Seeing Is Not Always Believing

"The political tide has turned against Israel"

"[Largely the result of] images of starving Gazan children have[ing] ricocheted across the globe."

Professor Daniel W. Drezner, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, tufts University

 

"[Too many journalists have been uncritically citing the Hamas-operated Gaza Health Ministry on conditions in Gaza]. The result is a narrative that masks its source and misleads the public about who is to blame."

"The default frame -- that of U.S., Israeli, and GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] culpability -- is repeated in headlines both explicitly and implicitly, even when the reality is unresolved or points elsewhere."

"This pattern of laundering narratives, particularly from unvetted or partisan sources, appears widespread in Western media. [The result has been] a distorted portrayal of humanitarian conditions in Gaza, misleading policy-makers, misinforming the public, and exploiting vulnerable individuals for political gain." 

The Network Contagion Research Institute / Rutgers University Social Perception Lab report 

Hidayat Al-Motawaq holds her 18-month-old son, Mohammad Al-Motawaq, in their tent in the Gaza Strip on Aug. 3.  Anas Baba/NPR 

In the wake of the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Gaza directly following on the Hamas terrorist group's October 7, 2023 atrocities carried out by thousands of Hamas operatives along with those of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine when Israeli girls and women were raped, mutilated and murdered, and kibbutzim raided, their inhabitants killed, leaving 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilian, butchered, and another 250 taken hostage, the Palestinian public relations operation went into full overdrive. 

 

Heart-rending stories and photographs of gaunt, skeletal, vacant-eyed Palestinian children were distributed by Hamas to Western media who unhesitatingly took them up and gave them wide, front-page publication, setting the wider stage for a global popular revulsion of the nation defending its population from marauding masses of terrorists, transformed into the merciless aggressor, placing the Palestinian population which fully supported Hamas in Gaza and its categorical aspirations for the destruction of Israel, as the victims in an unjust war.

 

Mainstream Western media unquestioningly published the photographic 'evidence' of Palestinian children starving in Gaza, resulting from Israel's conflict with Palestinian terrorists. The very same terrorists known for installing themselves along with their weapons caches, rocket launchers, militia operations headquarters within the densely populated areas for the purpose of shielding themselves from Israeli responses, offering up the Palestinian civilian population in their stead. Those civilians who are wounded or killed as collateral damage in the conflict with Hamas become the useful propaganda fodder for Hamas.

 

And even knowing this to be the Hamas modus operandi, as despicable as it is, the resulting propaganda is published without verification or suspicion with respect to its source, in a free-for-all legacy media assault on Israel as the aggressor once again victimizing Palestinians. The international community, influenced by what they read and hear and see in those damning photographs turn against a nation desperate to defend itself from its implacable death-dealing enemies. The photographs of pathetic starving children in Gaza that fire up anger against Israel, bear examination.

 

The Free Press did investigate a dozen of those photographs of 'starving children' revealing that each of them "were already facing grave situations because of their health, irrespective of any third-party action". Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova pointed out that a photograph of an emaciated Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub alMatouq forced the New York Times to admit the child "had pre-existing health problems affecting his brain and his muscle development", when the falsity of Hamas-generated images of him as a typical starving child was revealed.

 

The Associated Press, CNN and other U.S. major news outlets published photographs of children portrayed as starving, when they were in actual fact, suffering from medical conditions ranging from cystic fibrosis to cerebral palsy, to genetic wasting conditions. This reflected a pattern of Western press publishing utterly false allegations on stories and photographs supplied to them by a terrorist group. And it is not that the corrupt practices of Hamas propaganda was unknown to these Western media enablers.

 

The Wall Street Journal had published an analysis of October 7's mastermind Yahya Sinwar's correspondence revealing his purpose in using Palestinian Gazans' suffering as a weapon against Israel. "He's shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas", wrote two journalists for the Journal in analyzing his messages to negotiators and Hamas members. Sinwar, they wrote, also stated to an Italian interviewer: "We make the headlines only with blood ... No blood, no news".

 

The myth of Palestinians suffering under famine has captured coverage in the West, all the more so, through photographs of starving children. The inconvenient detail that the children portrayed suffer not from starvation but from chronic medical conditions is hardly of concern to Hamas, but it should be to the uncritical Western media that appear to favour Hamas and in contrast, disfavour Israel. That Hamas was the instigator of the conflict and deliberately sacrifices its own population of civilian Palestinians seems less newsworthy to the Western press than presenting reality. 

 

Samah Matar poses for a photo with her sons Yousef, 6, in her arms, and Amir, 4, who suffer from malnutrition and cerebral palsy, at a U.N.-run school in Gaza City, Saturday, July 26, 2025. In Gaza, malnutrition is often worsened by preexisting conditions and compounded by illnesses linked to inadequate health care and poor sanitation. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

The United Nations also clearly favours Hamas. Its refusal to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in distributing food aid to Palestinians has meant that hundreds of trucks loaded with food have been virtually abandoned by the UN, the food left to rot. Those trucks that did enter Gaza saw many of them commandeered by armed Hamas terrorists and taken to Hamas depots where they were unloaded and stored for the use of Hamas, not distributed to Palestinian civilians as they were meant to be. Yet Western media has yet to ask of Hamas why it has secured humanitarian aid in their own warehouses, off limits to Palestinians, while Hamas claims starvation stalks Gaza and kills its children.

"[NCRI addresses the issue of the falsely-imputing photographs alleging] multiple cases of potential journalistic malpractice by major Western media outlets in their portrayal of alleged famine in Gaza." 

"[NCRI] uncovered clear evidence that the depicted individuals had long-standing, confounding medical conditions such as cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, or chronic illness [that were generally revealed in the original Arab-language sources of the images but omitted when republished in the West]."

Network Contagion Research Institute 

No aid has reached people in Gaza, a UN aid official says, two days after the Israeli government lifted an 11-week-old blockade. The Israeli military said five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday and 93 on Tuesday, but supplies haven't been distributed, say local officials. Still from video

Slandering Israel Comes Easy

"Hundreds of aid trucks have entered Gaza with Israel's approval, but the supplies are standing idle, undelivered."

"The reason? The UN refuses to distribute the aid. Hamas and the UN prevents the aid to reach the civilians in Gaza."

"The world deserves to know the truth."

"But BBC, CNN, Daily Express and The New York Times spread a misleading story using a picture of a sick, disabled child to promote a narrative of mass starvation in Gaza -- playing into the hands of Hamas's propaganda war."

"Without proper disclosure. Without medical context. Without journalistic ethics." 

Israeli Foreign Ministry  

Humanitarian aid packages waiting to be picked up on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing on July 24, 2025. “The UN refuses to distribute the aid,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry says. Photo by  by Amir Levy/Getty Images

 British investigative journalist David Collier wrote an explanation that one of the children used as a shaming condemnation against Israel purportedly failing to ensure that sufficient humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, a child with the surname al-Matouq "suffers from cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder", data extracted from a 2025 medical file.

 

A BBC documentary titled "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone" was discovered by Mr. Collier to have been narrated by the son of a senior Hamas official. That revelation led to embarrassment on the part of the British public broadcaster and a retraction of the documentary. The photograph of the emaciated child saw sensational use by international media testifying to the devastation brought by Israel's war in Gaza and the resulting aid crisis there.

 

Last Thursday, the New York Times digital story was entitled "Gazans are dying of starvation", over the image of the skeletal child. "A horrifying image encapsulating the maelstrom of human misery gripping Gaza" was how the Daily Express captioned the heart-rending photograph of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub Al-Matouq.  

 

Unlike his brother standing by his side, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq suffers from cerebral palsy.

 

And then there is the image of five-year-old Osama al-Rakab, yet another child whose photograph saw use as an illustration of the threat of child malnourishment resulting from Israel's 'blockade' of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. Al Jazeera  featured the little boy's skeletal torso throughout a number of Italian media outlets to extract maximum disgust from news readers, holding Israel responsible for the pitiable condition of the child.

 

Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), divulged that al-Rakab "suffers from a serious genetic illness unrelated to the war", and with his mother and brother had been transported out of Gaza to an airport in Israel destined for treatment abroad. "This is what a modern blood libel looks like: A sick child. A hijacked photo. A lie that spreads faster than truth", wrote the Israeli Foreign Ministry on its X account.

 

A third infant, 11-month-old Sila Barbakh was featured on Israel's official X account, who "isn't starving", but rather "suffers from a pre-existing chronic gastrointestinal illness, unrelated to the war". In none of these pathetic photos of children suffering from dread diseases were they captioned 'for illustrative purposes only', unrelated to Hamas's wildly successful public relations' campaign aimed at the gullible West.  

 

His name is Osama al-Raqab. He has cystic fibrosis, a serious genetic illness. He’s been in Italy receiving treatment since June 12. Israel enabled his medical transfer from Gaza.

 

The Times of London found it useful when featuring tiny Barbakh's suffering from starvation to expand y explaining that the baby weighted a mere "seven-and-a-half pounds". According to data published by the Hamas-operated Gaza Health Ministry, 56 Palestinians had died in July of starvation. About half the total number reputed to have died of starvation since the war began on October 7, 2023 when Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas stormed into southern Israel to launch its campaign of rape, pillage, torture and mass slaughter. 

 

Humanitarian supplies handover was shifted away from the United Nations in May, with an U.S.-backed, Israeli-supported group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), taking the initiative. Civilians in Gaza had then to travel into areas controlled by Israeli military to receive the supplies. That solved the issues involved in Hamas armed operatives taking control of aid-delivery trucks to have the goods they carried stuffed into Hamas warehouses, and withheld from the civilian population. Some of that aid ended up at open-air marketplaces selling for exorbitant prices. Most of it was sidelined for the exclusive use of Hamas operatives.

 

Today, the IDF invited dozens of international journalists to the Kerem Shalom crossing inside Gaza, to see for themselves. Israeli Foreign Ministry

 

Reportedly, GHF distributed close to 90 million meals to civilians while facing significant opposition from Hamas, which had attacked and murdered a dozen Palestinian employees of GHF who had been working with the group to help distribute the aid. According to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Hamas offered bounties to any of their followers who kill American contractors or any Palestinians assisting their endeavours in providing aid.

 

The United Nations has accused Israel of reportedly killing hundreds of Gazans seeking aid in what is  essentially an active war zone. Many more have died resulting from stampedes in the chaos of crowds of Palestinians vying among one another to receive aid. A week ago Israel announced its intention to once again commit to airdrops of humanitarian aid, alongside Arab nations, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Airdrops had been suspended in view of properties being destroyed and civilians being hit by the airdrops.

 

People carrying aid parcels from the privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) walk along the Salah al-Din road near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip (Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images)

 

The New York Times claimed that the "Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war". In response, the Israel Defense Forces released a video showing Hamas militants with rifles "looting an aid truck", while civilians gathered about.  These same images were shared by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American academic, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. Showing Hamas operatives stealing aid during an earlier ceasefire.

 

"Right here before your eyes! But according to NGOs & media, there's still 'no evidence' of theft", charged Alkhatib who has been a vocal critic of Hamas and the Netanyahu government, both. Alkhatib shared a video in another post, showing Hamas police officers who stripped, arrested and beat Palestinians who had gone out to the GHF aid distribution site, and paid the consequences, with the aid they had gathered taken from them, for their pains. 

 

 A truck loaded with food on the Israeli side of the border crossing heads back into Gaza. However, the food is sitting for days or weeks before it can be distributed. The U.N. and aid groups say they face a host of problems that include a shortage of trucks and fuel due to the war, as well as criminal gangs that are looting the supplies.    Maya Levin for NPR