Gaunt Hostages

The Western press is at it again – wringing its hands over the gaunt condition of the Israeli hostages released by Hamas, while steadfastly ignoring the fact that the entire population of Gaza has been systematically starved by Israel’s blockade. A crisis of deliberate design, yet the media somehow manages to frame it as yet another example of Israeli victimhood.

Let’s look at the facts. Since October, Israel has choked off food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza, a strip of land where 2.3 million people were already living under a brutal blockade. Humanitarian agencies have been screaming for months that starvation is setting in, that children are dying from malnutrition, that disease is spreading due to a lack of clean water. The UN, Oxfam, Save the Children – take your pick – all saying the same thing: Israel is actively blocking aid and creating conditions of mass suffering.

Now, in a moment of jaw-dropping irony, the Israeli hostages are released, visibly thinner, and the press is falling over itself to paint this as evidence of Hamas’s cruelty. Pause for a moment – if hardly any food is entering Gaza, what exactly were they meant to be eating? Magic beans? The people imprisoning them weren’t exactly feasting, were they? When an entire population is being denied food, everyone goes hungry – captors and captives alike.

Yet this blindingly obvious reality is neatly sidestepped. The BBC, CNN, and their ilk frame the story as though Hamas deliberately starved the hostages while simultaneously ignoring the fact that Israel has been starving Gaza wholesale.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about excusing Hamas. But it is about exposing the utter hypocrisy of Western media. The same journalists who weep over Israeli hostages are oddly mute when it comes to the thousands of Palestinian children who have died of malnutrition and dehydration in recent months. Starving civilians to death is a war crime – unless, apparently, Israel does it, in which case it’s just ‘security policy’.

If you want a measure of media bias, here it is. One group of gaunt people is proof of barbarity. Another group of gaunt people is barely worth mentioning. And the common denominator? The same Israeli policies that caused both. But you won’t hear that on the six o’clock news.