Hamas starves hostages and its people, and Israel gets the blame

In June 2025, a statement by the US. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee put on notice mainstream media for “reporting” misinformation about Israel and the conflict in Gaza. Primarily mentioned were CNN, The New York Times, and the Associated Press. Reports of IDF soldiers shooting at Gazans while collecting food were proven to be false. Huckabee contended that the news media should be held responsible for misleading the public with false information, which has escalated antisemitism in the US and Europe.

Meanwhile, Hamas atrocities toward Gazans, like stealing their provisions, not providing shelter and basic human necessities, and the starving of hostages, are lost on mainstream media, politicians, and activists who justify antisemitism while excusing terrorism.

The News of Israel (July 27, 2025) bulleted mainstream media’s political weave of misinformation into their reporting to fit a narrative that influences and shapes political landscapes. Hiding behind the disingenuous mask of righteous indignation, they push an agenda while shamefully using misery as collateral damage.  This was recently obvious when a heartbreaking picture of a Palestinian mother holding her emaciated-looking 18-month-old child, Mohammed al-Maatouq, in her arms was circulated by the British tabloid newspaper Daily Express, and later propagandized by the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, NBC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Without vetting for truth, this raised the anti-Israel rhetoric to new heights and spun the Israel- purposely- starving-children narrative out of control.

David Collier, an investigative journalist based in London, is making it his mission in life to expose dishonesty in reporting. He challenged the status quo by investigating the picture of Mohammed al-Maatouq shared without context across front pages of global newspapers and media. The truth was that the poor child suffered from cerebral palsy, hypoxia, and other genetic disorders that contributed to his deteriorating condition. This was compounded by a lack of nutrients that he requires, but his image raised the hyperbole of blaming Israel for his condition and that of thousands of other Gazan children requiring food. Collier does not want to make excuses for Israel. Collier wants to expose the duplicity of the Western mainstream media, which reports without source verification and often only from Gazan sources who have very little interest in telling the truth, especially if they can demonize Israel. It took days before The New York Times revised the narrative on Mohammed; others never even bothered, and the picture plus the narrative still stands on major media outlets.

In March of this year, Collier exposed the BBC for a documentary they shot, presumably about Gaza children living in a war zone.  Before the documentary even aired, Collier discovered that the Arab narrator Abdullah was actually the son of Dr. Ayman Al-Yazouri, a member of the Hamas ministry of agriculture, its deputy to be exact. Also, one of the featured children was the daughter of a Gaza police captain and Hamas enforcer. Another child was featured posing with a Hamas terrorist while holding an AK-47. The BBC pulled the plug on the documentary, but the damage was done.

The UK anti-terror law enforcement is investigating the co-BBC production company Hoyo Films for allegedly diverting the documentary public funding to Hamas. Hamas is still listed as a terror group by the UK government. The UK taxpayer forked out £400,000 ($515,000) for this documentary. Although the BBC apologized, they still excused their blatant lack of journalistic ethics by saying that it was impossible to vet everyone’s background in Gaza. Even Labor Culture Minister Lisa Nandy had “concerns” about the poor investigative reporting. Will this urge the BBC and others of its ilk to change? Highly unlikely. There is money in sensationalism.

The rise in antisemitism and Israel-bashing is not complex. In the past three decades, the population dynamics of Western countries have changed with the uncontrolled influx of millions of people from cultures traditionally hostile to Israel and Jews. This has also replaced the cultural landscape of countries with a new generation taught and raised by academia as leftist Marxist activists rather than scholars. As such, Collier argued that the BBC has morphed into activist journalism, pushing narratives and stories that are highly biased and mostly unverified. The documentary that was supposed to expose the truth even failed to accurately translate Arabic into English. A good example was the translation of Jew into Israeli, and jihad into fighting and resisting the IDF. A “translation” snafu justifying purposeful and deliberate falsehood.

In the meantime, according to the World Food Program, USA, (June 2024), the top ten regions for famine are the DRC (Congo)(23.4 million), Yemen (17 million), Syria (12.9 million), The Sahel (13 million), S. Sudan (7.1 million), Sudan 26.6 million), Somalia (6 million), N. Ethiopia (5.5 million), and Haiti (4.7 million). The 2025 hunger rates by country, as reported by the World Population Review (August 4, 2025), are similar to those of the World Food Program. They list in order of Global Hunger Index (GHI) score: Somalia, Burundi, South Sudan, Yemen, Chad, Madagascar, the DRC, Haiti, Niger, and Liberia. There is zero mention of Gaza or Palestine. The Sudanese American Physician Association (SAPA) (August 2025), a group of medical professionals working in the US, added Venezuela and the Central African Republic (CAR) to the list of hungriest countries. This does not mean that the food situation in Gaza is not critical. Still, it demonstrates how mainstream media, the UN, the EU, and US politicians ignore countries that have uncontrollable famine and starvation and concentrate on Israel. Possibly because, despite terrorism, corruption, and human rights violations in these countries, none of them is a Jewish state.

We have just witnessed the slaughter of the Druze in Syria, whom Israel is trying to save. This bit of news failed to reach the desks at BBC, NBC, CNN, and the rest of the leftist media, who pile on the self-righteous activist journalism on Israel. No demands of accountability for the lack of food.  No BBC documentaries on the children dying in Ethiopia or Haiti. Do these lives not matter? The reason that people like Collier and I bring up such blatant incongruity and bias is that the over-the-top condemnation of Israel while ignoring verifiable famines in corrupt, leaderless, and terrorist regions exposes the moral deficiencies in the Western hemisphere.

The final nail in the coffin of common decency is countries like France, the UK, Canada, and Malta puffing their chests out to recognize a Palestinian state. While demanding the capitulation of Israel, there are no demands to release hostages or for the right for Israel to exist. A leadership buffoonery to disguise their own impotency as leaders in countries stricken with immigration and social problems. Twenty years ago, all Israeli settlements in Gaza were dismantled. Gaza has been an autonomous pseudo-Palestinian state ever since. However, instead of using international funding to build a viable state, they opted to elect terrorists to lead them and rape their resources to build tunnels, store ammunition, and kill Israelis. Billions have been given and mandated to Gaza, the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinians. Yet in 20 years, they have not produced anything, created anything, contributed to anything, or left a legacy of anything except terrorism. A truth that is purposely ignored.

The Hamas media propaganda machine was not embraced by chance or through geopolitical ignorance. It found gradual fertile soil in three decades of European immigration and infiltration of antisemite cultures. Antisemitism has gradually risen with little attention from governments playing the “tolerance” card that appeases anti-Israel and anti-West leftist Marxist agendas prevalent in higher academia in Europe and the US. October 7^th was the perfect storm to raise antisemitism to the surface within an activist excuse that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. A play on words that is supposed to excuse the obvious. In the meantime, impotent leadership is threatening to officially recognize a Palestinian state by September. Some said unconditionally, which means that Israel, whether recognized by this new state or not, will be dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential, as will the hostages that are purposely starved and shamed publicly on the world stage.

The global community is at a crossroads of either historical praise or condemnation. The massacres of October 7^th will be remembered as the West’s second darkest stain since the Holocaust in the last century. Legitimizing a terrorist organization that kills without provocation and still holds hostages against any international human rights laws is morally decrepit. Not since the previous century have Jews around the world experienced such open hostility with complete immunity. The tongue-in-cheek “never again” is as hollow as the pretense by world leaders who have stepped over the horrors of October 7^th the same way that they stepped over the Holocaust in 1940. No, history will not judge us well. When terrorism is given diplomatic status and leniency, civilization is lost.

The attempt by those trying to rewrite history to fit a present narrative will not succeed, because Israel has history on its side, Biblical and archeological.  It is time to remember Golda Meir and her unapologetic wisdom, which elucidated why, for the sake of the Jewish diaspora, Israel must remain strong. “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.” ~ Golda Meir

Carr. C. (August 1, 2025). The story behind this viral image of a child in Gaza. The story behind this viral image of a child in Gaza | SBS News

Golda Meir Quotes. (n.d.). TOP 25 QUOTES BY GOLDA MEIR (of 93) | A-Z Quotes

Huckabee, M. (June 2, 2025). Statement on Media Misinformation on Gaza – U.S. Embassy Jerusalem

Hunger Rates by Country 2025. (2025-08-04). World Population Review. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hunger-rates-by-country

The News of Israel. (July 27, 2025). Unmasking the tactics: how misinformation shapes the Israel-Palestine conflict. Unmasking the Tactics: How Misinformation Shapes the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Schut, B. (March 7, 2025). UK journalist who blew whistle on BBC Gaza documentary: ‘I caught them in bed with Hamas’. UK journalist who blew whistle on BBC Gaza documentary: ‘I caught them in bed with Hamas’ | The Times of Israel

Waleed. (Updated April 25, 2025). Top 10 Hungriest Countries in the World | Countries with Food Insecurity. https://sapa-usa.org/top-hungriest-countries//#

World Food Program, USA. (Updated June 25, 2024). Global Food Crisis: 10 Countries Suffering the Most From Hunger – World Food Program USA