‘People see the images, they hear the outcry, but they don’t check the facts. There is a constant flow of food. But Hamas hijacks aid, disrupts distribution, and prevents civilians from accessing relief and then blames Israel.’
No one is dying of starvation in Gaza.
We have been here before. In September 2000, two days before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Ariel Sharon (then Likud party leader; he would become prime minister in 2001) visited the Temple Mount, which is Judaism’s holiest site. There was stone-throwing, some injured Israeli policemen. The next day, more violence ensued, bricks and rocks were hurled at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. The rioting spread and came to be called the Second Intifada. Then too, the majority of the world’s media blamed Israel for what had been a cynical and calculated action by the Palestinian Authority. That was 25 years ago, and the formula has been deployed every year since then: provoke Israel and harm Jews, then shelter behind a pliant and partisan world media which dutifully demonises the Jewish state.
The now notorious photograph of a mother from Gaza holding her extremely sick child, which appeared starved and malnourished, found its place in the pages of the New York Times. On cue, mainstream media followed lockstep with the same image and story that the child’s suffering was due to starvation caused by the State of Israel.
That newspaper’s July 30th admission of misreporting its front-page photograph of a Palestinian child suffering from cerebral palsy and genetic disorders, cynically misrepresented as a starvation victim, is the latest example of years of coordinated information warfare against Israel.
Such corrections are inconvenient to those who continue to consume the falsehood about “starvation in Gaza.” There is no shortage of food in the Gaza Strip nor a shortage of food supplies and aid.
When Danny Danon explained to the press, as he did to the Jerusalem Post on July 23rd, that “People see the images, they hear the outcry, but they don’t check the facts. There is a constant flow of food. But Hamas hijacks aid, disrupts distribution, and prevents civilians from accessing relief and then blames Israel,” he was stifled. He shouldn’t be, for Danon is Israel’s Ambassador to the UN.
Danon is no household name for those following the Israel-Hamas war. But the names of the UN Special Rapporteurs, who routinely level accusations against Israel, have been made so. The difference between the two is hard evidence, which is the stock-in-trade of the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, and the State of Israel.
But when last month evidence was presented of an emaciated Israeli hostage, Evyatar David, who has been captive since October 7th, 2023, it was shunned by the same media that photographically misrepresents children and editorially erases the true war crime — that there are still 50 hostages held by the terrorist group Hamas (only 20 of whom are believed to be still alive).
This is only true to the most recent form. On October 17th, 2023, a blast at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was reported to have killed hundreds. BBC News very quickly thereafter declared, “It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes.” This outright lie was picked up and re-broadcast by world media, and instantly followed with condemnation by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. When the IDF produced footage to show that the blast had, in the first place, been caused by a Hamas rocket, and second, that the claimed toll was much smaller, neither the BBC nor those that rushed to amplify the British broadcaster’s claim corrected the original lie.
And so we have witnessed, during the 22 months since the terror attack by Hamas upon Israel, a litany of media lies. Chief among them is that Israel is committing “genocide.” Not so. The world must recognise that it is Israel which is facing a stated genocidal threat from Islamist organisations including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
What the West still fails to see clearly is that Palestinians represent a cause and an ideology that is altogether opposed to democratic principles and values. The so-called Palestinian cause is not about land, it is not about territory. It is not for anything material other than their rejection that Jews and the State of Israel have a right to exist.
The deliberate media whitewashing of Hamas terrorism and its propagating of the lie about Israel being a “coloniser” and “occupier” is meant to distract from the cause of the terror groups, which is the destruction of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. There is no other way to consider it. The vicious slogan, “From the River to the Sea,” means explicitly that — the elimination of the Jewish state and Jewish people from between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The campaign of falsehood against Israel is at least 50 years old in its present form. To reprise the first of those falsehoods, no land was stolen from the Palestinian people by Jews who were thrown out of Europe. This truth, fully documented and established, must be accepted. That will signal an end to the lies.
Viva Kermani is a corporate professional. She has been a keen observer of the Arab-Israeli conflict for over 30 years and has a background in Middle Eastern Studies.
