Health

‘Hamas’s propaganda war’: Israel battles famine allegations

Humanitarian aid packages waiting to be picked up on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing on July 24, 2025. “The UN refuses to distribute the aid,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry says.

Israeli authorities are strongly disputing media reports showing three purportedly starving Gazan children, insisting all have pre-existing medical conditions.

The two boys and one girl – five-year-old Osama al-Rakab, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq and 11-month-old Sila Barbakh — have become symbols of Gaza’s ongoing food crisis as Israel has come under intense international pressure amid allegations of widespread starvation and throttled humanitarian aid.

On Monday, President Donald Trump said there was “real starvation” unfolding in the Gaza Strip, while hedging his statement by asserting Hamas was “stealing the food.” The Israeli government has

maintained

that nearly 1,000 aid trucks full of supplies have remained stuck at the Gaza border due to obstruction from international organizations, including the United Nations, and that the situation is being exploited by Hamas for political gain.

“Hundreds of aid trucks have entered Gaza with Israel’s approval, but the supplies are standing idle, undelivered,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry

shared

 on social media above a picture of foreign media visiting the Kerem Shalom crossing.

“The reason? The UN refuses to distribute the aid. Hamas and the UN prevent the aid to reach the civilians in Gaza. The world deserves to know the truth.”

On the country’s official X account on Tuesday, Israel said al-Matouq, whose image has been used in global media coverage about the food crisis in Gaza, “suffers from cerebral palsy.”

“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 — playing into the hands of Hamas’s propaganda war. Without proper disclosure. Without medical context. Without journalistic ethics.”

Doubts over the accuracy of al-Matouq’s heart-wrenching images have been raised in recent days after British journalist David Collier publicized contradicting information. Collier wrote a detailed thread on Sunday explaining that al-Matouq “suffers from cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder,” purportedly based on a 2025 medical report of his.

Earlier this year, Collier

discovered

that a much-touted BBC documentary, “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,” was narrated by the son of a senior Hamas official, which led to its retraction by the British public broadcaster.

Al-Matouq’s picture was used across international media as a defining image testifying to the devastating personal cost of Israel’s war in Gaza and the ongoing aid crisis in the Strip. “A horrifying image encapsulating the ‘maelstrom of human misery’ gripping Gaza,” the

Daily Express

described him. Al-Matouq appears to be the only image of a skeletal child used in the

New York Times

 digital story from last Thursday entitled, “Gazans are dying of starvation.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the Times issued an editors’ note clarifying that since the publication of the story, the outlet “learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems.”

“This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation,” a separate

statement

reads.

The Israeli government’s social media message came a day after its foreign ministry highlighted similar concerns about the image of five-year-old Osama al-Rakab, another child used as an alleged illustration of the severe malnourishment Gazan youth confront.

Al-Rakab’s bony torso was featured on Al Jazeera and across various Italian media outlets, with one featuring his image beneath a title

evoking

 a famous book from a Jewish survivor of Nazi death camps. However, according to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), al-Rakab

reportedly

 “suffers from a serious genetic illness unrelated to the war” and was transported out of Gaza alongside his mother and brother to an Israeli airport for treatment abroad.

“This is what a modern blood libel looks like: A sick child. A hijacked photo. A lie that spreads faster than truth,” the Israeli foreign ministry’s X account wrote on Monday.

Later Tuesday, Israel’s official X account publicized a third infant, 11-month-old Sila Barbakh, who allegedly “isn’t starving” but “suffers from a pre-existing chronic gastrointestinal illness, unrelated to the war.”

An account alleging Barbakh was suffering from starvation was featured in

The Times of London

, explaining that the baby weighed just “seven and a half pounds” according to a pediatrician.

Data published by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry last weekend

reported

 that 56 Palestinians died of starvation in July, representing almost half of the total since the war began on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group invaded Israel.

In late May, the handover of humanitarian supplies was redesigned and shifted away from the United Nations to an

American-backed

 and Israeli-supported outfit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Under the new arrangement, Gazan civilians were required to travel into Israeli-militarily controlled areas to procure supplies.

GHF reportedly distributed

nearly 90 million

 meals to civilians and faced significant opposition from Hamas, which attacked and killed a dozen Palestinian employees transported to the distribution site to assist with the operation. The American organization has also

claimed

 Hamas is offering bounties for those who kill American contractors or Palestinians assisting.

The GHF handovers have often devolved into violent affairs with more than

1,000 Gazans

reportedly killed since it began operating, the UN noted last week. Israel has been accused of shooting Palestinians seeking aid, while scores have also died as a result of

stampedes

 in the ensuing chaos.

In late July, Israel announced it would restart humanitarian air drops into Gaza alongside other Arab nations, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a practice that was

stopped

last year after it destroyed property and hit civilians.

According to the

New York Times

, Israel had blockaded food from entering the Strip between March and May, citing concerns that Hamas was pilfering supplies.

The extent of Hamas’s theft of humanitarian aid remains a hotly contested issue. The New York Times

reported

 that the “Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war,” based on anonymous conversations with several Israeli officials.

However, on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a video

purportedly

showing Hamas militants with rifles “looting an aid truck” while civilians gather around.

Images shared by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American academic and senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, also purport to show Hamas militants stealing aid during an earlier ceasefire. “Right here before your eyes! But according to NGOs & media, there’s still ‘no evidence’ of theft,” Alkhatib, a vocal critic of Hamas and the Netanyahu government, wrote on X in mid-July.

In another post the following day, Alkhatib

shared

 a video alleging Hamas police officers stripped, arrested and beat Palestinians who ventured to the GHF aid distribution site.

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