Israel Puts Out Their Most Absurd Psy-Op Yet About The Sumud Flotilla.

Israel Has Put Out Some Ridiculous Psy-Ops, But This One Takes The Cake.

Israel has put out some outrageous psy-ops used to justify their war crimes, but their latest smear of the Global Sumud Flotilla, the collection of 40 boats containing activists breaking the Israeli blockade and bringing aid to Gaza, has to be the most outrageous yet.

Continuing their long tradition of fabricating documents, the Israeli foreign ministry claimed it found documents that “prove Hamas’s direct involvement in the funding and execution of the ‘Sumud’ flotilla to Gaza”.

As part of this so-called “proof,” the Israeli foreign ministry claimed that Zaher Birawi, a British Palestinian activist on the ship, was a “high-ranking, well-known Hamas operative”.

To back up this fabricated claim, the Israeli foreign ministry put out a picture it claimed was the late chairman of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, next to Zaher Birawi, and then Zaher Birawi on the flotilla boat, next to Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Pictured Above: Image put out by the Israeli foreign ministry claiming that Zaher Birawi, pictured on the boat, was also pictured next to Ismail Haniyeh.

The problem with this ridiculous psy-op- as anyone with eyes can see- is that those are two different people in the pictures.

The man pictured next to Ismail Haniyeh is, in fact, not Zaher Birawi, but the well-known former UK MP, current leader of the Workers Party of Britain, and host of the “Mother of all Talk Shows”, George Galloway, when he attended an event for peace activists who brought relief aid to Gaza in 2009.

Pictured Above: A clearer picture of the event, showing that it was George Galloway, not Zaher Birawi, in the photo.

Galloway confirmed that this was him in the photo, writing on X :

A British Palestinian man Zaher Birawi who has worked freely in and around Parliament for decades is fingered as Greta’s Hamas handler and mastermind of the flotilla. But his pictures which Israel has published globally are actually pictures of me. For the record: I have nothing to do with Hamas or the flotilla. I have not seen or spoken to Mr Birawi in more than a decade.

Furthermore, this psy-op gets even more ridiculous, because as Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada pointed out , “if Birawi is a ‘UK-based Hamas operative,’ why didn’t the UK arrest him for the past 2 decades? Hamas is fully proscribed in the UK, even wearing a t-shirt with their red triangle can get you in prison and you’re saying there’s a Hamas operative on the loose running a registered organization in the UK without British authorities touching him? Do you hear yourself?”

As ridiculous and comical as this Israeli deception is, the implications of Israel putting it out are not. as Shehada noted, Israel is “declaring clear intent to attack, murder and kidnap international activists who are trying to bring baby formula to an active genocide/famine zone”.

By putting out this outrageous deception, Israel is clearly signaling their intent to attack the flotilla, to prevent any aid from reaching Gaza.

The use of deception to falsely label people as Hamas members mirrors previous Israeli deceptions they have deployed against journalists whom they went on to murder.

Israel’s 972 magazine reported on the Israeli military’s “Legitimization Cell”, which was established after October 7th and tasked to “identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters”.

One inside source told the magazine, “the goal was simply to find as much material as possible to serve hasbara (propaganda) efforts”.

The “Legitimization Cell” fabricated and put out smears against several Palestinian journalists, which the IDF then used to justify murdering them.

As Muhammad Shehada reported in 972:

During Gaza’s Great March of Return protests in 2018, after an Israeli sniper shot and killed Palestinian journalist Yasser Murtaja in his press vest, Israeli officials labeled him a ‘Hamas operative’ We then learned Murtaja was actually detained and beaten up by Hamas in 2015, and that his media company had been vetted and received a grant from the U.S. government. Israel then said it would investigate his death — and seven years later, that’s the last we heard of the story.

Israel ramped up this effort after the start of the genocide in Gaza, with Shehada documenting that “after a targeted Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami Al-Rifi in Gaza, the military released a screenshot of a file allegedly ‘found on Hamas computers seized in the Gaza Strip,’ arguing it proved Al-Ghoul was ‘an engineer in the Hamas Gaza brigade.’ Among several glaring inconsistencies in the army’s allegations was the fact that the screenshot showed that Al-Ghoul had received a military rank in July 2007 — when he was just 10 years old.”

Israel similarly put out fabricated documents portraying journalist Anas Al-Sharif as a Hamas member to justify their killing of him and five of his colleagues, all of which - as documented by Shehada- had massive inconsistencies, with him noting:

In the case of Al-Sharif, Israel released three documents that contradict each other. One, dated 2023, lists him as a “combatant” with his status described as “suspended” and “unassigned.” It highlights that he suffered incapacitating injuries in a training explosion that left him with “extremely weak hearing in the left ear, weak eyesight” and constant migraines and headaches.

Another from 2019 describes Al-Sharif as a “group leader” but lists his 17th birthday as the day he joined Hamas, despite the minimum age for membership being 18.

And a third undated document suggests Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas’ Nukhba unit, the most elite combat division of the Al-Qassam brigades. But it is nearly impossible that someone with incapacitating injuries could join this unit, or would have previously been a member and then demoted to a foot soldier.

Israeli journalist Amit Segal even confirmed that Al-Sharif was detained and then released by the IDF at the Al Shifa hospital, something they would not have done had he actually been a Hamas commander.

Just as Israel fabricated deceptions to smear Palestinian journalists before killing them, Israel is now fabricating an even cruder deception against the Sumud flotilla, signaling that they are planning on targeting and killing the activists to prevent aid from getting to starving Palestinians.

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