Though Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell finally departed the outlet last year after decades of spreading lies about Israel and Jews, the political cartoon page is still being used to spread similarly hateful propaganda. The latest example is a cartoon by Ella Baron on the IDF’s operation against Hamas terrorists who were reportedly using the Kamal Adwan hospital, in the territory’s north, as a military base.
It appears that the operation was successful, with hundreds of patients, doctors and caregivers being evacuated prior to the raid, and, according to the IDF, the 19 people killed during the battle were all terror operatives – without any known civilians dying. Some 240 terror operatives were arrested – including 15 who allegedly participated in the Oct. 7th massacre.
The director of the hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, was also detained. The IDF said he is suspected of being a Hamas operative.
However, the Guardian cartoonist decided to spread propaganda based on an evidence-free claim of the Hamas-run health ministry, which accused Israeli troops of intentionally setting fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including at a lab and the surgery department – an accusation the IDF emphatically denied.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said that “While IDF troops were not in the hospital, a small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital that [was soon] under control,” adding that a preliminary investigation found “no connection” between military activity and the fire.
Nonetheless, here’s the cartoon, titled ‘A Year of Destruction in Gaza’. (Red Arrow added below to highlight the part of the image in question)
Here’s a close-up of the relevant part of the image:
As you can see, the event in question is depicted by the cartoonist as a massive fire consuming the entire hospital – which goes far beyond even Hamas’s more narrow claim that there were fires in a lab and surgery department. When we argue that the Guardian’s coverage of the Oct. 7th massacre and its aftermath has been effectively pro-Hamas, this is the kind of nakedly propagandistic and fallacious content we’re referring to.
