Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

A haunting photo of an emaciated toddler cradled by his mother dominated the front page of Friday’s New York Times, quickly becoming a symbol of the hunger crisis in Gaza. Now, the newspaper has amended some aspects of his story amid criticism.

“Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition,” the original caption said.

But over the weekend, skeptics about the scope of the hunger crisis in Gaza — and especially about whether Israel is to blame — cried foul over the image and its use. They charged the newspaper with perpetrating a “blood libel” against Israel.

On Tuesday night, the newspaper announced that it had revised the story, saying that it had learned that the child had underlying medical issues that affected his muscle development. The revision removed the mother’s quote from the story saying that Mohammed had been born healthy and added context from his doctor, though it did not back away from the other reporting in the story, “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” including its claim that the child was suffering from malnutrition due to food shortages.

“This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his condition,” the newspaper said in a statement about an editors’ note appended to the story.

The editors’ note followed days of criticism of the newspaper and other outlets for running photographs that the critics said exaggerate the extent of hunger in Gaza and lay blame for any crisis solely at Israel’s feet.

“Muhammad is not simply a victim of starvation. His condition stems from a health disorder, not from a lack of food caused by Israel,” the pro-Israel media watchdog Honest Reporting wrote in a report issued Sunday titled “Another Photo. Another Lie.”

While Honest Reporting acknowledged that there is “suffering in Gaza,” it claimed that the blame lies with Hamas, which it accused of looting aid intended for civilians and disrupting Gaza’s medical system with its attack on Israel and continued hostage-holding.

“He is a sick child in need of medical care and specialized nutrition. Care that was once available, and could be again,” its report said.

Honest Reporting and other pro-Israel voices, including the Israeli government, have long accused various media organizations of distorting their presentation of the Israel-Hamas war to paint Israel in the harshest light possible. The challenges have picked up — and found purchase — as international attention has turned to a hunger crisis in Gaza.

In another incident this week, the Israeli agency responsible for aid in Gaza, COGAT, denounced the use of photographs of another emaciated Gazan boy, noting that he had been evacuated for medical treatment to Italy in June.

Allegations of distortion can cut both directions. An Israeli journalist this week accused COGAT of distorting public sentiment by distributing an image of Hamas fighters taking a selfie over a meal to make the case that Hamas was stealing aid intended for Gazans. The picture, Amos Harel wrote, citing Israeli army sources, was taken a year ago, long before the current crisis. The army declined to comment on the picture.

Together, the images and the disputes over them point to deep challenges in understanding and responding to conditions in Gaza, where Israel and Hamas have been battling for nearly 22 months. Israel has not allowed independent journalists to enter the territory, meaning that the professional images that emerge are taken by photographers who may be working with Hamas’ approval or otherwise conflicted about their subjects.

The New York Times is among a growing number of news organizations that called for Israel to lift restrictions on international reporters from independently entering the Gaza Strip, a policy it says has hindered reporting in the region. Independent media organizations regularly send their journalists into conflict zones in other parts of the world.

Philip Pan, the newspaper’s international editor, said in a statement on Sunday that its journalists in Gaza “face difficulty finding food and ensuring safe freedom of movement in order to do their jobs,” and would continue to push for its journalists to be “allowed to work securely and without fear or hesitation in Gaza.”

The disputed images are far from the only signs that there is a crisis in Gaza. While saying firmly that there is “no starvation” in the enclave, even Israeli officials have conceded that challenges with aid distribution have resulted in some places where hunger is acute.

A wide array of groups, including the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam, have said starvation is looming in the enclave.

Even the New York Times story featuring Mohammed quoted multiple physicians who said they were seeing patients in acute stages of hunger; some of the physicians said they themselves were going without adequate food. And many other independent news outlets have reported stories about acute hunger, sometimes including photographs of Mohammed alongside pictures of other emaciated children that have not been contested.

It is clear that images that emerge from Gaza are shaping the global response to the war, informing opinion and policy-making at the highest levels.

“That’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake it,” President Donald Trump said on Monday, during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, directly contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I think people in Britain are revolted at seeing what they’re seeing on their screen,” Starmer said.

A day later, on Tuesday, Starmer announced that the U.K. will recognize a Palestinian state in September, a move that Israel opposes, if Israel does not agree to a ceasefire with Hamas and end the “appalling situation” in Gaza.

“Now, in Gaza because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand: images that will stay with us for a lifetime,” he said. “The suffering must end.”

How the New York Times came to run an incomplete account of Mohammed’s medical issues is not clear. But the newspaper was far from the only outlet to have done so.

The photographer for the New York Times story, Saher Alghorra, was not the only one to take images of the emaciated boy. The Turkish state-run news service Andolou includes several pictures of him taken last week by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini, another Gazan photojournalist. Andolou, which partners with the global photo clearinghouse Getty, contains a large number of pictures of weak and emaciated Gazans, some with obvious underlying conditions and some from well before the current crisis.

“I took this photo because I wanted to show the rest of the world the extreme hunger that babies and children are suffering from in the Gaza Strip. He received no baby milk, no formula, no vitamins, either,” al-Arini said during a BBC appearance over the weekend. “Because of the lack of any humanitarian aid and the lack of any medicines, prices have shot up, skyrocketing, so nobody in Gaza can afford these prices.”

Al-Arini’s photos were widely circulated by other news outlets — including NBC News, Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Guardian, BBC, The Intercept and CNN — which often described him as suffering from severe malnutrition.

For those who reject the idea that children could be starving in Gaza, it was not hard to find reasons for skepticism in the pictures. Mohammed’s mother did not appear to be unusually gaunt. Neither did a brother who appeared in the background of one picture.

An appearance by Mohammed’s mother on the BBC on Saturday added new reasons for skepticism. She said he had been healthy due to physical therapy and proper nutrition prior to the war but acknowledged that he had a muscle disorder.

On Sunday, the pro-Israel journalist David Collier alleged in a post on X that Mohammed had a medical report for the child that stated he has “cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder.” That day, Honest Reporting issued a call for news organizations that ran the photographs to demand corrections.

At the same time, another photo of a different Palestinian child was sparking controversy. The Italian outlet Il Fatto Quotidiano featured 5-year-old Osama Al-Rakab last week in a story alleging starvation in Gaza. He had previously appeared in photos published by The Guardian and Al Jazeera, among other outlets.

Multiple Israeli government offices, including COGAT and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, went on the offensive against Il Fatto Quotidiano’s cover story featuring Osama on Monday, saying that the boy has cystic fibrosis and had traveled to Italy for treatment with Israel’s support. (When patients with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder, have access to adequate medical care, including medication and management of their complex nutrition needs, they typically thrive.) They charged that the photo was akin to the millennium-old antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews kill non-Jewish children.

“This is what a modern blood libel looks like: A sick child. A hijacked photo. A lie that spreads faster than truth,” the ministry wrote in a social media post. “He has cystic fibrosis, a serious genetic illness. He’s been in Italy receiving treatment since June 12. Israel enabled his medical transfer from Gaza. But that didn’t stop media outlets from weaponizing his image NOT to tell his story, but in order to smear Israel.”

A post on the pro-Palestinian Instagram page Translating Falasteen, which included images of Osama taken over several months, also reported that Osama had been evacuated to Italy for treatment and had recovered, but only after “months of starvation left him severely malnourished and weighing just 9 kilograms.”

“At the time, he was clinging to life at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, suffering from anemia, weakness, and exhaustion due to the Israeli occupation’s total blockade,” the post read. “His condition was so terrible that doctors described it as one of the worst they had seen. But in less than two months, Osama made an incredible recovery.”

The stew of misinformation — now acknowledged in the New York Times editors’ note, even as the story remains substantially the same — has been perplexing for many of those who are concerned about conditions for Gaza civilians but also on guard against false anti-Israel allegations that have proliferated.

“This doesn’t mean there aren’t children in Gaza who are hungry. There are. It doesn’t mean children in Gaza aren’t dying horrific, preventable deaths. Too many are,” wrote the Israeli blogger Sarah Tuttle-Singer on social media.

“But using an image of a gravely ill child — one who is receiving care abroad — as the face of Gaza’s starvation is not journalism,” she continued. “It’s not storytelling. It’s emotional manipulation. And in some corners, it comes dangerously close to blood libel.”

Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump are once again on opposing sides about a central tenet of Republican orthodoxy: This time, on Israel and Gaza.

Earlier this week, Trump directly contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu refuted claims by multiple international groups saying that Gaza was at the point of starvation, calling it a “bold-faced lie.”

Trump responded during a joint press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer when he finally acknowledged that there is “real starvation” in Gaza.

Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right MAGA firebrand from Georgia, jumped in on it and called the war in Gaza a “genocide,” using language that historically only progressives used to describe the war.

And public opinion has largely shifted against Israel despite the brutal Oct. 7, 2023 terror incursion where Hamas squads murdered 1,200 innocent people and took 251 hostages in addition to carrying out acts of depravity on the populace.

President Trump saying there’s ‘real starvation’ in Gaza has not led to a change of heart from most Republicans in the Senate. (Reuters)

With Joe Biden exiting the stage, Democrats are having their reckoning with the party’s historic support for Israel. But many Republicans feigned ignorance.

“I haven’t seen what the president said. So, was it today?” Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana, one of the more MAGA House members who got a promotion last year, responded when asked about Trump’s comments by The Independent on Tuesday.

The Senate remains one of the last true bastions of Republican orthodoxy on foreign policy, which is to say, support for a strong military and America having a prominent role as the enforcer of the global order. Support for Israel remains a core tenet of this style of support, both because of Christian conservatives’ theology about the Holy Land and the critical strategic position of Israel in the Middle East.

Republicans historically viewed Israel’s placement in an area of the world rife with conflict as another asset for intelligence and security purposes. Trump represented a break from that, focusing more on “America First” ideology wherein he adopted more isolationist rhetoric, though he still robustly backs Israel and assisted with its war with Iran.

That might be why Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Independent to contact his office. Sen. Todd Young, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Marine Corps veteran, refused to answer questions.

Despite the fact that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) faces a MAGA primary challenge from Texas’ wayward and scandal-ridden Attorney General Ken Paxton, read from the hymnal of the Bush Republicans.

“I think there’s definitely a humanitarian crisis, but i think the blame is not Netanyahu, the blame is Hamas,” Cornyn told The Independent. When asked if that’s what Trump meant, Cornyn said “you’d have to ask him.”

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are at odds over whether children are starving in Gaza. (Getty)

Despite the fact Trump relocated the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in his first term and continues to support Israel militarily, he clearly views the American relationship with Israel in a far more transactional light than his Senate counterparts. During one point of Israel’s war with Iran, Trump famously said “they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, told The Independent there is “clearly a humanitarian crisis there,” said people should remember that Hamas caused this.

Democrats for their part sought to exploit Trump’s remarks on Gaza. Unburdened from having to defend Joe Biden’s record on Gaza, numerous Democrats pointed to Trump’s record to raise the suffering in Gaza.

“What we can do is continue to call upon President Trump, who now has acknowledged that people are starving to death in Gaza, to call upon Prime Minister Netanyahu to let the UN a delivery system,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), told The Independent.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined Van Hollen’s letter this weekend to cease funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and instead resume sending money to the United Nations for food distribution. But Sanders said Trump deserves no credit.

“Look at any newspaper in America today and you see pictures of starving children, this is not a brilliant observation,” he told The Independent.

Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Amy Klobuchar delivered a speech excoriating Netanyahu. This came weeks after she met with Netanyahu during his visit to Congress.

But Klobuchar said her remarks were not an about-face.

“The reason I went was to raise the lack of humanitarian aid into Gaza and that they had to have more access points,” she told The Independent. “I think it’s getting worse and worse and I know they’ve let some aid in but it is not enough. This is a crisis, it’s a humanitarian crisis, and people are starving.”

Sen Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucus with the Democrats, went one step further. On Monday evening, he released a statement that he would not support any type of aid whatsoever to Israel as long as children starved. For an even-keeled moderate, it was a stunning remark.

“They’ve cut off water, off and on, and they’ve really and they’ve created a situation now where it’s so desperate that people are I are going after the aid in a desperate kind of way, and they’re, they’re using armed troops in that situation,” he told The Independent. “They have the power to fix it. If they fix it, I’m with them until they fix it. I’m out.”

But Senate Republicans will likely attack any Democrat who signed Van Hollen’s letter, specifically vulnerable Democratic senators, even as some of the Democrats are Jewish supporters of Israel. One in particular: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who faces a tough re-election next year.

LOADING ERROR LOADING

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) became the first congressional Republican to label the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip a “genocide” on Monday after President Donald Trump acknowledged that Palestinians are starving.

Greene’s comment came within a larger criticism of a colleague, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who spoke approvingly of the deteriorating situation in Gaza.

Advertisement

“Release the hostages. Until then, starve away,” Fine wrote on social media last week, adding that he considers the increasing evidence of widespread famine in the region to be “a lie.”

Even Trump was moved to say there is “real starvation” occurring in Gaza as a result of Israel’s nearly two-year war in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on civilians that was instigated by fighters from the Palestinian militant group Hamas, who took hostages back to Gaza.

“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” Greene wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Advertisement

“But a Jewish U.S. Representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful,” she said. “His awful statement will actually cause more antisemitism.”

Greene has also fueled antisemitic tropes in the past, most notably in a now-deleted 2018 Facebook post that suggested a link between the wealthy Jewish Rothschild family and wildfires in California — prompting ridicule for what her critics called her “Jewish space lasers” theory.

Her choice of words, however, makes her unique among congressional Republicans.

Trump said during his visit to Scotland on Monday that he had been disturbed by images and reporting he had seen on television of the worsening situation in Gaza.

Advertisement

Israel, which controls entry to Gaza and patrols its coastline, has for months been blocking aid from reaching over 2 million Palestinians there.

Photos of exhausted, skeletal children have begun to surface on front pages around the world. One child reportedly weighed less upon her death than when she was born.

“You can’t fake that,” Trump said of the images.

Like Fine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flat-out denied that Palestinian civilians are starving to death. Israel has for months claimed that Hamas, which controls Gaza, is misusing shipments of food and supplies, although The New York Times reported over the weekend that Israeli officials know there is no evidence to support that assertion.

Advertisement

Asked Monday if he agreed with Netanyahu, Trump responded, “I don’t know.”

“I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly,” he went on.

“Because those children look very hungry.”

Starmer says U.K. will recognize Palestinian state if Israel hasn’t agreed to ceasefire by September

The United Kingdom will recognize Palestine as a state in September unless Israel takes “substantive steps” to end the “appalling situation in Gaza,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday.

Addressing reporters at Downing Street, the prime minister said the U.K. will recognize Palestine as a state at the United Nations General Assembly in September unless Israel takes a number of steps — including the establishment of a ceasefire in Gaza, a commitment to halting the annexation of territory in the West Bank, and a pledge to work toward a peace process involving a two-state solution.

“Meanwhile, our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal. They must immediately release all of the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza,” Starmer added.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes an address following an emergency cabinet meeting on Gaza at 10 Downing Street in London on July 29, 2025. TOBY MELVILLE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Speaking at the U.N. headquarters in New York moments after Starmer had finished speaking, British Foreign Minister David Lammy said the U.K. government had taken this decision as the “two-state solution is in peril.”

“Let me be clear — the Netanyahu government’s rejection of a two-state solution is wrong. It’s wrong morally and it’s wrong strategically. It harms the interest of the Israeli people, closing off the only path to a just and lasting peace, and that is why we are determined to protect the viability of a two-state solution,” Lammy said.

In a statement on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the U.K.’s decision, writing that “Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims.”

“A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW. Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen,” Netanyahu said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the decision by the U.K. and called it a “reward for Hamas” that “harms efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a framework for the release of hostages.”

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday, President Trump said he did not discuss the decision with Starmer during their bilateral meeting in Scotland a day before the announcement.

Seated alongside Starmer on Monday, Mr. Trump addressed the situation in Gaza, saying the U.S. will be providing food to the people of Gaza and working to eliminate barriers to humanitarian aid.

“Some of those kids are, that’s real starvation stuff,” Mr. Trump said Monday. “I see it. And you can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.

He added: “I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way.”

A Downing Street spokeswoman said in a statement that Starmer spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the phone regarding the announcement on Tuesday.

“He [Starmer] said that the situation in Gaza was intolerable and that the need for humanitarian access is now more pressing than ever before. He urged the Prime Minister to take immediate action to lift all restrictions on aid access and get those suffering in Gaza the food they need,” the spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman for Starmer’s office said the prime minister had also spoken over the phone with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and King Abdullah II of Jordan about the U.K.’s plan to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize Palestine as a state and would formalize that decision at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

“Consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine,” Macron said at the time. “The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and to bring relief to the civilian population.”

Netanyahu said Israel “strongly” condemned that decision and said that it “rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became.”

“A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it. Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel,” the Israeli leader said in a post on X.

That announcement came as pressure has mounted on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza as images of starving Palestinian children have garnered widespread global attention over the past week. The international pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures, including daily humanitarian pauses in fighting in parts of Gaza and airdrops.

France’s top diplomat, Jean-Noël Barrot, hailed the U.K. prime minister’s announcement Tuesday in a social media post.

“Together, through this pivotal decision and our combined efforts, we break the endless cycle of violence and reopen the prospect of peace in the region,” Barrot said.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists 149 countries that currently recognise the state of Palestine. That number would rise to 151 should France and the U.K. formalize recognition of Palestine as a state in September.

At least 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israel-Hamas conflict began, according to the most recent figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.