There is Popularized Impression And There is Reality

"We discovered that, in our opinion, much of the coverage of the Gaza war is just factually wrong. If Israel wanted to kill as many civilians as possible, like in a genocidal situation, or was even indifferent, it could just kill hundreds with one bomb."

"You don't see any clip or other forensic evidence in the Gaza war for frontal massacre, putting a line of civilians against the wall and mowing them down, or executing prisoners from close range, you know one by one."

"[The Palestinian-American Medical Association claimed children were shot by snipers] intentionally, virtually every day. We don't rely on any source that our critics cannot check and verify by themselves."

"Allegations of indiscriminate or disproportionate bombing as evidence of genocidal intent are also examined, and found wanting. The IDF, according to the study employed an array of unprecedented precautions to limit collateral civilian damage, including advance warnings."

"[Deaths in] safe zones [were rare, relative to active combat areas]."

"Safe zones, as defined in international law, should actually be the initiative of the defender. Hamas shot hundreds of rockets from the safe zones." 

Professor Danny Orbach, military historian, History and Asian Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Debunking the Genocide Allegations

Chapter 1 examines accusations of the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s civilian population.

Chapter 2 addresses the lack of sufficient context for understanding Israel’s military actions during the war, particularly the challenges of urban warfare. We focus primarily on Hamas’s “human shields” practice and overall strategy, recognizing that war is shaped by reciprocal measures taken by all parties involved. Thus, the actions of one side to the conflict cannot be assessed without considering those of its adversary.

Chapter 3 provides an in-depth analysis of claims regarding deliberate killings of civilians.

Chapter 4 investigates allegations that Israel systematically violated the principles of distinction and proportionality in its strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Chapter 5 critically reviews Gaza Health Ministry (GMOH) data and manipulations. While recognizing the uncertainty of the available figures, we offer a speculative scenario for how these manipulations skewed the actual gender and age distribution of casualties, and draw conclusions as to plausible combatant-civilian casualty ratios.

Chapter 6 explores the capability of UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and major media outlets to assess humanitarian crises in closed societies under oppressive regimes such as Hamas-controlled Gaza. It draws a comparison to Iraq under U.S. sanctions between 1991 and 2003, and explores the inability of said organizations to pierce the heavy-handed humanitarian deceptions of the Iraqi regime.

Chapter 7 evaluates the ability of UN agencies and human rights organizations to credibly distinguish between civilians and combatants among war casualties in contexts marked by manipulation and politicization within closed or controlled societies. This chapter includes findings from a comparative analysis of the 2002 Battle of Jenin, the 2006 Lebanon War, and previous conflicts in Gaza.

Chapter 8 analyzes the methodologies used by UN agencies, human rights organizations, and affiliated journalists and researchers that have led to recurring analytical failures, as well as the lack of subsequent insights or corrective action, even when these failures were eventually acknowledged by the same organizations.

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem 

 

 

International affairs has been gripped by the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A claim that has been embraced by those calling themselves experts in the field of human rights, and by leaders of countries that Israel formerly considered Western democratic allies. Recently, a new study has been published that through thorough research of the accusation and meticulous attention to the reality of proofs available has found the accusations to be entirely false in their hysterical and often triumphant declarations.

 

The Israeli think tank's study runs to 330 pages, entitled "Debunking the Genocide Allegations", where military historians and quantitative analysts systematically address the claims accusing Israel of crimes against humanity. Their conclusions following careful study is that the evidence fails to support the charge that Israel is committing genocide in its offensive against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas which perpetrated a mass atrocity in southern Israel when thousands of its operatives rampaged through farming villages raping and slaughtering Israelis. A massive crime against humanity itself that instigated the conflict in Gaza.

 

Around the time of the study's release, a United Nations group -- the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory -- had issued its own report. Theirs, concluding that genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is being perpetrated by Israel. According to the commission, Israeli authorities and security forces carried out four of the five qualifying acts for genocidal intent outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention: killing members of a group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life meant to destroy the group; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

 

Palestinians leave a food distribution point run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with bags and boxes, near the Netzarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2025. Photo: Eyad BABA / AFP

 

The researchers working alongside Dr. Orbach took "a multi-layered approach" with the use of open-source facts, legal analysis and ethical analysis. Released through the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, the report  reached a conclusion wildly divergent from that of the UN body. The focus on intentionality, central to the genocide allegations, that Israel deliberately took measures to annihilate the population of Gaza through a program designed to starve civilians, massacre non-combatants and bomb indiscriminately, were found to be totally inaccurate; in fact completely manufactured slander.

 

The vast majority of civilians in this war, pointed out Dr. Orbach, were killed for a variety of reasons not represented by malicious intent; being caught in the crossfire, misunderstandings or incorrect assumptions by Israeli soldiers, or having been used as living shields by Hamas. One core plank in the genocide accusation is that Israel deliberately sought to starve the population of Gaza. supported through repeated claims by humanitarian groups. Fundamental methodological and factual errors compounded the issue, found the study authors; the benchmark of 500 aid trucks daily as minimum for Gaza's population survival was based on misinterpreted prewar data when the actual average of food trucks entering Gaza in 2022 was 73 daily.   

"[The United Nations] bears responsibility for the death of many Gazans, by not cooperating with evacuations to safe zones when there was still time."

"Hamas, furthermore, ought to have opened its network of underground tunnels for civilian safety."

"What Hamas did was put Palestinian civilians in danger intentionally, because they knew that the world will blame Israel."

"The humanitarian bias [coming from UN agencies and  human rights organizations who suspect a humanitarian disaster is about to happen and] exaggerate in order to mobilize public opinion." 

"Political biases of the experts suddenly became very important. These manipulations meet a very eager audience. ...Then it gets more and more space in the media."

Professor Danny Orbach  

Troops of the IDF’s Golani Brigade are seen operating in the Morag Corridor area of the Gaza Strip, in a handout photo issued by the military on April 17, 2025. Photo: Israel Defense Forces

 

 During much of the conflict, in fact, Israel facilitated food entry into Gaza at or above prewar levels. No wars predating the conflict in Gaza saw any military undertaking the care of the population whose country they had invaded for defensive/offensive reasons "where one side supplied humanitarian aid in massive amounts" for two years, to enemy-controlled territory. And nor did gruesome predictions that tens of thousands would die of starvation materialize. Medical and mortality data that Hamas's own Gaza health ministry gathered failed to register famine or mass nutrition-related deaths. 

 

Neither surveys on the ground nor reliable nutritional assessments validated claims of widespread starvation based on circular citations and media echo chambers. As to the charge that Israel acted on a policy of systematically killing civilians, the study authors relied on the absence of intent and systematic execution; prerequisites of genocide's legal definition. The researchers stated no credible proof was found that Israeli policy-directed attacks aiming to kill civilians could be found after surveying extensive forensic evidence, testimonies and video documentation from Gaza.

 

61 of some 50,000 war casualties by official Gazan counts only could be plausibly attributed to deliberate IDF actions, linked to unreliable or disputed sourcing. According to the study, the IDF employed an array of unprecedented precautions for the purpose of limiting collateral civilian damage, including advance warnings of strikes. Dr. Orbach described a phenomenon akin to a domino effect, when anti-Israel individuals stationed within world bodies make false claims, then quoted by NGOs, and subsequently appear in the media, finally cited by other publications "So the average viewer thinks there are numerous sources which document the Israeli crimes in Gaza." 

 

 

"So the average viewer thinks there are numerous sources which document the Israeli crimes in Gaza. On a similar idea, a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab, called "The 4th Estate Sale" How American and European Media became an Uncritical Mouthpiece for  Designated Foreign Terror Organization [made the case that large numbers of media uncritically parroted Hamas talking points]." 

"The Hamas-run health ministry published in the beginning of the war that 70 percent of the war casualties are women and children. Even they retracted this later. But again the retraction was very silent, and the initial news was very loud."

Professor Danny Orbach 

Is There a Difference Between Terrorism and Journalism?

"After some 20 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza Monday, media zeroed in on their new favourite narrative, implying that because journalists were among the dead, they were targeted."

"Indeed, the headline carried by the Globe and Mail above a Reuters wire story read as if killing journalists was the point of the strike: Multiple Journalists Killed by Israeli Strikes on Gaza's Nasser Hospital."

"It wasn't until several paragraphs into the story that it was reported Israeli troops fired two artillery shells at the hospital, targeting surveillance cameras on the roof'."

"In fact, nearly half of the 197 journalists -- listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists -- killed in Gaza and Lebanon since the October 7 attack, 'worked for media owned by or affiliated with terrorist organizations', according to analysis by American journalist James Kirchuk. These include 'journalists' who worked for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, the Islamic Jihad-run Al-Quds Al Youm and the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar." 

Carson Jerema, National Post 

A combination image shows the journalists killed in Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital on Aug. 25, 2025: (L-R) Hussam al-Masri, a contractor for Reuters; Mariam Abu Dagga, who the Associated Press said freelanced for the agency; Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist who worked with several news organizations, including occasionally Reuters; Mohammed Salama, who Qatar-based Al Jazeera said worked for the broadcaster; and Ahmed Abu Aziz, taking a selfie in an undated social media image obtained by Reuters. (Stringer/Reuters/Ahmed Abu Aziz via Facebook/Handouts via Reuters)

 

This is a war, one wrought by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists -- Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Fatah -- who raged through southern Israel in their thousands, committing mass murder, rape, wholesale destruction and the abduction of 250 children, infants, women, the elderly, foreign farm workers, leaving devastation in their wake and a traumatized population in Israel. The nation's military response, with the Israel Defense Forces entering Gaza's crowded population enclaves in their search for the terrorists ensconced within the densely-packed civilian areas and deep underground in the Hamas tunnel network, has incited world condemnation.

 

While nations under attack by hostile foreign elements are guaranteed international recognition of the right to respond, protecting its population and searching out their enemies to destroy any further potential for additional attacks, Israel appears the sole exception. Government leaders in the West gasp their condemnation of 'lack of proportionality', when the Israeli hammer nails the terrorists threatening it, even while doing its utmost to minimize collateral damage impacting the civilian population in Gaza. That Hamas willingly sacrifices Palestinian civilians for the greater good of destroying Israel, all are silent.

 

Infamously, Palestinian terrorist groups view their civilian populations as expendable, their value as human shields and as public relations material in Hamas's victimhood agenda of Israel deliberately killing Palestinian children and women, the greater the number the greater the impact on an accusing Western media, unquestioningly repeating victim numbers to the gratification of the terrorists and the horrifying fascination of their readership, Israel becomes the aggressor, and sympathy oozes for Hamas's courage in confronting an 'oppressor'.

 

Context in reporting events is irrelevant to the greater goal of demonizing Israel. Reuters, The Associated Press, lead the way and the BBC, CBC, CNN and others publish what the public omnivorously reads, listens to, and is ultimately fully influenced by. Israel is expected to endure whatever happens to it and its population. Its existential condition surrounded by a death cult nourished by the Islamic Republic of Iran and carried out by its terrorist proxies is its problem, and its alone, for Jews, and Israel have always been left to their own devices in securing their lives.

 

The inflated numbers of dead Palestinian children give way to the tales of starvation, privation and death, photographs of strike-mangled bodies, of children in the throes of death lacking food whose twisted, gaunt bodies reflect chronic inherited diseases, not starvation, but those photographs make good readership bait along with the cover stories -- and deception sells, as long as it involves the demonization of Jews and Israel.

 

Journalists among 20 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital – still from video

 

Anas Al-Sharif, one of the purported journalists killed in the August 10 strike reported for Qatari-funded Al Jazeera, while also "an active Hamas military wing operative" who "received a salary from the Hamas terror group" according to Israeli records. Oh well, there's the problem writ large: 'Israeli records'...as in who would believe anything that Israel claims, as opposed to the credibility of everything that Hamas announces...?

 

Even documents attesting to the 'journalist' having joined the Hamas military wing where he "was certified as the team commander" of a "rocket launching squad in northern Gaza", and being listed as a member of the Hamas Nukhba Force, a military group that "led the initial waves of attacks on southern Israel during the October 7, 2023 Hamas onslaught". Documents, so what? Evidence, hard evidence, is it? But ... but ... but ... Hamas certifies on their honour, that he was a journalist, and so does Al Jazeera. Believe Israel? 

 

Al Jazeera, after all, is a credible, creditable news source. Is it not? Well, perhaps it's true they employ many Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives as journalists, why not? They're direct observers and actors, so with their insight and personal experience, doesn't that make them the perfect journalistic specimens? Why should Al Jazeera be put on a hot seat to explain the links between its journalistic credibility and having terrorists on its payroll?  

 

The Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Monday.

Abdallah F.s. Alattar/Anadolu/Getty Images

 

"On the way to Gaza, when they started to touch me and sexually abuse me, I passed out physically and mentally. I couldn’t handle it anymore."

"I had to beg not to be raped, telling them I was on my period. I didn’t know exactly what had been done to my body in those lost minutes when I wasn’t conscious. But my soul already knew: nothing would ever be the same. I was suffering from a fractured jaw, a broken pelvis, ear damage from the explosions, and a burned leg."

"They took us through the back entrance [of the Nasser Hospital] and walked us past all the civilians. In the hospital, there was an area that was closed off and used only by Hamas, with an armed guard. They locked us in a room, where we met a third hostage."

"When it was time to eat, they took a lot of food to their room. They had meat, rice, and vegetables. At the same time, they left us with our meal, which contained sometimes as little as 10 chickpeas or a piece of dry flat bread, which wasn’t always well-cooked."

Ilana Gritzewsky, former Israeli/Gaza hostage 

Ilana Gritzewsky shows the UN Security Council a picture of her and her hostage partner Matan Zangauker on August 27, 2025. (Perry Bindelglass / Israeli Mission to the UN)

 

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

Hamas Propaganda

A Palestinian pays for goods at a street market in Gaza City, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

"It was all staged."

"There was food in the next room -- the hostages who escaped from tunnels told us this."

"The captors are not starving. Our people are."

"We do not deny the humanitarian need in Gaza. But we ask the world not to fall for Hamas's lies."

"Condemn Hamas and tell them: You want to move forward? Release the hostages."

"In the last week alone, we've brought in 30,000 tons of aid -- 30 tons by air yesterday alone. The UN has almost 800 trucks they could distribute -- and failed to do so."

"So a lot could have been done."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog 

 

"Why are German and international news agencies continuing to use his [photographer working for Turkey's state-operated Anadolu Agency] images when many are clearly biased or staged?"

German newspaper Bild

 

"[Be forewarned of] manipulation attempts through professionally produced press photography."

"All parties involved in this war -- including media and intelligence services -- are using the power of imagery like never before to shape public perception." 

German Journalists' Association

 

 

According to a special report produced by The Press Service of Israel, citing United Nations' own numbers, 85 percent of the aid entering the Gaza Strip by truck since May 19, has been stolen. Black market profiteers and inflation have resulted in much of the international aid taken by force ending up in Gaza markets, at mark-ups making them unaffordable for most Palestinians. The food and medical supplies meant to be distributed freely among Palestinian civilians have instead been forcefully diverted to become pricey goods unavailable to the very people the aid was meant to help. 

"Where is the photographer? Who is standing around him? What do the people depicted in the picture see? Do they see what we suspect, for example a food distribution? Or are they facing photographers?"

"The images also have an additional function. They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Many people don't even remember these pictures."

"Hamas is a master at staging images."

"I assume that many of these pictures with starving and sick children are simply staged or come from other contexts." 

Emeritus history professor and photography expert Gerhard Paul, University of Flensburg, Germany 

The Suddeutsche Zeitung recently published an expose on the use of staged imagery by Hamas to convince international opinion that Israel has embarked on a genocidal program to prevent food and medical aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, suffering under the Israeli Defense Forces' invasion to destroy the terrorist group's capacity to carry on its intentional destruction of Israel. Hamas, infamous for its strategy of installing themselves among the general population, for placing its weapons in schools and hospitals, placing its rocket staging areas in dense population areas, uses civilians for cover.

 

The Hamas propaganda machine rests its case to the international community on the numbers of Palestinian citizens it claims become victims of Israeli bombs; those very citizens of Gaza whom Hamas deliberately places in harm's way, counting on them as sacrificial lambs to the Hamas agenda portrayed as victims of Israel's ruthless bombing campaigns which could readily be halted should Hamas surrender to the forces that engage in stopping it from conducting further carnage in Israel among Israeli citizens.

 

President Herzog, in his press appearance held up the two photographs of Israeli hostages Eviatar David and Rom Breslavsky, emaciated on the verge of death through deliberate withholding of food. While Israel is expected by the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the very population in which the greater majority expressed support for Hamas, for its barbaric savagery during the October 7 invasion that saw 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, Hamas gleefully publishes videos of its sadistic torture of Israeli hostages.

 

 

 

The international press treats these revelations of Palestinian terrorism and the results of their death-cult pledges to destroy Israel and kill all Jews as humdrum non-news, but the very country that is engaged in protecting its population from mass lethal psychopathy is damned and condemned for the condition in which Palestinian Gazans find themselves, while the terrorist group that governed Gaza and which uses its population as a living shield is described as 'resisting their oppressors'. 

 

The photographer whose work is being labelled as deceptive by Bild and Suddeutsche Zeitung regularly posts anti-Israel content on social media, while his photographs staged and otherwise, are published by the BBC and CNN along with other legacy mainstream media. Germany's press circles have revealed the manipulation of war photographs, condemned by The German Journalists' Association. 

 

As for the food appearing in the markets selling at prices inflated up to 300 percent, Palestinian sources within Gaza informed The Press Service of Israel that much of that food originated from international aid, including U.S. shipments for months on end. That food is stamped as humanitarian aid, visible to anyone within Gaza with the wherewithal to make that purchase. 

 

Al-Sahaba market in the Gaza Strip, July 28, 2025.  (photo credit: TPS-IL)

 

 

 

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

Israel Alone

"[Some of Israel's closest allies want Israel to] stand down and accept that Hamas's army of mass murderers will survive."

"I say to President Macron, Prime Minister Carney and Prime Minister Starmer, when mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you're on the wrong side of justice."

"You're on the wrong side of humanity, and you're on the wrong side of history."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel's PM has accused the leaders of the UK, France and Canada of being on "the wrong side of history"  Reuters

No other nation on Earth, constantly threatened, attacked and forced to defend itself on an ongoing basis from forces intent on destroying it, faces the unrelenting 'advice' by other nations considered allies, on how it should comport itself as does Israel. In a region of the world where might is right, and inflamed tensions build inexorably to violence and where well funded, trained and armed militias that most countries designate as terrorist entities, attack, the only response that works when attacks take place is to respond in kind.

 

Israel, in responding to a mass barbaric attack led by Hamas and joined by other Palestinian terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, as well as Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis, knows that it has an obligation to itself and its people, long targeted by death squads of the death-cult movement of Palestinian terrorism to finally vanquish and destroy the ability of these death-dealing groups to continue threatening and attacking the Jewish state. 

 

There is no country on the face of this Earth that would hesitate to counter-attack when thousands of terrorist operatives trained in terrorism tactics bring sadistic savagery to play in hunting down women for mass rape and mutilation, fire automatic weapons to kill any civilian child, woman or man, elderly or in uniform identified as an Israeli target, that would not invade the territory that had desecrated its state of security by mass bloodletting. 

 

Israeli soldier patrols near the Supernova music festival attack in Be'eri, Israel, on Oct. 12.   Aris Messinis / AFP via Getty Images

This is a conflict that terrorism initiated with a stated goal -- to annihilate Jewish lives and in the process destroy the state that protects and secures those lives. Israel's military responded in kind, but a measured kind as a civilized nation, seeking to avoid causing as many casualties among the civilian population ruled by the terrorists as can be possible when Hamas and its sister groups deploy a strategy of shielding themselves among the civilian population, within hospitals, schools and mosques for maximum shelter from the consequences of their actions.

 

During war, civilian populations inevitably suffer. They disproportionately pay the  cost of their governing representatives' decision to wage war on others. In the case of Palestinian terrorist groups there is another role within the conflict scenario; to encourage the civilian population to willingly become decoys, to offer their lives in protection of the lives of those who brought war to them. Collateral damage can be kept to a minimum relatively speaking, when a humane military warns civilians beforehand.

 

There is, however, no way during an active war situation, that civilian lives can be spared during the drive to destroy and eliminate the warring element of the population. Even so, Israel's Defense Forces have been the cause of fewer civilian deaths than in any other active war situation. And the situation is that Hamas holds Israeli  citizens as hostages when to return them could bring an end to the conflict. Even while the IDF in fighting mode seeks out Hamas leaders and their operatives, and Israel's 'allies' urge a ceasefire, Hamas and its terrorist colleagues continue to send rockets into Israel.

 

 

 

What country would unilaterally lay down its arms and allow terrorists to continue their agenda of destruction and death unimpeded because its critics are allied in offering advice that they themselves in similar conditions would never consider as a reaction to a war imposed upon them? Yet the allies do not desist, and Western legacy media, infused with a sense of national moral righteousness from afar, portray Israel as a human rights-abusing nation, never hesitating to use the public relations agenda of Hamas to portray Israel as actively pursuing a 'genocidal' course in its response to an actual genocidal intent.

 

The world has accustomed itself to denying Jews the right to self-defense because they prefer Jews as victims. As victims during the Holocaust when Nazi Germany with the aid and assistance of occupied Europe, just as content to be rid of their Jews as was Germany, and lending themselves to the enterprise with gusto, it was seen as revelatory and shocking when the death toll was counted and those still alive presented in their pathetic state of survival. Empathy to their plight was a natural human reaction.

 

Now it appears that another natural human reaction is taking place, when Jews  refuse to be perpetual victims, and inconveniently have a military and a nation whose purpose of existence is to ensure that Jews themselves endure and exist despite the best laid plans of Jew-haters intent on destroying their lives. The very idea of a competent and still humanitarian military with the capacity to lay low belligerents whose thirst for Jewish blood is unappeasable, fails to sit well with critics whose Jew-hate creeps through their civilizational facade. 

 

People in Tel Aviv light candles on Oct. 12 for those who were taken hostage and in memory of people killed.  Amir Levy / Getty Images file