You can’t make this up.

CNN gushed about how well the hostages were treated by Hamas during their two-week stay in the tunnels under Gaza.

They had shampoo! Air conditioning!

Of course, the woman they learned this from also said she had gone through “hell,” including being beaten with a stick. Not to mention that she was segregated from most of the other prisoners, and her husband was still being held by Hamas.

But she had shampoo and running water!

Very posh. If you’re looking for an upmarket hostage getaway, dial 1-800-HAMAS.

— Lisa🇺🇸🖤💙🖤🇬🇧God, Family, Country (@LisaAlesci) October 24, 2023

It’s beyond perverse, this Hamas worship that comes from so many both inside the MSM and from so many younger folks in the world. It’s a kind of empathy blindness for Jews, or perhaps all people they think of as “White settlers.”

Hamas terrorists are higher up the intersectional ladder, so pretty much anything they do is not quite enough to tip them over into the category of vicious murdering rapist hostage-taking terrorists.

Shampoo! Tampons!

See, they aren’t so bad. Sure, they put together plans for a year to take hostages alongside their murders and rapes, but at least they were prepared! The tampons are there to keep the bleeding down to a reasonable level for the women they rape repeatedly!

How nice.

My colleague once removed over at Red State Bob Hoge ridiculed CNN and was as shocked as I was at CNN’s callousness. It’s like the reporters there and elsewhere live in an alternate universe where taking hostages is a perfectly normal thing to do, and the most important question is whether they have access to running water in the underground tunnels where Hamas hides. Not even bothering to notice that Hamas terrorists treat themselves better than they treat the citizens of Gaza.

Hamas still has running water as they abandon their own citizens. Hamas is the government of Gaza.

The irony is rich. Hamas terrorists have running water while the regular citizens of Gaza do not. No mention that the citizens of Gaza don’t have running water because Hamas has refused to release the hostages. It is Israel’s fault, not Hamas’, because reasons.

So what else did we learn about the treatment of hostages–information CNN didn’t bother discussing?

“I’ve been through hell,” Lifshitz said, nearly whispering while talking to reporters at Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv.

“They went rampant in our kibbutz,” she said of the terrorists who invaded her home at the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel.

“They blew up the electronic fence, that special fence that cost $2.5 billion to build but didn’t help with anything,” Lifshitz added.

“Masses mobbed our homes. They beat people, took some hostage. They didn’t distinguish between young and elderly, it was very painful.”

She described how abductors grabbed and laid her on a motorcycle before speeding off with her through thick bushes.

Lifshitz said she was beaten with sticks during the ride: “The young men hit me on the way. They didn’t break my ribs but it was painful and I had difficulty breathing.”

But she had shampoo! Gaza residents don’t!

Again, why is that? Could it be that Hamas is a terrorist organization that wants to commit genocide? That isn’t speculation or propaganda. They declare it proudly.

CNN thinks that is OK, because of shampoo.

Hamas has spent years digging tunnels under Gaza, digging up water pipes to build rockets, and spending $350 million a year on its “military.” The Palestinian Authority sends checks to the “martyrs” who commit atrocities. It is government policy to promote and pay for terrorism.

More than 80% of Gaza’s population lives in poverty, according to the U.N.

But Hamas has an investment portfolio of real estate and other assets worth $500 million, experts say, and an annual military budget of as much as $350 million. https://t.co/psUyOGHe7S

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 26, 2023

Yet we are to blame Israel for the conditions in Gaza. Their policy of holding hostages from around the world is causing misery for Israelis and Palestinians, but Israel is to blame.

Because Hamas provides shampoo to the people it kidnaps.

I wonder if Israel should airdrop shampoo into Gaza to get a bit of credit.

What would CNN coverage be like after Pearl Harbor? Would they be demanding that the US restrain itself from fighting Japan? Was the war in the Pacific a disproportionate response to a minor annoyance? And the Nazis…aside from the Holocaust what was so bad about Hitler? We should have left the poor Germans alone, right? None of that “unconditional surrender.”

I wonder if American POWs had shampoo? Or was it the lack of it that made it OK to fight against Germany?

This sort of blindness to reality and justification for horrors both creates and results from the utter ignorance of world history. Back in 2020, a poll was done of young Americans, and the majority of them had no real idea of the Holocaust, and some even blamed the Jews.

SHOCKING survey, in case you’re wondering about the state of our K-12 education system:

– 63% of U.S. 18-39 year olds unaware 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust

– 23% said the Holocaust was a myth, exaggerated, or weren’t surehttps://t.co/YKfBQVZz1A

— Tommy Schultz (@Tommy_USA) October 26, 2023

This is The Narrative™ in action. The manipulation of information and the distortion of reality create a twisted version of the truth. A version where rape, murder, and hostage-taking are just fine. In fact, the rapists and hostage takers are the moral exemplars who provide shampoo as the evil apartheid Western settlers rampage across the world.

Earlier today I wrote about how important it is for you to support Hot Air. We do our best to give people a fuller picture with an analytical perspective.

We face a problem, though: the MSM and Big Tech HATE us and they have a lot of power to strangle our revenue streams. Generally speaking, if our analysis diverges from The Narrative™ too much our traffic gets throttled and our ability to monetize our content through advertising is strangled.

For this, we are censored and demonitized. As you can see, the MSM/Big Tech Narrative that dominates is corrupt.

We don’t recognize the importance of shampoo or something…

I beg you to chip in to keep us fighting for truth and presenting a more balanced view of reality. We tell you our point of view, of course, but never try to distort reality. 

Many of our readers have joined the fight as part of our VIP and VIP Gold membership, and they have been crucial to our operations as an independent platform and the ability to debate all of the issues honestly. We also produce some great exclusive content for our members:

• The Amiable Skeptics featuring Adam Baldwin
• Off the Beaten Path with Larry O’Connor
• The Week in Review with Duane Patterson
• Exclusive columns from Tom Jackson, Duane “Generalissimo” Patterson, and Matt Vespa
• Members-only content from our HotAir team – Ed Morrissey, Jazz Shaw, and myself
• Live chats and interactive engagement on all platforms with VIP Gold
• Exclusive access to the comments sections on each post, so that you can join the conversation at HotAir
• And more yet to come!

Ed said it better than I could:

We talk about this more often now because we see the coming crisis in media more clearly than ever. This week’s media performance and Big Tech suppression should convince everyone about their plans to control debate and suppress dissent. We hope we can gather as many allies as possible to keep all of these issues in the public square – and indeed to preserve the public square at all.

Join us in the fight. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code CENSORSHIP to receive a 50% discount on your membership.