Tony Thomas Quadrant Online January 30, 2025
Being so pro-Palestine often puts the ABC in a bind. For example, the ABC is incapable of admitting that Hamas has been looting aid trucks in Gaza for decades to steal and profiteer food and essentials. Last November 19 the ABC ran a Matthew Doran/agency piece about strange “gunmen” in Gaza who “violently looted” more than 100 trucks with food from UNRWA and charities. The food could have fed 25,000 Gazans for three months. The looting was doubly sensitive because then-President Biden was warning Israel to step up aid or else.er
The normally outspoken UNRWA[1] went coy about who those “gunmen” might be[2], preferring like UNOCHA[3] to bleat about “armed lootings”. Doran then quoted aid agencies accusing Israel of turning a blind eye to “armed mobs” seizing food aid.
Hamas runs a disciplined and fanatical army that has held even the IDF at bay. The idea that rival “armed mobs” could steal and resell a fortune in aid supplies from under the nose of Hamas, is so absurd that only the ABC, UN and legacy media could believe it.
In reality the ABC wants to maintain its narrative that Israel is solely to blame for a “famine” in Gaza that the ABC has predicted since the start of the war but which has never materialised.[4]
Worst of all, the ABC’s “passionate” Nicholas Maher in Behind the News (BTN) offered some high-energy fun for schoolkids aged 10-13 last April. BTN drenched and traumatised the small kids with the ABC’s and UN’s Israel-hating “famine” and “ceasefire” Gaza narratives.[5] The kids weren’t told of course about Hamas plundering food aid, nor its human-shield strategies:
Maher: Experts say there’s reason to believe what we’re seeing in Gaza is famine.
Gazan vox pop: For God’s sake, we need to eat! Our children are dying of hunger!
Gazan: What has this child done to suffer from hunger? We are eating plants. We started eating pigeon food, donkey food. We are like the animals.
James Elder, UNICEF: When you have a bombardment like this, that is devastating…, The healthcare system is on its knees because of the hundreds of [obviously Israeli] attacks, attacks on health care facilities, ambulances, health care workers [for no reason?] So, we have to fall back, as much pressure as we can, on a humanitarian ceasefire that involves hostages going home and giving people a chance just finally to breathe.
ABCTV 7pm flagship news ran tear-jerking clips this month about freezing conditions for adults and children on the strip. No mention, of course, that Hamas routinely loots aid for the warm winter clothing and shelter. OCHA on January 8, surprisingly, spelt it out:
The high risk of armed looting continues to severely hamper the scaling up of shelter assistance. For the vulnerable children, winter clothing kits are restricted by “armed looting of aid supplies. ..more than 11,000 children’s clothing kits have already been lost due to looting. CP [child protection] actors estimate that — if this trend continues — around 25 per cent of the overall number of procured clothing kits will be lost to looting. As a result, only 19,000 children’s clothing kits out of a total of 220,000 procured kits have so far entered Gaza and were distributed to the most vulnerable groups, including inter alia newborn babies in hospitals, children in residential care, many of whom have lost their parents, children with disabilities, and child survivors of gender-based violence.
The ABC television and radio coverage was also terminally biased about the IDF clearing terrorists out of Gaza hospitals late last year. On Radio AM last November 18 correspondent Matthew Doran began his piece on the prior Kamal Adwan Hospital raid by the IDF:
It’s a sound echoing from almost every corner of the Kamal Adwan hospital. Young children, their tiny bodies bruised, bloodied and broken. Victims of Israel’s deadly war with Hamas.
He doesn’t say how the “deadly” war started, maybe it just sort-of happened?
The ABC somehow obtained interviews and vox pops with Gazan staff and carers about the IDF “bashing injured patients” and how it even “unleashed their dogs on the children directly.” Doran quotes a Gazan grandmother: “They beat all of them, the sick, the injured, the ones who were bleeding. Some were bleeding so much that the floor was flooded with blood.”
The ABC, pro forma, quoted the IDF “insisting” that the hospital was a Hamas stronghold but added, “Hamas and doctors reject[ed] accusations fighters were sheltering there.” On December 30, Doran followed up, “Earlier, the IDF released vision it insisted showed a number of weapons found inside Kamal Adwan. The ABC has not been able to independently verify the IDF’s claims.”
Exactly how an ABC reporter might verify such claims is not stated, perhaps by flying in a panel of judges from Geneva? The ABC never adds its “inability to verify” tag to claims by Hamas terrorists.
Let’s get real here. Germany’s Algemeiner just last Saturday (Jan 25) ran a piece headlined, “Hamas Terrorists Admit Israeli Hostages Held at Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital”. Don’t expect any ABC follow-up. (It was the same cynical practice by Hamas at UNRWA camps).[6]
When the IDF quarantined and raided the hospital[7] last December, it detained 13 of the first 21 “patients” through the checkpoint as terror suspects. Others tried posing as doctors and stretcher-bearers. Of 940 staff and patient arrivals, the IDF detained 240 as Hamas suspects. Of the 240, at least 15 had taken part in the October 7 massacre, the IDF said. Inside and in adjoining apartments, commandos found guns, grenades, ammunition, incriminating documents and terror funds.
The most prominent detainee was the hospital’s director, Abu Safiya. He has an international media profile for saintly dedication to patients, but had praised the October 7 massacre as an “act of God”.
An X user Eitan Fischberger posted a translation of the Palestinian Donia al Watan news site naming Safiya as a Hamas colonel.[8] It is not yet clear whether the three female hostages Hamas released last week are the same hostages the IDF earlier said were held at Kamal Adwan Hospital .[9]
Terrorist misuse of adjacent Nasser Hospital is well-documented. Incriminating posts include the Palestine Authority last October relaying a summons from Hamas for Gazan civilian Shadi Subhi Al-Suweiti to report to Nasser Hospital for interrogation by Hamas’s military intelligence. The PA author was actually critical of Hamas for using hospitals for “summonses, interrogations, and extortions”. When Doron Katz-Asher and her two girls Raz, 4, and Aviv, 2, were freed in the first exchange in November 2023, she said they had been imprisoned in Nasser Hospital for 33 days in terrible unhygienic conditions. “I was hungry and the girls cried because they were hungry,” she said.
The ABC was much impressed by a report last month by the Israel-hating UN Human Rights Commission[10] about IDF alleged hospital crimes. Whether any ABC person actually read the 23-page report seems doubtful (the ABC was satisfied with agency copy). The UN can’t even admit that Hamas started the war, merely referring to “the escalation of hostilities that began on October 7”.
It divides Hamas into the military arm (Al Qassam), and the apparently innocent “civilian wing” which Israel mustn’t target. It continues (p10, footnote 36),
Israel has asserted that all members of Hamas, including members of its civilian wing, are legitimate military targets. Under IHL [International Humanitarian Law], civilians are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities (see ICRC Study, Rule 6). Quotation marks around Hamas are used in this report when it is not clear whether Israeli authorities are referring to the military wing (Al Qassam), or the civilian wing, or both.
Even if the IDF has established that Hamas is misusing hospitals, the report says it must embark on protocols that include warnings, opportunity for the (bogus and real) Hamas medicos to respond to allegations, and grace periods for Hamas to reform itself and behave properly. At worst, the IDF must limit strikes to just the spots where offences are discovered, with no risk to patients.
ABCTV’s Wednesday, January 1, broadcast on Gaza makes a case study: from 13.20 minutes, after a header, “Breaking Point”.[11] The ABC briefs us, in its subtle way, about how Israeli war criminals bomb hospitals and add to the sufferings of patients, especially children. The ABC adds, purely pro forma, that the Israeli military denies wrong-doing. Here’s a transcript – I’ve marked the contentious bits:
Tamara Oudyn, newsreader: The [Israel-hating] UN has condemned Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza, warning the action could amount to war crimes.[12] The Israeli military claims Hamas militants are using the hospitals as command centres but the UN Human Rights Office [comprising among others in 2025 China, Cuba, Sudan, Kuwait, Qatar, DR Congo and a dozen other “sh-t hole States”] says the repeated strikes have the health system on the verge of total collapse.
Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran: Winter in Gaza brings rain and the displaced population is struggling to survive in flimsy tents. And where they now have to go for health care is not much better. This makeshift hospital in Khan Unis is flooded as well. [Warm winter aid is being looted by Hamas, see start of this article]
Mr Ayman Abou Hatta, father (translated): “I came to treat my son but I found the hospital in such a state, this is a situation unfit for any hospital in the entire world.”
First World aid is shown in the clip as having poured into this demountable – and far from “makeshift” — hospital, sourced from Finnish top-class suppliers. The slightly flooded floor will doubtless be fixed shortly by other First World engineers. Mr Hatta is not easily satisfied amid the wartime ambience his elected government created.
Doran:… The legacy of more than a year of war [started by whom, and how?[13]] in which Gaza hospitals have frequently been in the Israeli firing line [because Hamas uses them as bastions]. This is what is left of Al Shifa, previously the territory’s biggest health care facility: its destruction in March documented in a new UN report [see earlier this article]…
Jeremy Laurence, UN Human Rights Office spokesperson: From the destruction of buildings and facilities to the killings of patients, staff and other civilians [blame Hamas human shield strategies], it raises serious concern about Israeli compliance with international law [see the UN take on it above].
Doran: Israel maintains that Hamas used hospitals as command centres and the civilians inside as human shields. Israel rejects the report as being politically motivated. The UN says Israel has not released enough evidence to substantiate its claims.
The Israel-hating UN is an utterly tainted source. The UN report covers attacks up to June 2024, more have continued since then.
Over the weekend the Kamal Adwan Hospital was raided and indefinitely closed, drawing strong condemnation from the WHO. [WHO like the UN is utterly compromised, no wonder President Trump is withdrawing US support]. There the IDF arrested 240 people including the hospital director. Israel alleges that they have ties to Hamas but has not provided any evidence.
Apart from the Palestine Authority having named the hospital chief as a Hamas colonel, for example. The ABC never requires such “evidence” of Hamas.
…What little is left of health services in Gaza is in dire need of supplies, but aid groups say it is struggling to get there…
Mainly because of Hamas looting.
A lucky few can leave for care outside the territory but it is an arduous process.
Clip: Mother Abeer Abu Yusuf says tearful goodbye to her children being bused out of Gaza for dialysis.
I thought Israel was doing a ‘genocide’ of Gazans, not treating kidney disease?
Mother’s translator: He has never been away from me, I don’t know how they will deal with him.
Her inference: Israel might torture or murder him.
Mother’s translator: I tried with multiple parties to get help so I can accompany my son, but I get rejection and we don’t know why.
Perhaps because in 2005 Ms Wafa al Bass, a Palestinian Arab resident of northern Gaza and student at Al Quds University, was permitted to be treated for burns at an Israeli hospital after a gas cooker blew up while she was making dinner. She wore a suicide bomb vest which she attempted to explode as she crossed into Israel via the Erez Crossing.
Doran: The painful separation: a child of Gaza’s only hope.
Don’t give Israel health providers any pat on the back, Matt!
Speaking generally, John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War group, says the IDF goes to unprecedented lengths to protect children and civilians from harm, including forewarning civilians before its forces enter an area, sharing maps of safe areas, and “roof knocking” on targets with non-explosive bombs so that civilians have time to flee before an attack. By foregoing the element of surprise for civilians’ sake, Israel has let many Hamas leaders and fighters escape, and suffered the loss of scores of its own IDF troops in ground clearances in lieu of added air strikes.
Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk, in an October 27, 2023 television interview, explained that Hamas built tunnels underneath civilian homes and businesses not to safeguard civilians, for “it is the job of the United Nations to protect them,” but because “we are fighting from inside the tunnels,” and Hamas fighters have “no other way of protecting ourselves.”
The ABC loves the “two-state” solution to end hostilities. But don’t expect to ever see an ABC Four Corners investigation into the Palestine Authority’s “pay for slay” bonuses for terrorists who kill or harm Jews. Pay-for-slay consumes 7% of the PA budget, and is a significant part of its welfare state. A book on it last April by Lital Shemesh, “How Much Is a Dead Jew Worth?”[14] spells out the details:
Payment to a martyr’s family is a lifetime pension. The family of jailed terrorists get stipends proportionate to the sentence. The minimum monthly wage in the PA zone is $US400 and the average is $US800. A three year sentence earns a family $US400 monthly. But a ten-year sentence is worth $US1600 a month and a 30-year term is worth $US3200 monthly.
Making Western aid conditional on ceasing pay-for-slay won’t work, because according to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, pay-for-slay will always be the PA’s top spending priority. “We view the Martyrs and prisoners as stars in the sky of the Palestinian people,” he said.
This doesn’t suggest the PA can be much of a bulwark against Hamas terror in the much-touted “two-state” solution.
Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 here.
On Tuesday February 18 at 6pm at Il Gambero, 166 Lygon St, Carlton, Tony will help launch Connor Court’s The Cronulla Riots – the inside story by Carl Scully, the then Labor Police Minister, and Mark Goodwin, then Assistant Police Commissioner. All welcome – CLICK HERE TO BOOK
[1] Relief & Works Agency
[2] “The agency did not detail who had carried out the looting, but placed responsibility for the protection of aid convoys on the Israeli government.”
[3] UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs
[4] Even this month, the UN is still saying famine in the north is “imminent”. It was supposed to be in famine last May.
[5] For other horrific brainwashing of kids by the ABC’s so-called “BTN Education” unit, see here. ACMA declined to deal with my appeal against BTN High brainwashing as beyond its jurisdiction, and my appeal has now gone to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
[6] Hat-tip Jill J for help.
[7] Kamal Adwan, for whom the facility is named, was a Palestinian Fatah operative responsible for attacks in Nahariya and Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market before being killed by the IDF in 1973.
[8] “The [conference] opening was attended by the Director General of Medical Services, Brigadier General Saeed Al-Saudi; the Director of the Adwan Complex, Colonel Ahmad Al-Kahlout; the Director of the Paediatric Hospital at the Adwan Complex, Colonel Hossam Abu Safia; and approximately 60 doctors working in paediatric departments in hospitals affiliated with the Medical Services and the [Hamas-run] Ministry of Health across the Gaza Strip.”
[9] The three women hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher freed on January 19 said they had been imprisoned in charity hide-outs including UN camps created to shelter and feed civilians. Details are yet to emerge. The office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the allegations were “very serious” and wants further details.
[10] Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s September address to the UN:
“In the last decade, there have been more resolutions passed against Israel in this hall, in the UN General Assembly, than against the entire world combined. Actually, more than twice as many. Since 2014, this body condemned Israel 174 times. It condemned all the other countries in the world 73 times. What hypocrisy. What a double standard. What a joke. And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state, is treated like other nations, until this antisemitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.”
[11] I’m dealing with the Victorian 7pm News version. The item was similar across other States’ bulletins, eg NSW, at 12mins, and Qld, at 17mins.
[12] In November 2024 the UN reported that in most instances Israel does not provide substantial evidence for its human shields allegations in Gaza nor could they independently verify these allegations. Nonetheless, they stressed that “Regardless of any use of human shields, Israel must uphold the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack”.
[13] Netanyahu last September gave the UN a reasonable summary of how the war started:
“Thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists from Gaza burst into Israel in pickup trucks and on motorcycles, and they committed unimaginable atrocities. They savagely murdered 1,200 people. They raped and mutilated women. They beheaded men. They burned babies alive. They burned entire families alive—babies, children, parents, grandparents. It seems reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust. Hamas kidnapped 251 people from dozens of different countries, dragging them into the dungeons of Gaza…
After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no-one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves.”
[14] Not on Amazon. Probably untranslated from the original.
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Nelle's journey 