Australia bans influencer for questioning Hamas propaganda

Australia’s government has banned Israeli-American tech influencer Hillel Fuld for his posts on Islam and the war in Gaza, in which he disputed propaganda disseminated by Hamas.

Fuld, whose brother Ari was murdered in a 2018 Muslim terror attack in Israel, was scheduled to speak in Australia at a fundraiser for Magen David Adom, a nonprofit emergency medical response organization in Israel. 

Fuld has been outspoken against the “plague” of radical Islam. According to Sky News, Fuld has said that up to 15% of Muslims have been radicalized.

These sentiments are presumably what Australia’s Home Affairs Ministry considers “Islamophobia,” which is one of the reasons it has revoked Fuld’s visa. The other is that he challenges Hamas’ narrative on the Gaza war. 

“The visa holder has posted on multiple platforms and made statements denying credible documented atrocities in Gaza and Islamophobia rhetoric,” the Home Affairs Ministry said in a statement. “The use of platforms for inflammatory rhetoric can lead to increased hate crimes, radicalisation of individuals and heightened tensions in communities.”

The ‘credible’ evidence

Those “credible documented atrocities” mentioned by the ministry are generated by Hamas’ Ministry of Health, which publishes inflated and misleading death counts. The lists of fatalities published by the terror group include enemy combatants as well as Gazans who die of natural causes. These rosters also contain duplicate names, further raising the death count.

In truth, Israel’s civilian-to-combatant death ratio is roughly 1:1, an extraordinarily low number for an urban conflict in which the enemy has embedded itself among the civilian population. For comparison, the US-led coalition force in 2017 that fought a similar conflict against ISIS in the Syrian city of Raqqa had a 2:1 civilian-to-combatant death ratio by some estimates.

Hamas’ propaganda also extends to media, including photos and videos of dead or injured children. So many of these have been found to be staged that the term “Pallywood” was coined, a portmanteau of “Palestinian Hollywood.” Images and videos of the rubble of former terrorist headquarters ignore the Gazan restaurants and markets where Gazans continue to dine and shop. 

Last week, Hamas claimed that IDF soldiers fired upon a crowd of Gazans trying to access food, killing dozens. Though the claim was false, as confirmed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Washington Post published it as fact. 

Occasionally, these claims of “documented atrocities” come from other sources. Recently, for example, the UN declared that 14,000 babies would die in 48 hours unless Israel allows more food into Gaza. UN officials were later forced to acknowledge the claim was false.

“So basically, you’re not allowed to disagree with [Home Affairs Minister] Tony Burke, that’s what this decision says,” Sky News host James Macpherson said in response to Fuld’s ban. “And you can’t disagree with media reports,” he added. “He has called into question media reports about whether or not Israeli soldiers fired on civilians trying to access food. I should point out that none other than the White House called into dispute those media reports, particularly from the BBC.”

Fuld out, terror supporters in

Macpherson noted that the Australian government has had no qualms about hosting United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has been internationally condemned for her antisemitism.

Another individual welcomed by the Australian government is Nasser Mashni, president of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network. Mashni, who has been convicted of falsely imprisoning a child and beating him with a wooden axe, has publicly praised the October 7th massacre, defended Hamas, and praised a terrorist who plotted suicide bombings against Israelis as a hero. He has called for the total destruction of Israel and the genocide of Israelis.

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