Thursday, July 04, 2024
Elder of ZiyonThe first words of of the video report has the narrator saying, "The chances of a newborn baby surviving in Gaza now are not good."
We are then treated to scenes of babies and children with their ribcages visible.
The report is libelous in two ways: One is that it pretends that children who have other medical issues are dying from starvation.
The "star" of this video is a dead baby: "The body of a baby that didn't pull through lies in a hospital incubator, awaiting burial. She was born two months premature because her mother was so exhausted. Too soon for her parents to even name her. Her tiny body is now wrapped in a green shroud."
If she didn't live long enough to be named, then chances are she died soon after birth from complications of childbirth, not malnutrition. What parent wouldn't name a child who is alive for days?
We've seen this before. The BBC reported that an otherwise healthy boy starved to death but didn't mention (until forced to correct) that he happened to have cerebral palsy.
This Sky report shows a child, Amjad, that it says is starving - but then mentions that he was one of the children who Israel evacuated to send to hospitals abroad. CNN showed Amjad and his older brother Ahmed, who was also evacuated, and didn't mention anything about starvation; his brother Ahmed looks well-fed.
The Washington Post tells us the truth: Ahmed suffers from testicular cancer and Amjad has a kidney condition which is associated with protein energy wasting.
This is what Sky News isn't telling you about the "starving children." Why tell the truth when you have video showing sick, crying kids?
Now, let's look at the central claim: that the chances for a child born in Gaza today to survive are low because of malnutrition.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry, there were 28 deaths from malnutrition as of March 31 and 34 today. (They didn't publish any statistics before March.) That means that even according to the highly unreliable ministry, there have been six deaths from starvation in three months. (We don't know how many of them were newborns.)
About 16,000 babies have been born in Gaza in those three months. This means that the chances of a baby starving to death in Gaza, today, is four in ten thousand at the very most.
Before October 7, the infant mortality rate in Gaza from all causes was between 1.5% (CIA) and 2.3% (UNRWA). That means that before the war, we would expect over 240 babies born in Gaza over the same three months not to survive one year.
One death is one too many, but starvation is a tiny percentage of Gaza infant deaths, even according to Hamas.
Which means that Sky News is outdoing Hamas in its zeal to demonize Israel.
In fact, the report doesn't mention Hamas once. It doesn't mention who started this war. It doesn't mention how Hamas steals aid meant for these children. It doesn't mention how Hamas fires on humanitarian convoys.
No, according to Sky News, most children in Gaza will starve to death because of an implied Israeli policy of murdering Palestinian babies.
(h/t JW, Adam Levick)
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