I have to admit that I have little idea of what is real and what is not in Gaza.
That’s not because I don’t read the news or follow the social media discussions about the war. It’s because everything coming out of the Strip is propaganda, and anything you read in the Pravda Media is so biased that I just assume it is a lie.
“This is the kind of work that would be praised by our peers for getting to ground truth. But we don’t live in normal times,” write our editors. The outrage is strategic: to punish reporters for curiosity, and to make the truth taboo. https://t.co/IKSqtNxyFQ
— The Free Press (@TheFP) August 26, 2025
The Free Press published an investigation into the “starving children” being featured in media stories around the world, and found that the photographs supposedly showing formerly healthy children who are now malnourished are all, essentially, fake. Not that the photos are AI or anything like that, although there is plenty of that from the war, but rather each of the children is suffering from some genetic disease or another, and many had been medically evacuated by Israel to save them.
Last week, The Free Press ran an investigation into a dozen viral photos published by major international media outlets aimed at depicting starvation in Gaza. All 12 pictures featured distressed Gazans, mostly children. All were skin and bones. And all suffered from preexisting conditions, like cerebral palsy.
Crucially, that last piece of information was absent from the captions or news stories they accompanied. In leaving out that context, the outlets presented an incomplete story. Rather than typifying the situation in Gaza, right now, these are exceptional cases.
We are proud of the report and the reporters who tracked it down. In doing so, Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova performed a public service by asking and answering a simple question: In a moment of widespread charges by international institutions and news outlets about hunger in Gaza, are these photographs representative? More: How is it that journalists failed to scrutinize information coming out of a war zone with an active terrorist group conducting kinetic and information warfare?
Journalistic outlets love to boast about “impact,” and this story has had more than its share. CNN updated its piece after our reporting, noting at the top that the story had been “updated to reflect new information regarding the condition of some of the subjects.” So did The Washington Post, issuing a correction to say that it had “incorrectly” used a year-old photo in its current coverage of “mass starvation” in Gaza. The Guardian issued no correction but stealthily added one important detail to its coverage: that a previously featured child had cerebral palsy.
This is typical of the stories coming out of Gaza. We only see and read what Pravda–and really, Hamas–want us to see.
Now that doesn’t mean that the Gaza war is clean or that Israel has completely clean hands. This would be the first war in history where that was true, and just yesterday, Israel admitted to a horrible error where it killed a number of innocents.
No doubt Israel is not completely transparent about what is happening, and just as clearly, we would expect that incidents of war crimes happen in Gaza. This is the brutal nature of war, where even legal means of fighting are often unmentionably brutal.
Ironically, if Israel had simply embargoed Gaza, the move would, at least arguably, be legal according to the laws of war. Sieges and blockades are acts of war, and while harming civilians is one goal of the laws of war, it is not the only one and can be overridden in many circumstances. Germany lost World War I not so much on the battlefield–the war was fought on French soil on the Western Front, and Russia never made it to Germany before they quit the war–as due to the embargo and strangling of the German economy, including food production.
Read the histories, and they are gut-wrenching.
Egypt is as active a participant–more so, actually– in isolating Gaza. It has a long border with the Gaza Strip that is massively fortified and walled off to keep Palestinians in. Israel, not Egypt, is the entry point for aid. If you wonder why Gazans are trapped in a war zone, look to Egypt and ask them. We all know the answer. They want nothing to do with Palestinians because they are politically poisonous to any country that takes them in.
More herehttps://t.co/iBcjSUN2eR
— GAZAWOOD – the PALLYWOOD saga (@GAZAWOOD1) August 25, 2025
Just as Pravda Media doesn’t tell you the story behind the pictures they show you, they fail to inform you that the “journalists” based in Gaza are either Hamas operatives or Hamas allies. I have written many times about this, and will do so in the future. Because we will be bombarded by stories about Israel targeting journalists in the war, without being told that those “journalists” are often Hamas fighters as well.
“Journalists” who are active members of Hamas and participated in the October 7 massacre, and who they worked for.
You’re not fooling us anymore. pic.twitter.com/Yuthj6O9PO
— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) August 25, 2025
One of the journalists whom Israel eliminated recently, and for whom they have received much criticism, participated in the October 7th atrocities. Previously, the Associated Press submitted in a prize competition a photograph from one of their stringers who photographed the October 7th attacks as he participated in them. There is a video of a CNN “journalist” holding a grenade while speeding on a motorcycle to commit atrocities.
This is the full video clip that the CNN photographer posted to his own Facebook page.
The grenade is clearly visible around the 11 second mark. pic.twitter.com/Kdp1iibJbx
— Jason Jones (@jonesville) December 5, 2023
One does not get immunity by putting on a Press vest or a doctor’s white coat, although you wouldn’t know that if you only watched the news.
Of all the people who ought to be upset about Hamas propaganda and its appropriation of the label “journalist,” it should be the media itself. It puts every real journalist at risk.
But…the Pravda Media EMPLOYS many of these people who put in “PRESS” vests and then take them off to fight. They depend on them to provide the propaganda that must be printed to make money.
A Gazan “journalist” takes off his press outfit and hands it over to a masked Hamas terrorist who quickly puts it on.
Does that now make the Hamas terrorist a journalist?
pic.twitter.com/N2LXLBi1wv— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 25, 2025
These people are “journalists” in the way that “doctors” who hold hostages are innocent aid workers. Meaning not at all. They are legitimate targets of war, and Israel has to keep killing them until they lay down their arms.
Last week, Hamas dressed up as World Central Kitchen aid workers to transport weapons.
The media entirely ignored the story.
Why? Because it shatters the narrative that Hamas doesn’t cosplay as aid workers and journalists. pic.twitter.com/DWehDgsmK5
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 25, 2025
Are horrible things happening in Gaza? Undoubtedly. Are some people hungry? Probably, although there is a lot of evidence that there is plenty of food making it to most places in Gaza. It’s not like every inch of the territory is an active war zone, despite what you are told.
Interesting find. This film was reportedly taken at a grocery store in Gaza City. This is the territory in the northern Gaza Strip where the UN-backed IPC declared a famine. It’s a good sign that merchants can get their hands on products. pic.twitter.com/Y2DOOHeLpA
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) August 24, 2025
I just don’t know what is happening, and neither does anybody else not on the ground. Unlike Vietnam, where journalists were out with the troops and moved relatively more freely in the country, all the information is filtered to us by…the enemy. We get the Israeli story, too, but that can’t be unbiased either.
As far as I can tell, there are no journalists in Gaza. So we really know next to nothing about what is happening there.
