Israel’s incorrigible apologists continue to plumb ever greater depths of depravity to deny the indisputable facts of its genocide in Gaza. When an image of an excruciatingly emaciated child hit the front pages of multiple UK mainstream press outlets, Zionist organisations and prominent right-wing media piled on.
Despicably claiming to debunk the images, they honed in on the fact that a toddler depicted in them lives with underlying medical conditions. They shamefully wheeled out the fact he’s disabled to ‘disprove’ the widespread famine Israel has manufactured in Gaza.
However, the torrid reaction has only cemented Israel and its supporters’ barefaced ableist eugenics. And it has put it front and centre for all the world to see.
Palestinian children hit the pages of the mainstream press after it ignored them for months
After months of Israel’s engineered starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, the Western mouthpiece media seem to have decided to no longer conceal the reprehensible reality.
UK mainstream outlets have plastered their pages with pictures of emaciated Palestinian children.
Of course, they chose to publish the images at this particular moment. That is, the very time when Western genocide-facilitating craven apologists across the political and media spectrum have begun a self-serving display of face-saving faux outrage.
However, the stain of their immoral participation will never wash off. Israel has been starving the population of Gaza for months, but these merchants of death spluttered into half-assed action only when starvation went past the point of return for many:
These harrowing pictures are the culmination of months of Israel’s deliberate forced famine tactics. Since March, the pariah occupying state has cut off aid distribution from established operators like the UNRWA. It has done this all while spreading baseless smears to delegitimise these agencies. It has systematically destroyed Gaza’s life-sustaining infrastructure, and orchestrated death trap aid sites where Palestinians seem to have just as much chance of finding a bullet as they do finding flour to feed their families.
The US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has pared down the number of aid sites, made them inaccessible for many, and provided nowhere near enough food and supplies. The IOF has murdered more than 1,000 aid-seekers in cold blood since GHF began its “death-trap” operations.
Aid political theatre
Now, Israel’s temporary aid stunt – cheered on and championed by these same Western conspirators – is proving itself the sham political theatre it always was:
It continues to violate even the briefest of its bogus humanitarian pauses, and has let in bare minimum aid:
Long before the mainstream media deigned to acknowledge the atrocious situation, these famine conditions have been well-documented. Online, Palestinians have been posting heart-wrenching accounts of the lived reality of their endless hunger. Social media has been a livestreamed horror-reel of scarce, moldy, outrageously unaffordable food, and of Palestinians going without for days on end.
Various international bodies have been warning of Israel’s manufactured famine, such as the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the World Food Programme (WFP). Both have issued said warnings months ago – and the situation has only continued to worsen.
The world has been bearing witness to this disgraceful deterioration into irreversible starvation in real-time.
To say this is the predictable outcome of more than a year of purposeful political prevaricating, and outright participation would be an understatement.
But to the corporate press, the lives of Palestinians starving at the hands of Israel’s manufactured famine only became newsworthy on the brink of death. Or more to the point, when they were irrefutable. Now, these long-time abettors of genocide are transforming a tragedy they’ve played a core role in fomenting, into politically convenient pressure point to play up their diplomatic saviour personas.
Spouting starvation skepticism
Meanwhile, like clockwork, open Zionists and right-wingers were quick to find a way to spin even these most damning images for their own twisted genocide-denial narrative.
Repugnant as ever, hate-mongering hack Hartley-Brewer was out on her vile soapbox spouting calculated starvation-skepticism:
But it was the story of one and half-year-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq that drew the most chilling response. Multiple outlets, including the BBC, the Guardian, the Daily Express, and even the Daily Mail put out articles displaying Muhammad’s skeletal frame.
Freelance journalist Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini took the photos of Muhammed and his mother. He described the tent the displaced family currently reside in as resembling a “tomb” to BBC Newshour. Andalou Agency first published the images under the caption:
Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a 1.5-year-old child in Gaza City, Gaza, faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, on July 21, 2025. Having dropped from 9 to 6 kilograms, he struggles to survive in a tent in Gaza City, where milk, food, and other basic necessities are lacking.
However, it wasn’t long before Zionists went on a crusade to delegitimise the photos.
Pro-Zionist groups ‘investigate’ Muhammed’s story
Zionist media ‘watchdog’ organisation HonestReporting was among the first on the scene. The organisation claims to expose “anti-Israel media bias” and “combat ideological prejudice in journalism”. Needless to say, this is nothing but doublespeak for slandering coverage even the slightest bit critical of Israel:
Next to the staunchly Zionist propaganda organisation was self-appointed antisemitism “undercover researcher” David Collier. In a rancid blog post, Collier wrote that:
Time and again, the most widely circulated images of ‘starving children’ in Gaza have turned out to involve children with serious underlying medical conditions. The images are heartbreaking, yes – but we must stay grounded. This is a war zone, and Hamas is actively using the civilian population as pawns in a global propaganda campaign.
Cosplaying investigative journalist, Collier delves into Muhammed’s medical records and family history, concluding unironically that the outlets turned Muhammed:
into a propaganda weapon
The disgusting piece calls into question the credibility of Palestinian journalist and civilian accounts of Israel’s mass starvation campaign and genocide. It launders the well-worn smears against the UN and other aid agencies. All told, the article is a love letter to Israel’s propaganda, hiding beneath a thin veneer of faux investigative journalistic integrity.
Naturally, Israel’s dutiful propaganda collaborators in the West spread the disgraceful non-story. Zionist shitrag the Jewish Chronicle amplified it, writing that:
Child ‘misleadingly’ presented as symbol of Gaza starvation ‘suffers from muscular disorder’
As did US Conservative tabloid the New York Post with the headline:
Viral images of starving Gaza boy don’t tell the whole story because he suffers from genetic disorders, critics say
The Times perpetuated the propaganda downplaying it as Mohammad merely getting “caught up in Gaza’s information war”.
Meanwhile, the Sun went with the odious sensationalist headline:
TRAGIC PIC ‘FRAUD’ Harrowing viral pic of starving Gaza boy ‘was HIJACKED’ by Hamas to create ‘fake news’, campaigners say
Predictably, the genocidal government of Israel itself also seized on the slander campaign:
Vile eugenics on full display from the Zionists
The disgusting implication these pieces were making was evidently that Muhammad is disabled, so would have died anyway.
That we even have to point out that this is patently false is utterly appalling. This is not the typical portrait of a child with cerebral palsy. It is what you might expect from a child suffering severe malnutrition from months of Israel refusing even the entry of baby formula into the Strip. But what if Hamas gets its hands on it?!
Since May, 93% of the population in Gaza have been experiencing food insecurity. This is the stark result of Israel’s induced famine.
What they’re saying in a nutshell is – Muhammad is expendable because he lives with underlying medical conditions. In other words, since he’s chronically ill and disabled, he’s unavoidable ‘collateral damage’.
Let’s get this abundantly clear: Muhammad’s life is no less valuable than any other child’s:
This idea that his starvation-etched body “can’t be helped” is nothing less than glaring eugenics writ large. When societies and systems devalue disabled lives to the extent they write off their deaths as an inevitable, acceptable sacrifice, we call that fascism:
Of course, this grotesque ‘gotcha’ is entirely on-brand for these brutal colonial ideologues. They’ve dehumanised Palestinian lives at every turn to lay the groundwork for their total annihilation and expulsion from Palestine.
If there’s scandal anywhere, it’s not in Muhammed’s medical history
If there’s something scandalous about the images of starving Palestinian children, it isn’t that the mainstream press failed to disclose a full and invasive medical history. The peddlers of propaganda themselves set up this obscene and nauseating malnutrition purity test. It’s an ableist abomination masquerading as fact-checking due diligence – and nobody should fall for it.
At the end of the day, that any Palestinian child is starving at all is unconscionable. If anything, the fact it’s starving medically vulnerable kids only shows how irredeemably heinous Israel is:
On the 28 July, Al Jazeera reported that:
At least 14 Palestinians, including two children, have died from hunger and malnutrition in Gaza, according to health authorities, as United States President Donald Trump says there are signs of “real starvation” in the besieged territory.
The deaths pushed the number of those who have died from malnutrition since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, to 147, including 88 children, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Monday.
Israel is getting away with this with total, remorseless impunity. As Western leaders and their media lapdogs feign horror, they hand it the bombs and political cover to continue this incomprehensibly evil war crime in full view of the world. That’s where the scandal is.
Featured image via screengrab
By Hannah Sharland
This post was originally published on Canary.
Press Release No. (908) Issued by the Government Media Office:
The famine is getting more ferocious and the occupation continues its crimes of genocide: Only 73 trucks entered today, and the air drop operations fell in dangerous combat zones
(@archivegenocide) 
