post on social media.
In April, the World Food Programme (WFP) revealed that throughout the month, only 392 food trucks were allowed to enter Gaza, debunking Israeli claims of allowing increased humanitarian aid (300 on average per day) as the war prolongs further.
In May, less than a month after the seizure of the Rafah Crossing, a backlog of aid accumulated on the road between the Egyptian side of the border and the town of al-Arish, which is roughly 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Rafah and serves as an entry point for foreign humanitarian deliveries.
A truck driver told Reuters that his products had been on his truck for a month, slowly rotting in the heat. "Apples, bananas, chicken and cheese, a lot of things have gone rotten, some stuff has been returned and is being sold for a quarter of its price," he added.
"I'm sorry to say that the onions we're carrying will at best be eaten by animals because of the worms in them."
Most recently, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society affirmed that 96% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip live in extreme food insecurity.
Though the UN and humanitarian organizations have said that a minimum of 500 trucks of humanitarian aid are needed daily to avert a famine in Gaza, even according to Netanyahu's number of 40,000, a measly 137 trucks would have entered every day since the war began.
Read more: 'Israel' using starvation tactic in Gaza to destroy food system: UN
Protecting Palestinian civilians
"The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. What in God’s green earth is he talking about? The IDF just dropped millions of flyers, sent millions of text messages, made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way," Netanyahu audaciously cried before Congress.
While the IOF send text messages and drop flyers above Gazan towns and neighborhoods, Palestinians have been repeatedly displaced, since the war began, and have run out of places to hide, especially amid the unrelenting bombings of alleged safe zones.
Moreover, in some documented instances, the supposed messages and flyers came only moments before Israeli bombardment.
Even Israeli-flagged "safe zones" were relentlessly bombed just as displaced civilians arrived and set up their makeshift tents. In May, the IOF committed a massacre against dozens of displaced persons by bombing their tents set up in UNRWA warehouses in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, an alleged safe zone.
The Government Media Office reported that the Israeli occupation committed a horrific massacre through the concentrated and deliberate bombing of a center for the forcibly displaced, established in UNRWA barracks in the northwest of Rafah Governorate. The center was bombed with more than seven missiles and large bombs, each weighing more than 1 ton.
The myth of safe zones has been flagged since the beginning of the war. The UN has warned multiple times of the absence of safe zones across the Gaza Strip,
In May, UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini dismissed "Israel's" assertion regarding the establishment of purported "safe zones" for forcibly displaced Palestinians as "false and misleading" via a post on X.
"The claim of ‘safe zones’ is false and misleading," the UNRWA chief stressed.
He added that Israeli authorities persist in issuing mandatory displacement directives, also referred to as 'evacuation orders', compelling residents in Rafah to evacuate hastily without designated destinations.
"Since the war began, most people in Gaza have moved multiple times: on average once a month. They desperately sought safety that they never found," he further stated.
'It’s permissible to shoot everyone' in Gaza
Two weeks ago, six Israeli soldiers, speaking to +972 Magazine and Local Call after being discharged from active duty in Gaza in recent months, reported instances of executions that lacked any clear "security justification".
Corroborating the accounts of Palestinian eyewitnesses and doctors during the ongoing Israeli genocide, the Israeli soldiers described being authorized to shoot Palestinians indiscriminately.
Of the six sources interviewed by +972 Magazine and Local Call, all but one spoke anonymously. They recounted how Israeli soldiers routinely executed Palestinian civilians for entering areas designated as "no-go zones" by the military.
The testimonies depict a grim scene of civilian bodies scattered across the landscape, often left to decay or be scavenged by animals.
The army reportedly only removes these bodies by a bulldozer before the arrival of international aid convoys to prevent images of advanced decomposition from spreading. Additionally, two soldiers described a systematic policy of setting Palestinian homes on fire before leaving them after their occupation.
When soldiers spot someone approaching, “it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not into the air,” one soldier said. “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”
He then recounted an incident from November when soldiers fatally shot several civilians during the evacuation of a school near Gaza City's al-Zaytoun neighborhood, which had been used as a shelter for forcibly displaced Palestinians.
“A battle started inside; people ran away. Some fled left toward the sea, [but] some ran to the right, including children. Everyone who went to the right was killed — 15 to 20 people. There was a pile of bodies,” B. detailed.
Mediated negotiations with Hamas
According to Netanyahu, "The war in Gaza could end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders, disarms and returns all the hostages, but if they don’t, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities, end its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home."
The Israeli Prime Minister failed to mention a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, one of Hamas' non-negotiable demands to end the war.
Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that "Israel" would continue its bloody war on the Gaza Strip until all war objectives are achieved. So far, not a single war objective has been achieved.
He vowed to bring back the Israeli captives but ended up killing a least 39 of them [confirmed], despite Hamas having underlined a prisoner-exchange deal that would safely return all captives for the release of Palestinian prisoners, which "Israel" consistently rejected.
Last week, two Egyptian sources told Reuters that negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza have been halted until the Israeli occupation showcases seriousness to reach an agreement.
In the same context, two security Egyptian sources affirmed to the Egyptian Al-Ikhbariya news outlet that "ceasefire negotiations stopped after three-day talks that failed to reach a result."
An informed source noted that Egypt has been urging the occupation to "not obstruct ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip or propose new demands that contradict what was agreed upon," according to Al-Ikhbariya.
"Israel" is trying to contain public opinion, according to the source, by "wasting time during formal meetings to distance Israeli public opinion from reaching a deal, to avoid the collapse of the government coalition."
Read more: Netanyahu's new conditions could stall ceasefire talks: WashPo
On the other hand, Hamas has shown extreme flexibility during negotiations and has reacted positively to the proposed ceasefire plans.
Every week, Israeli settlers protest Netanyahu's strategy and demand a ceasefire and prisoner-exchange deal, as well as early elections to oust the prime minister from his position.
Last night, while Netanyahu gave his speech to Congress, thousands of settlers swarmed the streets of Tel Aviv, while the Israeli advocacy organization the "Hostages and Missing Families Forum" stated, "45 minutes of speech and applause won't erase the one sad fact: the words 'Deal Now!' were absent from the prime minister's address."
In Tel Aviv's "Hostage Square", relatives of Israeli captives implored him to stop the war, with one person stating, "Every day that passes and our people are still there it's a shame to our country."
"Deal now," the demonstrators yelled in response.
Earlier this month, former Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin said "The military pressure [that Netanyahu has been exerting to "defeat Hamas"] of more than nine months only resulted in the killing of hostages and many Palestinian non-combatants. Make a deal now!”
He urged Israeli negotiators to finalize negotiations “and bring it to the people so that everyone will know that the prime minister is the one who is blocking the deal”.
