Will Jones
Dr Will Jones is Editor of the Daily Sceptic. He has a PhD in political philosophy, an MA in ethics, a BSc in mathematics and a diploma in theology. He lives in Leamington Spa with his wife and two children.
In the past week, a heart-wrenching image of a desperately thin Gazan child has been splashed on the front pages of newspapers worldwide and all over social media. But what none of them have told you, says David Collier, is that the child has a serious genetic disorder – and his brother is well. Here’s an excerpt from David’s viral thread on X.
This is not the face of famine. It is the face of a medically vulnerable child whose tragic situation was hijacked and weaponised. Exposing the truth behind the viral Gaza ‘famine’ image of Mohammed Al-Matouq.
You’ve seen the photo. A starving Gazan child. Bones showing. Headline after headline claiming it was proof of famine. It ran on the front page of the Daily Express on July 23rd. Then Sky News, CNN, NYT, BBC, Guardian, and others picked it up. But they left something out.
Let me just start with other images the media chose not to use. Photographs of Mohammed with his three year-old brother Joud. Both mother and brother are healthy and fed. Any honest journalist should have immediately questioned – and reported – what we were actually seeing.
Mohammed suffers from cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder. He has required nutritional supplements since birth. A medical report issued in Gaza in May 2025 confirms all of this. This wasn’t disclosed in a single major outlet.
I watched @bbcnews lie on screen. It interviewed the mother. She referenced a history of physiotherapy. The signs were there. The BBC ignored them. Instead it reported the curved spine was from famine. A healthy child starving fits the narrative. A child with CP doesn’t.
And what of the father? The media said Mohammed had no father, because he had been killed by the Israelis when out “looking for food”. Pushing the hunger narrative even more. This example from @nytimes.
Turns out he was killed on October 28th 2024 (don’t worry – receipts in article below). He was killed in a targeted strike on ‘al Qassabeeb’ street in Jabaliya. The Israelis lost seven soldiers in that area in that week.
This is what ‘al Qassabeeb’ street in Jabaliya looked like that week. This is a Hamas video showing terrorists targeting the IDF in the same street that Mohammed’s father was in apparently out “looking for food”.
The UN and NGOs also played a disturbing role in creating a crisis. Rather than helping deliver aid, they imposed impossible logistical demands, stalling food deliveries and wanting Hamas control over distribution. Why? Because Hamas needs control to keep ruling Gaza.
Read the full thread here.
This is not to say there is not a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It’s hard to know the truth. But spreading misleading images of an ill child as the face of a ‘famine’ is no way to build confidence that what we’re being told are the facts.
This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.
