There is a vicious campaign of lies being waged against the state of Israel. Its purpose is to turn Americans generally and Christians specifically against our longtime ally. The smear campaign claims that Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is intentionally starving the people of Gaza.
One recent example of the anti-Israel propaganda was the publication by the New York Times of a photo showing an obviously sick, emaciated Palestinian child in Gaza. His spinal cord and ribs were clearly visible through his skin. Major media outlets in the United States and around the world ran this photo. Anyone who saw it was justifiably horrified.
But the photo itself and the narrative it promoted were lies. The photo was cropped so that the viewer could not see other members of this Palestinian family who were all healthy and of normal weight.
Why would only one child in the family be starving and emaciated while other family members showed no signs of being deprived of food? Because the child wasn’t starving. His condition had nothing to do with a lack of food. He was suffering from severe medical issues, including a disease that caused his muscles to waste away. No one at the New York Times or other media outlets checked the facts. They all ran with an unsubstantiated story.
The photo unleashed a torrent of editorials and condemnations against Israel. Heads of state issued emotional statements, accusing the Israeli government of starving children. Some countries are threatening to formally support the creation of a Palestinian state to “punish” Israel.
We live in a world of mass communication saturated with lies. As Christians, we must constantly be discerning and seek the truth. The charge that Israel is starving Gazans is vile propaganda, similar to the “big lie” technique perfected by Adolph Hitler. Sadly, this pervasive lie is eroding support for Israel and feeding the growing antisemitism in America, Europe, and around the world. The more hatred grows, the more violence will follow.
There is no doubt that people in war zones face heartbreaking challenges in meeting their basic human needs. It is not news that war is terrible, and that it is particularly cruel for women and children. The people of Israel know this better than anyone. The war with Hamas began on October 7, 2023, when jihadists poured into Israel in an unprovoked attack. They murdered over 1,100 innocent Israelis, including 800 civilians, and took 251 Israeli hostages, including many women and girls. Some of those hostages are still being held.
When Hamas fighters dragged the hostages back into Gaza, thousands of Gazans celebrated. One advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that when the October 7th attack happened, “everyone praised [it] and cheered as if we had liberated Jerusalem.”1 That invasion started this war, and, like every war, it has resulted in tremendous human suffering.
Sadly, many people in Gaza supported the massacre of Israeli civilians. Many Gazans are deeply antisemitic. France had been accepting refugees from Gaza, but it suspended the program after some of the refugees posted messages on social media, including “Kill the Jews everywhere.”
Hamas has violated every rule of international law. They built a massive tunnel system throughout Gaza to hide their fighters, and they have used the Gazans living above as human shields. Hamas stores weapons in mosques and hospitals and has launched attacks out of those facilities. It does so knowing that when Israel fights back, international outrage will condemn them, not Hamas. Under international law, it is a war crime to use civilians as human shields. Likewise, weapons and missiles cannot be put into civilian neighborhoods.
In stark contrast, Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to warn Palestinian civilians to evacuate before it strikes a particular area. Israel takes significant measures to avoid civilian casualties, far beyond what any other nation would do.
Israel and the United States are both doing everything possible to ensure food aid reaches Gaza. The problem is not the quantity, but the distribution. Hamas only wants the U.N. to distribute aid because Hamas steals the food and then sells it to Gazans at sky-high prices. The U.N. claims the only way it can distribute food is to coordinate its distribution with Hamas. Israel will not agree to that, and neither will the United States.
When aid trucks enter Gaza, they are often ambushed and looted by some of the thousands of armed combatants. When U.S. and Israeli aid arrives, Hamas opens fire on desperate Gazans, while Western media falsely claim Israel is shooting starving Gazans. This is a lie.
There is no moral or legal obligation for a country at war to feed the enemy that attacked it. When the United States was fighting Nazi Germany, we were under no moral or legal obligation to carry out food drops over Germany.
But Israel, the only Jewish nation in the world, is regularly held to a different standard of how it must conduct itself. Demanding that Israel feed its enemy is a perfect example.
There is real starvation in Gaza—not of Gazans, but of Israeli hostages. Hamas recently released pictures of 24-year-old Evyatar David being forced to dig his own grave in an underground tunnel. David is clearly malnourished and starving. Hamas was happy to release the photo, hoping it would pressure the Israeli government to give in to their demands.
Finally, we should remember there are suffering children throughout the Middle East. The children of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the children of Yemen under the Houthi Islamists, the children of Syria, and, yes, even the children of Gaza are all suffering and dying because of the radical Islamic ideology that permeates the region. Such occurrences of suffering and death are totally ignored by the rest of the world. It is of no interest to the United Nations or to “progressive” religious groups because they cannot turn it into another attack on the Jews of Israel.
JDFI prays for an end to the war, the release of all hostages, and the disarming and deradicalization of the Gaza Strip. We also pray that the epidemic of antisemitism and anti-Christian violence around the world end now.
1 Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Palestinians ‘Praised and Cheered’ Oct. 7, Admits Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor,” The Algemeiner, August 4, 2025, https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/08/04/palestinians-praised-and-cheered-oct-7-admits-mahmoud-abbas-advisor/.
