Trucks carrying aid move, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri

The humanitarian aid situation in Gaza has been receiving overwhelming media coverage lately. While it was a good military move to stop Hamas-controlled food trucks from entering Gaza, Israel should have expected the world’s PR machine would be turned against it — even though there has never been an actual famine or anything close to it in Gaza.

Israel didn’t/doesn’t/won’t let people starve. Hence the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the US-run, Israeli secured food distribution system in Gaza. On June 2, The Jerusalem Post reported:

According to the organization, 21 truckloads of food aid were delivered from its Tel Sultan distribution site, totaling 18,720 boxes – enough to provide approximately 1,081,080 meals. This brings the cumulative total to an estimated 5.8 million meals distributed since operations began.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee corroborated the figures in a stiff statement denouncing the flood of international media using “Hamas sources, which are designed to fan the flames of antisemitic hate that is arguably contributing to violence against Jews in the United States.”

Huckabee called it “sloppy journalism.”

Respectfully, Mr. Ambassador, it is more. It is a collaboration among terrorists, international “aid” organizations, and the media in which each has something to lose if the truth wins. Consider:

“Gaza is the hungriest place on earth,” said the UN’s Jens Laerke. But Laerke should check Action Against World Hunger, which reports Burkina Faso, Mali, South Sudan, and Sudan at the top of the list of people facing famine. Yemen and the DRC are right up there. The UN began yelling about famine in Gaza less than six weeks after Israel’s entry into Gaza following the 10/7 massacres. It never happened.

Then, Tom Fletcher, a UN humanitarian aid official, told the BBC on May 20, “There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them. I want to save as many as these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours.”

It was strange from the beginning — if there was a famine and genocide, how did 14,000 babies get born and survive? It may be the only genocide in the world that resulted in a larger, not smaller, victim population. The UN actually said, “Nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months … Of these, 14,100 cases are expected to be severe.”

Eleven months, not 48 hours. And even then, malnourished is bad and Israel is working to prevent that, it’s not the same as dead. But how many news outlets reported the lie but not the follow up?

Most recently, Hamas reported an Israeli tank attack at a GHF site last weekend.

The media reported it without question. A BBC news summary said, “At least 31 people have been killed after Israeli tanks opened fire near an aid center in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says, and 150 Palestinians have also been injured according to the Red Cross hospital in Rafah … ‘We have had an extortionate [sic] amount of people come through the door… The injuries are all gunshot wounds.’”

Gunshot wounds from a tank attack? Oops.

It is true that there was shooting; you can see it here — Hamas operatives are shooting at Palestinian civilians.

The Center for Peace Communications posted this video: “An eyewitness speaks out. ‘Hamas attacked queues of people waiting to receive aid from the American company in Gaza … while on social media, Hamas threatens and incites against those who receive American aid.’”

A later BBC article changed it without comment. The Washington Post removed its story altogether.

Amjad Taha, a political strategist and astute observer from the United Arab Emirates, was fabulously blunt on X:

LET ME TRANSLATE FOR YOU in simple terms: Welcome to the Middle East, where reality hits harder than Macron’s wife mid-argument and your hormone-fueled activism melts faster than a vegan at a Gulf barbecue. Here, logic took the first flight out, and Hamas shoots Palestinians to stop them from eating because starving children are the main course for protest menus in London and Paris.

Now — we have come to the central issue. Hamas is losing the war. Its commanders are gone, its tunnels are severely degraded, its weapons are low, Iran largely gone from the region, and — with an alternative source of food — the people of Gaza are turning on them. Hamas is desperate.

“Aid” agencies are desperate to help. Part is reputational — having claimed to be feeding starving Gazans, they are not happy to see Gazans welcoming food from the US in cooperation with Israel.

The uglier part is financial — having received billions in aid money, as the world finds out that Hamas was not only stealing the food but charging “starving people” exorbitant prices for donated goods, they are understood to be thieves. The media fronted for all of it. The ugliest part is anti-Zionist/antisemitism; they can’t be separated from each other or from their proponents.

The easiest way to end any food shortages is for Hamas to release the hostages, and end the war. That won’t happen of course — and Israel will still be blamed for a war Hamas could end right now.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.