Cost of a lie

HALF the world now believes Israeli ­warplanes massacred 500 Gazans sheltering in a hospital.

From all the available ­evidence it is a flat-out lie.

A lie told by Hamas terrorists to smear Israel and cover their own tracks.

And this evil propaganda campaign has worked — and made life yet more dangerous, especially for Jews — because reckless left-leaning Western media giants led by BBC News spread it eagerly and without scrutiny.

Security Minister Tom Tugendhat rightly tore into the publicly funded corporation yesterday, citing the appalling consequences of presenting fiction as fact in the Middle East tinderbox:

The breakdown of talks between US and Arab leaders.

A synagogue torched.

Soaring anti-Semitism in the UK.

We will now see more pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas marches, more excuses made for unspeakable savagery, more revelling in hate, more racism towards terrified Jews, including Britain’s.

It will be justified by a monstrous falsehood, a modern “blood libel”, in the Israelis’ words.

All peddled by the BBC.

And still it cannot fully grasp what it has done.

Yesterday its presenters only grudgingly accepted that the evidence, and there is plenty, indicates the Israelis were not to blame.

But there was never any evidence they were. None.

Only what baby-murderers, euphemistically described as “Palestinian authorities”, spoon-fed the BBC and others for unquestioning regurgitation.

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The Left’s dislike of Israel threw petrol on the flames and gave that line credibility.

We commend Rishi Sunak for his solidarity visit to Tel Aviv yesterday.

And Mr Tugendhat too for his crystal clarity on what Israel’s mission must now be:

To rid the planet of these monsters committed to the genocide of Jews.

No, that will not be “disproportionate”.

With their history, Jews should believe the blood-curdling threats and end them.

Pump police

HOW long before the Government finally acts to stop petrol retailers ripping us off?

We have waited years for a “Pumpwatch” regulator.

Downing Street agreed to it months ago.

Yet here we still are, with a litre down 1p in ten weeks despite an 8p drop in the wholesale cost.

It is a national scandal — and fuelling inflation the Tories are desperate to cut.

Carbonystas

AT last Just Stop Oil have given up pretending they merely want to end fossil fuels and upgrade everyone’s insulation.

They are simply Marxist troublemakers who gave the game away yesterday by trying to block a bus ferrying illegal migrants to the Bibby Stockholm barge.

Climate hysteria is a front. It’s not ­carbon bothering these thick hippies.

It’s any political position to the right of Jeremy Corbyn.