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Not a PR Problem – A War Crime Problem
Israel continues to push back on images of people suffering in Gaza. On Tuesday, they published this, claiming that a Palestinian man died from “untreated diabetes” — not starvation. They call the starvation stories “fake news.”
Well, that’s just as bad, isn’t it? In May, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said on record that he knew diabetics in Gaza who were down to their last drops of insulin — because Israel was blocking medicine and aid.
The New York Times issued a correction about an image of a young boy who appeared skeletal and frail. Yes, they admitted he suffers from “severe malnutrition” — but added that he also had “pre-existing health problems.” As if that makes it better. Should we go back and analyze the Jews who starved during the Holocaust to check for pre-existing conditions — and then apologize to the Nazis for the bad optics?
Even President Trump said on Tuesday that the starvation in Gaza is obvious to anyone “unless they’re pretty coldhearted or, worse than that, nuts.”
Israeli officials are increasingly worried they’re losing the PR war. One lamented that they “need a PR Iron Dome” to shield themselves from the world’s horror. But they already have one — it’s called AIPAC. It’s called Hasbara. It’s called the mainstream press. It’s called criminalizing dissent as antisemitism. And none of it works against images of starving children.
To be fair, it works about as well as the real Iron Dome.
Meanwhile, the talking point that “Hamas steals the aid” has collapsed in broad daylight. The U.S. government’s own internal review found “no evidence of systematic theft” of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies by Hamas. The New York Times confirmed the same, quoting two senior Israeli military officials: “The Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations.” In fact, they said, “the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.”
This is clearly not about messaging, which has fallen flat as American support for Israel has plummeted. It’s about the reality of causing such devastating human suffering while the world takes note.
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