Wednesday, August 06, 2025
It wasn’t a mistake when The
New York Times ran a front-page photo of a skeletal 18-month-old Gazan boy
and claimed he was suffering from starvation. It was a deliberate editorial
choice — a lie that fit the preferred narrative: Israel is genocidal.
Even Fox News
missed the point. Their headline—“NY
Times' erroneous cover photo… joins series of media blunders”—called it an error,
a media blunder. But this was no “oops.” It was propaganda. And the
proof is in the cropping.
Let me just start with other images the media chose not to use. Photographs of Mohammed with his 3-year-old brother Joud. Both mother and brother are healthy and fed.
— David Collier (@mishtal) July 27, 2025
Any honest journalist should have immediately questioned – and reported - what we were actually seeing. 3/13 pic.twitter.com/FaUsVFsqb2
The boy’s healthy brother
was edited out of the image. The Times didn’t disclose the child’s medical
history until days later, after pressure from Israeli officials. Mohammed
Zakaria al-Mutawaq has cerebral palsy, hypoxemia, and a severe genetic
disorder. He requires specialized nutrition and therapy—not a ceasefire.
Unlike his brother standing by his side, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq suffers from cerebral palsy.
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) July 29, 2025
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 —… pic.twitter.com/UzP5PhNSvU
The Times eventually
tacked on a note that the child had “pre-existing health problems,” but the
damage was done. The image had gone viral, a global symbol of “Israeli
starvation.” The Times knew what it was doing. That’s why it buried the
correction in the digital story and posted it from a PR account with under
90,000 followers—not their main feed with over 55 million.
We have appended an Editors' Note to a story about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza who was diagnosed with severe malnutrition. After publication, The Times learned that he also had pre-existing health problems. Read more below. pic.twitter.com/KGxP3b3Q2B
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) July 29, 2025
And when real starvation did appear—this time in the form of emaciated Israeli hostages like Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski—the Times’ front page was silent. No photos. No headlines. Just a weak, secondary article headlined, “Hundreds Protest in Tel Aviv After Hostage Videos Surface From Gaza.”
Nothing about Evyatar
digging his own grave. No image of Rom weeping, his ribs protruding. Nothing of
the horror that millions of Israelis felt—not just a “handful” of Tel
Aviv protesters.
As Yaakov Ort, a former
NYT staffer, put it: “If the Times had a Jerusalem bureau that reported the
thoughts, communications and actions of the vast majority of Israelis… they
would have told readers that the reaction… is not fear or protest. It is
horror, rage, and resolve.”
The excuse? Mohammed’s
condition had worsened due to war. But as Israeli pediatrician Dr. Michal
Feldon said, “I’ve been a pediatrician for 20 years and we never see kids
looking like this, even very chronically ill children. When we do, we
suspect abuse.” Prof. Dan Turner added, “Even patients with
background diseases should not be malnourished like that.” In Gaza, it’s
not just illness—it’s lack of access, lack of formula, and yes, Hamas theft
of humanitarian aid.
This wasn’t bad
journalism. It was anti-Jewish narrative warfare—the blood libel of our
time, illustrated by a carefully framed photo and a willfully ignored truth.
Because in today’s media:
a carefully staged image used to falsely accuse Israel of starvation is
front-page news — but the real starvation, suffering, and desperation of
Israeli hostages doesn’t make it in at all.
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