Google searches bring up Israeli propaganda site linking UN relief agency to Hamas
The Israeli government is buying bulk advertising from Google so that people searching for anything relating to ‘UNRWA’, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, are directed to a website falsely linking UNRWA to Hamas.
Even a search for Israel’s demolition of UNRWA’s offices shows a link to the Israeli propaganda site at the top of the results:
The Israeli-run site claims that the agency is hiding its links to the Palestinian resistance, a smear UNRWA has denied.
Earlier this year a number of western governments, including the US and UK, de-funded UNRWA after Israel claimed thirteen of its around 30,000 staff participated in the 7 October raid on southern Israel, leaving millions of Palestinians facing famine. A recent UN-commissioned report concluded that Israel had not provided any evidence to support the claim.
Israel has long wanted to end UNRWA because of the organisation’s support for Palestinians’ right of return to lands stolen from them. In February – in an example of shoddy Israeli propaganda that has been repeated time and again – Israel claimed to have found a ‘Hamas tunnel’ under UNRWA’s Gaza HQ, but the smear instantly collapsed when the supposed ‘terror equipment’ was shown to be UNRWA’s solar power kit:
Last month, Israel destroyed UNRWA’s Gaza HQ. The United Nations has also been forced to suspend humanitarian operations because of Israel’s targeted violence against relief workers.
According to Google stats, Israel’s ads are coming up around 50% more often than UNRWA’s own ads. Similar Israeli ads are also reportedly appearing on YouTube, forcing the agency to spend huge amounts of vital cash buying ads to try to counter the propaganda.
Since the UN report, several countries have restored their funding to UNRWA and individual donor numbers have also risen as supporters reacted against the smear campaign. Ninety percent of Gaza’s more than two million people are in famine, according to the World Health Organisation, while diseases such as polio are proliferating because of the destruction of health and hygiene infrastructure and clean water resources by Israel.
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Re defunding: if you must vis the UNWRA allegation but please be consistent and defund Israel for its many many violations of international law
Thankfully soon after taking office the UK’s government announced the following.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy has announced that the UK will restart funding to UNRWA in order to get aid as quickly as possible to those who need it in Gaza
in statement to MPs, Lammy said UK aid funding to Gaza is a “moral necessity in the face of such a catastrophe”
the Foreign Secretary also reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire to secure the release of hostages and end the suffering in Gaza, following his visit to the region earlier this week
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-restart-funding-to-unrwa
So let’s get this right, Billy:
This so called ‘Labour” Government provides funding for UNRWA via one Government Department whilst another Government Department continues to sell arms to the extremist Zionist regime to bomb UNRWA facilities in Gaza and attack UN personnel that is part funded by the money made from selling arms to those bombing the facility the ‘Labour’ Government are part funding.
Now there’s a [***sarcasm alert***]” sensible” use of taxpayers money. Not to mention the matter of joined up thinking.
Have you thought of putting on a thinking head, Billy? I hear Wurzel Gummidge has one going spare.
Dave – Would you rather they stopped funding UNRWA?
To what end, Billy?
To rebuild the facilities destroyed by lethal ordinance supplied by the UK ‘Government’?
To compensate the families of local UNRWA workers slaughtered by that ordinance?
To pay people and equipment to search through the rubble of the Gaza concentration Camp destroyed by more ordinance than the Allies used on some German cities during WW2?
What?
This is not effective and practical policy. Supplying the means to destroy infrastructure and people with one hand and then virtue signalling – because that is the sum of what you are crowing about – with the other hand o provide a band aid to try and clear up a little bit of the resulting mess of that policy.
Your position and argument is typical reductionism. Separating out everything into little self-contained silo’s and pretending there is no systemic connectivity operating and no wider context to consider.
I suppose no one should be surprised at someone who supports policies of a so called ‘Governing’ Party which does not do joined up policy thinking across the board would take such a Philistine and irrational approach to such matters.
Even kids in toddler groups can figure this out. Which just about sums up you and those like you, Billy.
Its easy to complain to Google. Ive just added a complaint. Be sure to mention the ongoing genocide. The rape and war crimes that are being committed. And that the UK has started funding UNRWA again as there is no evidence for this propaganda.
Keir Starmer given the PERFECT excuse to continue Israel arms sales.
https://youtu.be/Jp3bIaUIPCs
Meanwhile, it is not all a one way street:
https://progressive.international/wire/2024-08-27-pi-briefing-no-33-throwing-sand-in-the-wheels-of-israels-war-machine/en
“….across July and August, groups working together under the banner of No Harbour for Genocide, including the Progressive International, **have monitored and disrupted the Overseas Santorini, which was carrying military fuel from the US to Israel….
On its most recent delivery, the Overseas Santorini left Corpus Christi on 15 July 2024 and entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar on 31 July. Through coordinated actions by civil society groups, social movements and dockworkers, the vessel was pressured to abandon its routine ports of call in Algeciras, Spain and Gibraltar. Further pressure was mounted in Malta, forcing the vessel to skip the country and continue directly to the Ashkelon terminal.
The Overseas Santorini’s entire voyage was beset with problems created by the transnational mobilisation against its delivery of jet fuel to Israel’s genocide. On 25 July, dockworker unions in Spain issued a statement saying they would refuse to service the ship, numerous Spanish politicians spoke out against its docking and hundreds turned out in the city of Algeciras calling on the city to reject what they referred to as “The Ships of Death”.
These actions forced the tanker to reroute to Gibraltar. In response, British MPs wrote to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Fabian Picardo, the chief minister of Gibraltar, calling on them to refuse the ship’s request to dock, meanwhile, activists on the ground in Gibraltar mobilised their community to monitor and protest the ship’s activities.
Again, the ship was forced to abandon its plans to dock.
Similar campaigns by civil society, activists and politicians — working closely with trade unions and port authorities — were established in every potential harbour along the Overseas Santorini’s route. For example, the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) in Cyprus called on its government to prevent the vessel from docking or refuelling in Cypriot ports, whilst activists in both Cyprus and Crete mobilising against the ship docking there.”
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Apparently the tanker, supplying jet fuel to the extreme Zionist regime, had to switch its transponder off to continue its journey to Israel.