Ah just like after the debate, CNN dragging their feet with fact checking. Now they have a bigger list.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/politics/fact-check-netanyahu-congress-address/index.html
Aid entering Gaza
Claim: Netanyahu said Israel has “enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza” adding that it amounts to “more than 3,000 calories for every man, women, and child in Gaza.”
Fact: More than a dozen aid agencies working in the territory have said that Israel’s statistics on truck entries “fail to address several vital components necessary for an effective operational response”.
“The mere entry of trucks into Gaza does not guarantee that the supplies reach the intended recipients due to safety and security reasons,” they said, adding that “reported numbers do not differentiate between types of cargo, often mixing commercial goods with critical humanitarian aid, which obscures the real picture of assistance reaching those in crisis.”
CNN has reported on Israel’s arbitrary and contradictory criteria for the entry of aid and the strict rules it enforces at checkpoints.
Mehdi from Zeteo:
What he said:
“The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter, complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That's half a million tons of food, and that's more than 3,000 calories for every man, woman, and child in Gaza.”
What he didn’t say:
Netanyahu didn’t mention how the world’s leading aid agencies – Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, UNICEF – all reject his rosy image of the aid situation in Gaza and all accuse Israel of blocking aid into Gaza. He didn’t mention that, in April, Oxfam reported that “people in northern Gaza have been forced to survive on an average of 245 calories a day – less than a can of fava beans – since January,” or that the organization also found that “the total food deliveries allowed into Gaza for the entire 2.2 million population – since last October – amounted to an average of just 41 per cent of the daily calories needed per person.”
He didn’t mention how some aid trucks that were destined for Gaza have been blocked by right-wing Israeli protesters; those protesters are on tape “throwing food packages onto the road and ripping bags of grain open.” He didn’t mention how many aid trucks do pass into Gaza, yes, but then get fired upon by Israeli forces. He didn’t mention the Israeli air strikes on a convoy of World Central Kitchen (WCK) trucks, in which seven food aid workers were targeted "systematically, car by car,” according to celebrity chef and WCK founder José Andrés. He didn’t mention the “Flour Massacre,” in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed after “shots were fired within close range of crowds that had gathered for food,” according to a CNN investigation.
Rafah death toll
Claim: Netanyahu said a commander in Rafah told him that there practically no civilian deaths in the city with the exception of “a single incident where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot and unintentionally killed two dozen people.”
Fact: There have been multiple reports of several strikes in Rafah that have resulted in civilian casualties.
The incident Netanyahu appeared to refer to occurred in May and killed at least 45 people at a camp for displaced Palestinians. The airstrike injured more than 200 after a fire broke out at the camp following the strike, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Palestinian medics.
In the same week, at least 29 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli attacks on displacement camps in Rafah, according to Palestinian and UN officials.
CNN has verified videos from Rafah and spoken to several health officials, humanitarian workers and eyewitnesses who have reported civilian fatalities as a result of Israel’s military assault on the city.
What he said:
“Remember what so many people said? If Israel goes into Rafah, there'll be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of civilians killed. Well, last week, I went into Rafah. I visited our troops as they finished fighting Hamas’ remaining terrorist battalions. I asked the commander there, ‘How many terrorists did you take out in Rafah?’ He gave me an exact number: ‘1,203.’ I asked him how many civilians were killed. He said, ‘Prime Minister, practically, none – with the exception of a single incident, where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot, and unintentionally killed two dozen people, the answer is: practically none.’”
What he didn't say:
“Practically none”? Netanyahu didn’t mention the Israeli bomb that, per Amnesty International, “struck the four-storey home of the Abu Radwan family in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in West Rafah, killing nine members of the family – six children, two women and one man” on April 19. He didn’t mention the Israeli strike that “destroyed the Abdelal family home in the al-Jneinah neighbourhood in eastern Rafah, killing 20 family members”. He didn’t mention the “at least 29 Palestinians… killed in two separate Israeli attacks on displacement camps in Rafah” in late May, as CNN reported at the time.
Then there is his suggestion that the dozens and dozens of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, who were killed in a horrific fire in the Tel al-Sultan refugee camp in Rafah on May 26, were killed not by the pair of 250-pound bombs dropped on them by the Israel air force but by “shrapnel from a bomb” that ignited a nearby “Hamas weapons depot.” The New York Times carried out an extensive investigation of this Israeli claim, saying it had “reviewed dozens of videos and has been unable to find any that suggest a significant secondary explosion.”
Ratio of combatant-civilian casualties
Claim: Netanyahu said the war in Gaza has “one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare.”
Fact: Israel has been saying since early on in the war that its ratio of civilian to terrorist fatalities is very low, but experts have cast doubt on the claim.
In November, then-Israeli military spokesperson Jonathan Conricus told CNN that Israel believes that it has killed two Palestinian civilians for every Hamas militant, saying the ratio is “tremendously positive.” Asked about the claims, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who served in Iraq, told CNN the comments were “dead wrong,”
Conricus said that when the Israeli military reported how many fighters it had killed, it was referring to combatants, “people who are fighting.” In Gaza, thousands of residents are employed in Hamas-run administrative agencies but carry out civilian duties.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health doesn’t distinguish in its reporting between combatant and civilian deaths but has previously said that some 70% of casualties in all of Gaza have been women and children.
Open-source monitoring by watchdog group Airwars found a “high correlation” between the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s civilian casualty data and what Palestinian civilians “reported online,” according to a new report.
More than 39,000 people have died in in Gaza since October, when Israel launched a war against Hamas after it attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.
What he said:
“John Spencer is head of urban warfare studies at West Point. He studied every major urban conflict… Israel, he said, has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history – and beyond what international law requires. That’s why, despite all the lies you've heard, the war in Gaza has one of the lowest ratios of combatants-to-noncombatants casualties in the history of urban warfare.”
What he didn’t say:
What Netanyahu didn’t mention is that the Israeli military conveniently defines almost every adult male it kills in Gaza as a combatant – as one soldier told the Israeli publication +972: “Every man [in Gaza] between the ages of 16 and 50 is suspected of being a terrorist.” The soldier added: “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”
What Netanyahu didn’t mention is what Israeli newspaper Haaretz has extensively reported on: that there are “kill zones” inside of Gaza where any Palestinian “who crosses into them is shot.” Per Haaretz: “The Israeli army says 9,000 terrorists have been killed since the Gaza war began. Defense officials and soldiers, however, tell Haaretz that these are often civilians whose only crime was to cross an invisible line drawn by the IDF.”
Netanyahu quoted John Spencer, a pro-Israeli U.S. academic, but he didn’t quote U.S. military historian Robert Pape, who has called Gaza “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.” He didn’t quote former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour, who has said we are witnessing “probably the highest kill rate of any military killing anybody since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.” He didn’t quote U.S. Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay, who has argued that “even if we accept the IDF’s claim that 12,000 of the roughly 29,000 Gazans reported dead by February 20 were enemy fighters, that would still mean that for every 100 Israeli air strikes, the IDF killed an average of 54 civilians. In the U.S. campaign in Raqqa, the American military caused an estimated 1.7 civilian deaths per 100 strikes.”
Iran funding US protesters
Claim: Netanyahu said that the US director of national intelligence recently revealed “that Iran is funding and promoting anti-Israel protests in America.” He also said: “When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.
Fact: The suggestion that most or all anti-war protesters are pawns of Iran is not accurate, but US intelligence has indicated that Iranian government actors have tried to pay some protesters.
Last month, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said that Iran is attempting to covertly stoke protests in the US related to the war in Gaza, posing as activists online and, in some cases, providing financial support to protesters. But Haines also said she wanted “to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza,” adding that the intelligence “does not indicate otherwise.”
What he said:
“For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now, outside this building. Not that many, but they're there. And throughout this city. Well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting, and funding you, you have officially become Iran's useful idiots.”
What he didn’t say:
There is zero evidence, none, nada, for this nonsensical and offensive claim. Were the hundreds of Jewish antiwar protesters who were arrested at the Capitol the day before Netanyahu’s speech all paid by the Iranian government to be there? Are you kidding me? Are the majority of ordinary Americans who tell pollster after pollster that they favor a ceasefire in Gaza, and an end to the fighting, also “Iran’s useful idiots”? This was the dumbest, most dishonest, most desperate claim of Netanyahu’s entire speech to Congress.
Starving Gazans
Claim: Netanyahu said the International Criminal Court’s allegation that Israel is starving people of Gaza is “utter, complete nonsense” and a “fabrication”.
Fact: On October 9, Israel declared a “complete siege” on Gaza, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel to the enclave.
Israel has since eased some of those restrictions, but aid agencies say the food that is getting into the strip is only a fraction of what is needed, leading to widespread hunger. Israel’s military operations in Gaza, they say, also hinder the safe distribution of food. In April, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said it is “credible” to assess that famine is already occurring in parts of Gaza.
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, noting that high ranking Israeli officials “have made public statements expressing their aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water and fuel” and that the “policy” is “being carried out by Israeli forces.”
Hamas stealing aid
Claim: Netanyahu said that if Palestinians in Gaza aren’t getting enough food, “it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas is stealing it.”
Fact: There have been some anecdotal reports from Gazans of Hamas stealing aid, although it’s not clear how rampant it is.
Israeli officials have been making the claim that Hamas was stealing aid since October. UN Humanitarian Coordinator Lynn Hastings told CNN then that Hamas wasn’t stealing aid because aid wasn’t coming in.
US Special Envoy David Satterfield in February denied the allegations that Hamas has stolen aid, saying that no Israeli official had presented him or the Biden administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance.”
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller did however say in May that one shipment coming from Jordan was briefly diverted by the group before it was recovered by the UN. CNN cannot independently confirm the claim.
Aid agencies have said that there have been cases of looting by the public due to Israel’s military operation leading to a breakdown in public order and safety.
Nothing of that stopped congress giving Netanyahu standing ovations during his speech, except one Rashida Tlaib.
