{"id":111500,"date":"2024-04-16T17:05:26","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T15:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=111500"},"modified":"2024-04-12T08:32:21","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T06:32:21","slug":"19-00-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=111500","title":{"rendered":"What the New York Times Left Out of Its \u2018Starving Gaza Children\u2019 Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>What the New York Times Left Out of Its \u2018Starving Gaza Children\u2019 Story<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Ira Stoll<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Palestinian fighters from the armed wing of Hamas take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip, July 19, 2023. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A front-page story<\/a> in Sunday\u2019s New York Times<\/em> accuses Israel of starving Gazan children to death.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story, though, is missing crucial context.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> reports, \u201cObtaining enough to eat had already been a struggle for many in the blockaded Gaza Strip before the war. An estimated 1.2 million Gazans had required food assistance, according to the United Nations, and around 0.8 percent of children under the age of 5 in Gaza had been acutely malnourished, the World Health Organization said. Five months into the war, that appears to have spiked: About 15 percent of Gazan children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished, as well as roughly 5 percent in the south, the World Health Organization said in February.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> reports these numbers for Gaza, but it doesn\u2019t say what the figures are in other places.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you look them up, you\u2019ll find that the same World Health Organization reports<\/a> figures of \u201csevere wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age\u201d of 1.1 percent in the Marshall Islands, 3.1 percent in Oman, 2.4 percent in Pakistan, 4.5 percent in Saudi Arabia, 1.7 percent in South Africa, 5.5 percent in Syria, 2.7 percent in Thailand, and 5.4 percent in Yemen. The numbers were 0.7 percent in China, 0.6 percent in Cuba, 1.4 percent in Ecuador, 4.8 percent in Egypt in 2014, 4.9 percent in India in 2017, and 2.9 percent in Lebanon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Got that? For all the Times<\/em> hype about the \u201cstruggle\u201d caused by the \u201cblockade,\u201d Gazans before the Hamas-initiated war were eating better than in some non-blockaded countries. That\u2019s because the so-called blockade wasn\u2019t designed to starve Gazans. It was intended \u2014 unsuccessfully, alas \u2014 to prevent the Hamas terrorist group from amassing more weaponry with which to kill Israelis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even months into the war, the 5 percent acute malnutrition rate reported by the WHO, if accurate, for Gazans who followed Israeli instructions to move south puts them in roughly the same shape as residents of India, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Why aren\u2019t starving children in those non-Gaza countries on the front page of the Sunday New York Times<\/em>? Because the Times<\/em> can\u2019t find a way to portray Jews as responsible for the deaths of those other children, and thus the news can\u2019t be shoehorned into a classical antisemitic trope.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of this is to deny that humanitarian conditions in Gaza are rough, or that some children are suffering. The fault for those conditions is with Hamas. The terrorist group could end the war immediately by surrendering and releasing the kidnapped hostages, but instead it cynically uses the civilian suffering as a way of advancing its diplomatic goal of surviving in power in Gaza after the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

You might wonder who wrote the Times<\/em> article. The first byline on the article is \u201cBilal Shbair,\u201d a new byline to Times<\/em> readers. As a former Israeli diplomat, Lenny Ben-David, noted in a social media post<\/a> about what he called a \u201cblood libel,\u201d Shbair is frequently interviewed by National Public Radio as a Gaza \u201cman on the street.\u201d A 2021 NPR dispatch<\/a> says, \u201cBilal Shbair, 34, teaches young children at an UNWRA school and lives with his wife and 20-month-old son in the central area of the Gaza Strip.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

UNRWA, whose full name is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is the UN\u2019s agency dedicated solely to the refugees and descendants of Palestinians who fled during Israel\u2019s 1948 War of Independence<\/span><\/p>\n

Given what we now know about UNWRA facilities being used to shelter Hamas tunnel entrances and missile launchers, as well as about the extensive involvement of UNWRA personnel<\/a> in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Shbair\u2019s UNWRA background might be worth disclosing to Times<\/em> readers.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter whose byline is on the piece, though, the ultimate responsibility to prevent the New York Times<\/em> from tilting to anti-Israel propaganda rests with the newspaper\u2019s editors, publisher, and owners. Sadly, the newspaper\u2019s management these days seems to care more about catering to an Israel-hating global online audience than it does about maintaining whatever is left of the newspaper\u2019s reputation for unbiased reporting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Ira Stoll<\/strong> was managing editor of <\/em>The Forward and North American editor of <\/em>The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular <\/em>Algemeiner feature, can be found <\/em>here<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the New York Times Left Out of Its \u2018Starving Gaza Children\u2019 Story Ira Stoll Palestinian fighters from the armed wing of Hamas take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip, July 19, 2023. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa A front-page story in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111500"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111636,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111500\/revisions\/111636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}