On July 23, Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was set to meet with Israeli and Qatari officials to discuss a potential comprehensive ceasefire agreement, and said that the negotiations were in the final stretch. The deal under discussion was expected to include an initial 60-day ceasefire in which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 others in phases in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Aid supplies would be signicantly ramped up, and the two sides would hold negotiations on a lasting truce.
Then, on July 24, Witkoff’s team cut short their trip after Hamas made new demands that were widely viewed as unrealistic, and designed to scuttle the talks. “We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza,” Witkoff said.
The terror group was likely buoyed by what it saw as a diplomatic win when a statement by Foreign Ministers of two dozen EU states was released demanding that Israel makes unilateral concessions on ending the war, while increasing aid to Gaza via the old international mechanisms and NGOs that Hamas had exploited to fund their military operations. The statement included only a throat-clearing call for the hostages’ release, rather than a definitive demand that Israeli concessions would be contingent on the hostages release and the terror group laying down its harms.
Sensing it had the upper hand, Hamas also began what turned out to be an extremely successful campaign to promote the narrative of starvation in Gaza – proving again that they’d rather score a public relations win than reach a deal with Israel that would have alleviated the suffering of Palestinians in the territory.
To observe that their starvation campaign worked is an understatement, as it was arguably the single biggest factor behind the decision by the UK, France and Canada to recognise a Palestinian state in September.
To be clear, when we call it a starvation “narrative”, this isn’t to suggest that there isn’t a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There is one. There’s also – as in most war zones – extreme food insecurity. However, as Andrew Fox wrote, based on his recent fact-finding trip to the territory, the situation there is far more complex than the Hamas narrative would suggest, with the factors behind food shortages having more to do with war-related logistical problems, most of which are exacerbated by the cynical decisions of Hamas, including the continued theft of (non-GHF channeled) aid by terrorists, as well as looters and other armed actors.
Fox doesn’t let Jerusalem off the hook entirely. However, if you read his account – both on his Substack page and in a lengthy HJS report about the GHF – you can see that the cartoonish depiction of Israeli’s putative malevolence is disconnected from reality.
However, as we’ve learned over the years, most British media outlets ‘don’t do nuance’.
Instead, since the terror group’s PR efforts began, most media organisations have been promoting heart-wrenching images of emaciated children in an effort to show that ‘Israel is starving children in Gaza’, quite a few of which, as CAMERA and others have revealed, have omitted the children’s pre-existing conditions causing their illness.
The children’s suffering is real. Media reports often are not.
In the UK, for instance, the Daily Express placed, on the cover of its July 23rd print edition, a shocking photo of a sick and emaciated child, 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq.
It was only later, after complaints to the outlet, that the online version was amended to note that the child suffered from pre-existing health problems that affected his brain and his muscle development. (It was also later revealed by CAMERA’s Arabic department that the photographer who took various photos of the child has a history of celebrating deadly terror attacks against Israeli civilians.)
But, by then, various images of that child, which was also featured on the front page of the New York Times, before a correction was added, had been published at countless news sites, including Sky News, the BBC, The Times, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Daily Mirror the Irish Times, and had gone viral on social media. It was framed as ‘proof’ that Israel is starving Palestinian children.
Muhammed wasn’t the only tragic case promoted by the media. But, he certainly represents the face of the deceptive Hamas-initiated campaign to scuttle ceasefire talks and breathe new life into the terror group’s war effort – cognitive warfare that much of the British media signed up for.
Flash ahead a few days to other disturbing images and videos from Gaza that began circulating, released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Except, this time, they depicted emaciated Israeli hostages cruelly starved by the terror groups and – most likely – inching towards death.
The first video shows civilian hostage Evyatar David, who has been held since Oct. 7th, 2023, and whose family agreed to release the clip. Evyatar, whose skeletal body evokes concentration-camp like starvation, can be seen digging his own grave.
This video, of hostage Rom Braslavski, who, like David, was abducted from the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023, shows him crying that he is at death’s door.
Unlike the case of Muhammad, whose pre-existing condition is likely the main factor behind his grotesque, emaciated appearance, both Braslavski and David are clearly the victims of Hamas cruelty – a reminder, if anyone still needs one, of the unparalleled evil of the pogromists who carried out the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust.
The Daily Express, which, was we noted, featured Muhammad on their cover page, only mentioned the Israeli hostages’ harrowing plight in an Aug. 4 article that devoted equal space to the suffering of a Palestinian child. Here’s the article’s featured photo:
The Daily Mirror has written nothing about the two starving hostages.
Channel 4 News aired one segment about David – an Aug. 4 interview with his cousin, Tamar Eshet.
For its part, The Times relegated David’s 22-months of agony in a Hamas dungeon to the eleventh paragraph, in a Aug. 3 story titled “Sick children to be evacuated from Gaza war for NHS treatment”. The article includes two paragraphs about David, and one photo. They didn’t mention Braslavski. The outlet’s Middle East correspondent, Samer Al-Atrush, despite being relatively active on X, hasn’t posted a word about either hostage.
Sky News released a 55 second video highlighting David’s plight, a stand-alone clip without audio, commentary or context – just screen text providing minimal information. Braslavski was not mentioned. Also of note: Sky’s Alex Crawford, the activist journalist who’s been exclusively highlighting Palestinian suffering since the barbaric Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, in her Sky reports and on X, hasn’t posted a word about Hamas’s starvation of the two Jewish civilians.
The same vow of silence about Jewish suffering is evident in the X posts of their international editor, Dominic Waghorn, and their Middle East editor, Alistair Bunkall.
The Guardian published an article by their Beirut-based reporter William Christou which featured a video of David starving in a Hamas tunnel. However, the headline, as you can see here (“Family of Israeli hostage held in Gaza accuses Hamas of starving him”, Aug. 3) framed the starvation as merely an accusation. The outlet also published a stand-alone video story about David that same day. However, most of the 1 minute and 57 second film focused on Tel Aviv protests demanding an end to the war in reaction to the Hamas videos. A third piece was published on Aug. 3, attributed to ‘Staff and Agencies’, titled “Hamas releases second video of Israeli hostage and says it will not disarm until Palestinian state established”, which tried to frame the emaciated condition of David not as a result of Hamas’s sadism and barbarity, but as the consequence of “Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza”.
The Independent published one story on the starving hostages on Aug. 3 titled “Family condemns Hamas video showing emaciated Israeli hostage inside Gaza”, which includes a photo of David, but no mention of Braslavski.
The Financial Times, like the Daily Express, blurred the horror by making the story not merely about David’s starvation at the hands of the proscribed terror group, but also about “emaciated Palestinian babies”. The Aug. 2 article , written by their former Jerusalem correspondent Mehul Srivastavla, is titled “Hamas shows starved Israeli hostages alongside emaciated Palestinian babies”. It briefly mentions Braslavski, but only devotes a few paragraphs to the two hostages, spending far more space on Palestinian suffering.
The BBC News website published one piece on David’s ordeal, “Family condemns Hamas video showing emaciated Israeli hostage”, Aug. 3, which included a photo of the hostage, but not the video. Also, thus far, the BBC has failed to report on the newer video of Braslavski. However, this one-off sympathetic coverage of one Israeli hostage hasn’t impacted the corporation’s daily output of anti-Israel content.
The only commendable coverage was in the Telegraph and Daily Mail, which both used rhetoric, photos and videos accurately depicting the horror of Hamas’s treatment of the hostages. Particularly noteworthy is an Aug. 2 Mail article titled “Hamas releases shocking video of Israeli hostage looking like a concentration camp victim after 666 days in captivity”. The Telegraph’s Aug. 3 piece was titled “Hamas forces starving hostage to dig his own grave”. There was a separate piece which focused more on Braslavski titled “Hamas release images of starving Israeli hostages”.
None of the outlets we reviewed featured the haunting photo of Evyatar David on their print cover page.
Finally, and most importantly, even those media outlets which did cover the starvation of two Israeli Jews immediately moved on, pivoting back to their saturation coverage of Palestinian suffering. The stories about the hostages were basically one-offs. Unlike the near daily media reports, diplomatic statements and protest marches focused on the children in Gaza, the images of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, and the plight of the rest of the hostages cruelly held by their terrorist captors for 668 days, which serves an illustration of Hamas’s antisemitic malevolence, have not gone viral.
They also haven’t penetrated or properly disturbed the moral conscience of the Western press, intelligentsia or political class.
In light of the Hamas-directed campaign to flood the zone with images of suffering children, it would be tempting to say that much of the media have been duped by the Islamist extremist movement. But, that would be denying the editors, journalists and commentators agency. It’s more accurate to say that – for various reasons, including political and ideological ones – many have self-conscripted themselves to a disinformation campaign that serves the interests of a Palestinian movement that’s not only pathologically hostile to Jews, but to the West as well.
British historian Niall Ferguson described this dynamic as the “new defeatism”, the “moral posturing of politicians and publicists more concerned with flaunting their own confused ethics than with helping the democracies to beat the authoritarians”.
The moral corruption within many of the outlets we monitor can’t be overstated.
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The Israeli government should ban all those news media who did not treat this with the coverage it deserved just as it did and does to AlJazeera.
One must ask what is the UK Jewish leadership, the BOD, JLC etc and the Office of Chief Rabbi ding to counter this boycott.
Have spent a few weeks in the UK, I found that some of the Jewish Media did not even give much coverage to Israel and of course none to the continual bombardment from Yemen Houthis of ICBM’s – it is as if they don’t care!