‘Gaza is starving’, ‘Netanyahu is committing genocide in Palestine’, ‘Gazan children dying of starvation’. This is what the Hamas-sympathising Western media wants the world to believe, even as the reality differs monumentally. After peddling pro-Hamas narratives and projecting the Islamic terrorists as some sort of ‘freedom fighters’, Islamo-leftists media have now resorted to using images of genetically deformed children to peddle that Gaza residents are being starved due to Israel.
In their recent reportage on the Gaza crisis, several Hamas-sympathising Western media outlets like The New York Times, NBC News, CNN, The Guardian, BBC, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Seattle Times, The Age (Australia), Osservatore Romano (official paper of the Vatican) among others used pictures of emaciated Palestinian boy Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, cradled in his mother’s arms, passing the images off as a face of Israel-inflicted starvation in Gaza.
“Gazans Are Dying of Starvation. After 21 months of devastating conflict with Israel, Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick — are facing what aid groups say is impending famine,” NYT reported.
Meanwhile, The Guardian published an article headlined, “Starvation in Gaza is destroying communities – and will leave generational scars”. The Guardian piece published on 23rd July 2025, used the image of the Palestinian boy and his mother to emphasise the severity of the starvation and human rights crisis in war-torn Gaza.
Similarly, NBC News used the images of the same mother-son duo in its report titled, “A baby boy dies as starvation spreads across Gaza.”
Daily Express went a step ahead a published a propaganda piece titled, “The suffering of little Muhammad clinging on to life in Gaza hell shames us all.” Express, however, did not care to delve into whether the suffering of the ‘little Muhammad’ was caused by Israel, the ongoing war, the food crisis or something else. The newspaper passed off the misery of a severely malnourished Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq as the one caused by the aid blockades imposed by Israel.
BBC, in its recent report headlined: “One in five children in Gaza City is malnourished, UN aid agency says”, also used the pictures of Matouq with his mother and linked his medical condition to the Gaza crisis.
Though moving, the Palestinian boy’s suffering has little to do with the food crisis in Gaza. The pictures widely used by the pro-Hamas media outlets were taken by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini for Turkish news outlet Anadolu Agency.
Anadolu Agency, notorious for peddling pro-Hamas Islamist propaganda several photographs of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a 1.5-year-old child in Gaza and claimed that he is facing life-threatening malnutrition “as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade.”
“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,” Anadolu Agency claimed.
While the media outlets picked Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq’s pictures with his mother, which aligned with their narrative, in one of the pictures, Muhammad Matouq’s older brother can be seen standing. In the picture, the other boy looks well-nourished, healthy and mentally sound.
None of the propaganda outlets that used Matouq and his mother’s pictures used the picture featuring the other boy, reported to be Matouq’s brother, since the picture would have punctured their lies.
Moreover, speaking to CNN, Matouq’s mother herself revealed that Matouq suffers from a rare muscle disorder. She added that her son receives specialised nutrition and physical therapy for his condition.
The medical reports and other details that have surfaced about the malnourished boy Matouq, whom the pro-Hamas media made the face of Gaza starvation and a proof of Israel’s supposed cruelty, suffers from cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder.
Turns out, the iconic picture of the Palestinian boy being the victim of the ‘great Gaza crisis’, is an ironic lie, presented in a much more sophisticated and emotion-provoking manner than the entire Pallywood could ever pull off.
Looks like the Western legacy media has upped its efforts in the narrative warfare and resorted to exploiting a disabled child to fuel anti-Israel sentiment, amounting to nothing less than a modern blood libel aimed at inciting global outrage and hatred against Israel and Jews. Apparently, the Hamas cheerleaders think that why bother verifying when you can vilify.
While many people on social media are demanding accountability from these pro-Hamas propaganda machines, they won’t get any since this was not a case of sloppy journalism but a calculated manipulation. The boy’s protruding spine, his skeletal body and his misery naturally evoke sympathy; thus, despite his condition having not been caused by Israel or the aid blockades, Anadolu Agency, NYT, and others turned him into a poster boy for a famine, using his heart-wrenching pictures to peddle an anti-Israel narrative.
Even as the Hamas-sympathising propaganda outlets are relying on unrelated images to concoct sob stories about Gazan residents, the crisis is real, and the shortage of food and essential supplies is real. However, all of it is mindlessly blamed on Israel while the real culprit, the catalyst of the ongoing chaos—Hamas, which still refuses to release the remaining Israeli hostages, gets a free pass.
This grotesque distortion by the Western media outlets is not surprising, given that they have a history of peddling pro-Hamas falsehoods; in fact, this is only a new low they have stooped to.
When NYT defended rehiring Hitler-praising and pro-Hamas ‘journalist’ from Gaza for Israel-Hamas war, and admitted to having relied on Hamas claims to accuse Israel of bombing a hospital
Just weeks after Palestinian Islamic terror group Hamas massacred innocent Israeli civilians on 7th October 2023, the New York Times rehired Soliman Hijjy, a Gazan journalist, who had a notorious track record of praising Hitler‑the, the 20th-century genocidaire of the Jews in Nazi Germany, and taking a pro-Hamas stand.
Maintaining ‘high standards’ of journalism, the NYT issued a statement defending its decision to rehire Soliman Hijjy. It claimed that after a review of his “problematic” social media posts, which came to light in 2022, they took various actions following which Hijjy adhered to their standards of journalism. Notably, the NYT platformed Hijjy to peddle pro-Hamas propaganda. In his reports published in the NYT, Hijjy carried out Hamas propaganda regarding the attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza and falsely accused Israel of the attack. Hijjy had a contribution in the NYT’s reportage on the Hospital attack, which later turned out to be false. Later, NYT issued a half-hearted’ clarification but admitted that it relied heavily on Hamas claims on the hospital explosion.
BBC used the son of a Hamas leader as narrator in its documentary to peddle the Jihadist group’s anti-Israel propaganda
In July 2025, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) admitted that its documentary titled “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” was propaganda. The broadcast claimed that it breached editorial guidelines as it failed to disclose a critical conflict of interest. The child who narrated the documentary was the son of an official linked to the Palestinian terrorist outfit Hamas. The documentary was produced by an independent company named Hoyo Films. It was removed from iPlayer in February this year after concerns emerged about the boy’s background. While the makers of the propaganda documentary were aware that the narrator was the son of a Hamas terrorist, the BBC did not care to conduct a basic editorial check and allowed usage of its platform for Hamas propaganda.
This was the second documentary aired by the BBC to be taken down over impartiality concerns. As reported earlier, the BBC ran a documentary titled “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,” which sparked outrage because a journalist, Ramita Navai, displayed problematic social media activity.
On 4th July, Ramita had said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Israel is “a rogue state that’s committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing, and mass-murdering Palestinians”.
Earlier, the BBC has been under fire for refusing to name Hamas as a terrorist organisation, even though it is marked as such by the UK, the US, the EU, and Israel. Earlier, the BBC had defended its stand on not calling Hamas a terrorist organisation, saying that calling someone a terrorist would mean taking sides.
It is, thus, unsurprising that the BBC, NYT and their likes manipulated a child’s suffering to inflame anti-Israel outrage. With their vast resources and self-proclaimed commitment to ‘accuracy’, they discarded journalistic integrity and banked on emotional imagery to vilify Israel. Considering the past record of backtracking after outrage, these propaganda outlets may put up a ‘clarification’; however, the damage is done. The Western media has become the extended branch of Pallywood, wherein the characters and the setting may be real, but the story is partially or fully imaginary.
