Contrary to popular belief, Barack Obama is not president of the United States; the election was actually won by John McCain.

While many people may think it is true, Gaza militants have never fired rockets at southern Israel.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are the same person.

These statements are demonstrably false.

So when the head of the Israeli Government Press Office tells The Jerusalem Post that there was no ban on journalists entering Gaza during the recent military operation, the appropriate response would be to laugh.

His statement, like the three above, is demonstrably false and was, perhaps. to be charitable, a droll attempt at humor.

One can argue about why there was a ban, but there is no denying that Israel barred journalists from entering Gaza during the war.

It is harder to disprove claims that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy than to demonstrate that Israel imposed a ban on journalists entering Gaza.

In fact, a simple Internet search would have helped The Jerusalem Post discover that, during the war, Danny Seaman himself defended the decision to bar journalists from Gaza, not once, but several times. 

"Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and a front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that," Seaman told The New York Times.

For The Jerusalem Post to base a story around a demonstrably false claim is simply bad journalism. Unfortunately, we see it all-too-much from the paper.

Danny Seaman has every right to argue that reporters are Hamas sympathizers, though I'm not sure what he would make of the news organizations, like McClatchy, NPR and The New York Times, among others, actively looking into claims that Hamas has again been brutally cracking down on Fatah rivals.

Danny Seaman also can't be blamed for trying to belittle reporters now in Gaza as "spoiled crybabies" who are a "disgrace to the profession." If he thinks that's the best way to approach his job, that's the Israeli government's prerogative.

But if there was no ban on reporters entering Gaza, then Israel's high court spent a lot of time and energy debating an illusion.

The wisest legal scholars in Israel must be demented to have actually issued a ruling tossing out the non-existent ban.

And if, as Danny Seaman told The Jerusalem Post, Israel never arrested anyone for entering Gaza, that will come as welcome relief to Amira Hass, the Israeli journalist who was arrested for entering Gaza.

Danny Seaman argues that any reporters who were willing to put in "a little effort" could have gotten into Gaza.

But, so far as I can tell, the only way for reporters to get into Gaza for most of the war would have been to use one of the smuggler tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.

And, considering that Israel was repeatedly bombing the tunnels during the war, they probably were not the most reliable route into Gaza. (Though one can guess that Danny Seaman probably would not have shed many tears for Fig Leaf Reporters buried alive by Israeli bombers.)

Reporters were repeatedly prevented from entering Gaza through any of the Israeli land borders.

An Israeli Naval boat rammed one boat from Larnaca carrying reporters trying to get into Gaza. Then Israeli ships fired warning shots to prevent a second boat full of journalists from breaking the Israeli Naval blockade.

Egypt did not let any reporters into Gaza until the final days of the war. And that came only after journalists had jumped through a series of bureaucratic hoops in Cairo.

The Israeli military brought a few selected reporters into Gaza for a few hours to see things from their perspective.

It is true that no reporters tried to parachute into Gaza. Nor did any journalist I know explore the possibility of taking a hang glider into Gaza.

So far as I know, no TV star tried to swim or ride the surf into Gaza.

In this regard, the journalistic community of "spoiled crybabies" was indeed negligent.

Perhaps, with a little more effort, reporters could have catapulted into Gaza.