Israel apologists think "no no, we're starving SICK kids!" is a winning argument

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnst.one
Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00 UTC

© screenshot

Naftali Bennett

I will probably spend the foreseeable future periodically reminding the world that when everyone was angry at Israel for starving children in Gaza, Israel's apologists spent days loudly proclaiming that no, they were actually just starving sick children.

As their defense they said this. They actually believed this helped their case.

Let me back up a bit.

On Wednesday, The New York Times posted an editor's note on an article it had published the previous Friday which included a horrifying photo of an emaciated child named Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq. Caving to pressure from Zionists and influence ops like the Israeli propaganda outlet HonestReporting, the Times went out of its way to clarify that al-Mutawaq "had pre-existing health problems," which Israel apologists instantly and predictably spun as proof that the media are lying about Israel starving Gaza.

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet claimed that The New York Times was guilty of "a blood libel in 2025."

Israeli media outlets like The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, i24 News, YNET and Israel Hayom went ballistic, as did Jewish News Syndicate.

"New York Times stunningly rolls back claims about viral photo of starving Gaza boy," reads a New York Post headline.

"New York Times admits using misleading cover photo of emaciated Gaza child," blared Fox News.

"NYT Adds Sick Editors' Note to Viral Photo of Child Starving in Gaza," proclaimed The New Republic.

Conservative pundit Glenn Beck threw a furious shit fit.

AIPAC hilariously accused the notoriously pro-Israel New York Times of being "instinctively against Israel".

Israel apologists like David Frum, Gad Saad, Brianna Wu, Eyal Yakoby, Eylon Levy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Eli David, Stephen L Miller, David Collier, Noah Pollak, and John Podhoretz went nuts on Twitter.

"They quietly added an editor's note, but the lie already went global," tweeted the Israel Foreign Ministry account. Zionist billionaire Bill Ackman said that Israel should sue The New York Times and other outlets for libel.

CNN's Scott Jennings tweeted that the photo was evidence that a "propaganda mission" had been fulfilled.

And it was all complete bullshit. All of it.

Any expert in the field will tell you that the first people likely to die in any famine will be young children, the elderly, and people with chronic health problems. Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq is two of the three. Israel apologists are citing obvious evidence that Gaza is being starved and claiming it's evidence that Gaza is not being starved, and bizarrely acting as though sick children being starved to death makes Israel look better instead of worse.

An independent fact-checking platform called Misbar reports the following:

"Misbar interviewed Hedaya al-Mutawaq, the mother of 19-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, and found Israeli claims about her son's condition to be misleading.

"'My son Mohammed was born in December 2023, during the war, without any chronic illnesses,' Hedaya told Misbar. 'Doctors diagnosed him with macrocephaly, which they said was caused by nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy due to the Israeli war.'

"She emphasized that Mohammed was healthy and of normal weight at birth. 'Over the past four months of displacement, his condition worsened due to the severe shortage of food. That is when he developed acute malnutrition.'

Misbar included a photo of Mohammed which his mother provided, showing a healthy-looking infant prior to Israel's increased starvation campaign.

© screenshot

So Israel is killing disabled kids using siege warfare to deprive them of food and medical care, and its defenders are claiming this makes Israel look like the heroes in this story rather than the villains. It takes a special kind of psychopathy to think this is a winning argument.

This isn't even the only time they've done this.

The other day Israel's official Twitter account tried to claim that a photo of a dead skeletal man proves people are sharing disinformation about Israel, because it turns out the man had untreated diabetes. Back in December 2023, Human Rights Watch published an article titled "Gaza Blockade Puts People with Diabetes at Risk."

Israel's COGAT account tweeted that "Hamas is using photos of sick children to push the 'starvation' narrative and blame Israel" by pointing out that a starving 14 year-old child in a photograph actually has "a genetic disease."

They're actually trying to argue that people with chronic illness suffering under a siege more than healthy people is evidence of their innocence, rather than the normal thing you'd expect to be seeing at this point if Israel was intentionally starving a civilian population.

This is a new level of disgusting, in two years of record-shattering levels of disgusting.

I don't expect that I will ever let Israel's supporters live this one down, and neither should you.