Israel starving Gaza? It's a campaign of falsehoods

'People see the images, they hear the outcry, but they don't check the facts. There is a constant flow of food. But Hamas hijacks aid, disrupts distribution, and prevents civilians from accessing relief and then blames Israel.'

- VIVA KERMANI

No one is dying of starvation in Gaza.

We have been here before. In September 2000, two days before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Ariel Sharon (then Likud party leader; he would become prime minister in 2001) visited the Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest site. There was stone-throwing; some injured Israeli policemen. The next day, more violence ensued, bricks and rocks were hurled at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. The rioting spread and came to be called the Second Intifada. Then, too, the majority of the world's media blamed Israel for what had been a cynical and calculated action by the Palestinian Authority. That was 25 years ago, and the formula has been deployed for every year since then: provoke Israel and harm Jews, then shelter behind a pliant and partisan world media which dutifully demonizes the Jewish state.

The now notorious photograph of a mother from Gaza holding her extremely sick child, which appeared starved and malnourished, found its place in the pages of the New York Times. On cue, mainstream media followed lockstep with the same image and story that the child's suffering was due to starvation caused by the State of Israel.

That newspaper's July 30th admission of misreporting of its front-page photograph of a Palestinian child suffering from cerebral palsy and genetic disorders, cynically misrepresented as a starvation victim, is the latest example of years of coordinated information warfare against Israel.