A careful analysis shows reportage riddled with agendas. Such reportage endangers Israelis and Jews worldwide.
The front page of The New York Times on July 25 reported starvation in Gaza. The report was by three journalists. The newspaper identified one journalist as reporting from Haifa, Israel, one from Jerusalem, Israel, and one from London.
Neither Haifa nor Jerusalem nor London are in Gaza. Reporters not in Gaza were given the front page of the NYT to tell the readers what was happening in Gaza.
What credibility is there in a report on a critical event not based on first-hand knowledge? Lest you think that it was too dangerous in Gaza to send reporters to report from there, the same NYT story carried a photograph that it identified as taken by a photographer in Gaza for the Times. For a picture — for that, the newspaper relied on a person on the scene. For a story based on facts on the ground — for that, the Times relied on no reporter on the ground. Doctors under Hamas’ control testified to starvation in Gaza and were taken at their word, sight unseen.
Is there starvation in Gaza? We would like to know. We have heard reports of famine and starvation in Gaza at least since December, 2023. If these reports were true, there would be no Gazans left. We are not getting reliable reportage from Gaza. We are getting ideologically driven reportage.
Absent the dire scenario of famine and starvation, the suffering in Gaza remains immense. As we have stated in these pages, we believe that Israel should take its considerable wins in Gaza and henceforth relate to Gaza militarily as it relates to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That said, we would like to get a story from Gaza we could trust, based on reliable reportage from there, not from Haifa, from Jerusalem or from London.
The reportage on food in Gaza embodies cognitive dissonance. Stacked alongside each other are reports that Gazans are starving, and emails from The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that, as of July 27, it has distributed 95 million free meals to Gazans.
Can 95 million meals leave people starving? We would like to get a story based on reliable reportage from Gaza.
More cognitive dissonance: Bitter critiques by the UN that the GHF — backed by Israel and the US — is stinting on delivering food to Gaza, stacked alongside hundreds of tons of food on UN trucks, rotting in the hot sun, undelivered to Gazans.
More cognitive dissonance: Bitter critiques by the UN that, before Israel took over aid deliveries to Gaza last May, the UN delivered ample food to Gaza — this, alongside incessant claims of famine or near famine in Gaza while the UN was in charge. Was there famine or was there not? We await reliable reportage from Gaza.
Can the UN now sit on its hands and blame Israel for reduced aid deliveries? It can, for the UN says that it should not rely on Israel to secure the routes for the delivery of UN food, since the UN, as a neutral body, will not accept Israel’s assistance.
Still more cognitive dissonance: Bitter complaints that Israel’s delivery of food to Gaza endangers Gazans, stacked alongside other bitter complaints, no more than some six months old, that Gazans were starving because Israel shirked its responsibility to ensure that food reached a population in an area that is occupied during wartime. Now that Israel assumes that responsibility, the UN rejects it. We would like to get a story from Gaza by journalists there whose historical knowledge of events is at least six months old.
We come to another front page report in The New York Times on July 27. The headline reads: “Israeli officials rebut Netanyahu on Hamas Thefts. Basis for food curbs. Routine Stealing of U.N. Aid Is Unproved, Say Some in Military.”
The long story continues from page 1 to page 11 with a five-column picture of Israeli soldiers in Gaza during a tour for journalists.
Israel justified its limitation on food deliveries to Gaza on the grounds that Hamas steals the food, intended as free aid to Gazans, and Hamas then sells the food to Gazans in order to fund weapons and salaries for Hamas.
Now the NYT says the claim of Hamas thievery isn’t true.
From the beginning to the end of the July 27 story, the “Israel officials” on whose word the story is based are not named. Given front page credibility are anonymous military sources, some of whom, the NYT report itself says, are opposed to the government’s decisions.
It looks like disgruntled military officials who do not accept civilian rule as a tenet of democracy trying to get their way via manipulation of news coverage in an all too willing prestigious media outfit.
We are still awaiting a story based on reliable reportage from Gaza that is based on people on the ground speaking in their own name, taking responsibility for what they have to say.
Scrambled in all of this is the charge that Israel caused starvation in Gaza by cutting off aid deliveries last March (as Hamas would not release hostages in order to sustain the ceasefire from January).
But the charge is wrong. Yes, as means of pressuring Hamas to release hostage, Israel cut aid deliveries in March. However, aid was stockpiled. The stockpiles ran out in May. As they ran out, Israel and the US devised the current delivery system.
Observe: The July 27 NYT story says that Hamas did steal some of the food aid but did not do so “regularly.” What is “regular” vs. “some” theft? How much humanitarian aid did Hamas have to steal in order to fund its terror activities? None of these questions are addressed, let alone answered, in the story. Again, we await reliable reportage from Gaza.
But suppose that Hamas steals only “some” humanitarian aid. When a federal court convicted the Holy Land Five for sending funds to Hamas, the phoney charity was not exonerated on the grounds it was sending only “some” aid to Hamas. The NYT’s article’s dismissal of Israel’s concern for Hamas’ theft of “some” aid would not hold up in court.
Not to mention, if only “some” aid was stolen, then what is the source of Hamas’ unlilmited funds for weaponry and normal food?
Then, we read in the story that, according to Reuters, an internal US government analysis came to a “similar conclusion” — that Hamas did not engage in “regular” theft. In the words of the Times, the analysis “found no evidence of systematic Hamas theft of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies.”
That’s apples and oranges: two separate and opposite occurrences.
Here’s the apples. Israel says that Hamas stole aid delivered by the UN and other organizations before the current US-funded and Israel-secured operation went into effect.
Here’s the oranges. The cited US analysis that found no evidence of systematic Hamas theft of US-funded aid has to refer to after the end of mostly UN supply effort — to US aid now delivered under Israeli security by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund.
Another defect in the reportage from Gaza: the passive voice. We cannot count how many reports we’ve read in the past weeks about the Palestinians being killed in trying to access the GHF aid. We are deeply pained at the death of every innocent. But when reports say, in the passive voice, that Palestinians were killed, it evades the question: Who killed them? And who were the victims?
That people were killed trying to get food delivered by the US and Israel does not necessarily mean that Israelis killed them — not in Gaza, with Hamas fighting tooth and nail to sustain its terrorist regime there, to sacrifice civilian lives by fighting from civilian bases such as homes and schools — and, possibly, such as food lines. We don’t know. We await reliable reportage from Gaza.
We do know this. We have read countless reports of Israel “firing at crowds” trying to access food. We have not read a single story identifying a single specific victim killed by a single specific Israeli. It could have happened, but that would require accurate reportage on the ground. Meanwhile, the implication is left to ride — Israeli soldiers shoot randomly at crowds.
It is on the basis of such unverified reportage that the “genocide” claim takes wing and that anti-Semitism around the world increases. Accurate and complete reportage is not just “inside baseball” among journalists. It’s critical to the good name and the safety of Jews everywhere.
© IJN 2025
