Trump threatened to kill everyone in Gaza. The media lied about it

As well as a hideous genocidal threat, this is a straightforward example of media deception

Donald Trump has threatened to exterminate the entire population of Gaza. This latest genocidal threat comes in a post on social media.

What he said is hideous enough. What becomes even more disturbing is how Western media outlets brazenly misrepresented what he said. This comes after 17 months of the media justifying, whitewashing, censoring the genocidal mayhem inflicted by the Israel state against the Palestinian people.

The key genocidal element comes at the end of Trump’s post, but there some other important points to be made first.

On TruthSocial, his social media network, he posted:

'Shalom Hamas' means Hello and Goodbye - You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!

On that basis, Donald Trump is going to be vexed when discovers out how many bodies are kept by the Israeli state.

As Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories, wrote in a report for the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council in mid-2023 - that is, before 7th October:

The deprivation of liberty haunts Palestinians beyond their life. Israeli forces often withhold the bodies of Palestinians deceased in custody or killed for alleged “security reasons”. This practice, which the Israeli High Court of Justice has condoned, applies to the bodies of both adults and children. By May 2023, Israeli forces reportedly withheld 125 Palestinian bodies, including 13 deceased detainees.

She added that:

For decades, the bodies of Palestinians who were not returned to their families were buried in graves near military zones known as “cemeteries of numbers” (as each body was assigned a number). In recent years, Israeli forces have withheld bodies in fridges, impeded identification by relatives, and imposed restrictions on burial upon returning the bodies. Reports suggest that the bodies are often kept in “poor and inhumane conditions”.

As DropSiteNews points out, Israel is currently withholding 665 Palestinian bodies, including those of 59 children. They note that this practise became institutionalised in 1995 when the Israeli High Court ruled the Israeli army could withhold the body of a Hamas member as a “bargaining chip”, with the practise being expanded since.

So does Trump believe that the Israeli state are “sick and twisted” for keeping bodies? Should we not agree that all bodies and hostages should be released, Palestinian and Israeli alike, as part of a permanent ceasefire?

Let’s continue. Trump further posts:

I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance.

Trump has just approved a further nearly $3bn arms shipment to Israel, bypassing the normal congressional review, having already approved nearly $12bn worth since he became President, which includes the 2,000 pound bombs - which made a particularly lethal contribution to the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians.

Now in practise - as Antony Blinken, the bloodstained former Secretary of State noted in January - all that slaughter since October 2023 had achieved was, according to official US estimates, Hamas recruiting almost as many new fighters as it had lost.

Even before we get to the final hideous part, what Trump means itself in practise here would be genocidal, - because it simply means more violence than ever, with Israel arbitrarily using ‘Hamas’ as a catch-all term and then slaughtering huge numbers of civilians with each strike on those supposed targets. And given that death and destruction means an endless supply of recruits - from those traumatised by the murder of their loved ones - it just means never ending slaughter.

But let me just read the final part of what Donald Trump wrote:

Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!"

Firstly, by “beautiful future”, Trump means the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their own land. Trump is committed to permanently driving the entire population of Gaza out, to some unknown destination. In practise that forced removal would itself require incalculable violence and death. It is genocidal in its aim - which is to erase Gaza as a Palestinian territory, so it can be turned into a giant casino for Trump and his friends.

But his statement clearly means that if Hamas do not release hostages, then the civilian population of Gaza will be dead. He is saying Israeli hostages must be released immediately or the civilian population will pay the price, in the form of death.

The misrepresentation of this in the media is quite something. Look at the Sky News headline:

This headline is straightforward deceit. The “you are dead” part of the post is very clearly addressed to “the people of Gaza”, not to Hamas. Let’s post what Trump actually said, highlighted in blue:

There is no debate to be had here. Trump addressed “you are dead” to “the people of Gaza”, not to Hamas. What Sky News wrote is false.

Yet Sky News goes on to repeat this false claim in the first paragraph:

Similarly, the Daily Mail headline is:

This is, again, demonstrably false.

The New York Times does the same. Straightforward disinformation. The headline and subheading:

This is false.

The New York times then writes this is in the text of the article:

Again, a lie. Trump clearly poses “you are dead” as a threat to the “people of Gaza”. Not Hamas.

In the BBC’s article, the headline is:

And then in the copy, the BBC writes:

Note how it says “He also appeared to issue a wider threat”. How is this prose justifiable? Could Trump have been any more explicit about his threat?

And note how the BBC makes no attempt to spell out what this wider threat is, which is the most newsworthy aspect of Trump’s post.

The Independent newspaper is a rare example of accuracy. Its headline is:

Sure, the Daily Beast accurate conveys the meaning, but look at this headline:

Blunt? Is that we’d call it? Blunt? A threat of exterminating an entire people is now just “blunt”?

As Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza writes:

What a horrible statement! He publicly says he wants to murder all of us here.

This is the peak of insanity.

This is so brazen. The President of the United States has publicly threatened to exterminate the people of Gaza. And the Western media has lied to you about it. This is straightforward disinformation - and about something that serious. How can they pretend to be accurate, how can pretend to be telling the truth, with such flagrant dishonesty?