Repetition does not validate a falsehood

July 9, 2025

Greg Barns’ article is, as usual, carefully reasoned and he lays out his argument(s) with scrupulous precision.

However, on this occasion, I seek more explanation for the contentious statement that “Hamas killed 1200 people” in the horrendous 7 October 2023 attack. It has been widely accepted that the death toll in that attack — while due to Hamas’s monumental strategic blunder that has profited nobody but Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist coterie — is in considerable part also a product of IDF complicity.

This is not a pedantic issue: the “Hamas killed 1200 people” mantra appears to have become something of a prophylactic against Zionist lobby action. Even The Guardian, that holds “facts are sacred”, has been adding a. almost identical stock phrase to virtually every article on the Gaza catastrophe for months now.

If this highly unreliable “fact” becomes entrenched in lore as the bedrock upon which all actions of the current Israeli Government and IDF are justified, it will become a barricade against inspection of the actions and motives of what is considered as genocide and war criminality by an overwhelming majority of the world’s population.

For Israel to have a future, it needs the spotlight of truth.