AFP Asia Business

Palestinian mother ‘destroyed’ after image used to deny Gaza starvation

Palestinian-Canadian Faiza Najjar was able to leave Gaza last year, but could not bring her four adult daughters with her. She watched from a distance as food shortages in the territory worsened.From Canada, where she lives with her six other children, Najjar pursued a months-long effort to get those she had left out of Gaza.She finally embraced her daughters and seven grandchildren when they arrived at Toronto’s airport last month.But when clips of the emotional reunion were posted on social media, pro-Israeli accounts mocked her physical appearance saying it disproved claims of starvation in Gaza.”As a mother it just destroyed me,” Najjar, 50, told AFP.Najjar did not claim that she went hungry while in Gaza.But as recently as this past weekend a post viewed more than 300,000 times across multiple platforms ridiculed her, erroneously implying she had just left Gaza.”Did you see what that woman looked like?” the poster said, pointing out Najjar does not look undernourished.United Nations agencies have warned that famine was unfolding in Gaza, with Israel severely restricting the entry of aid. Images of sick and emaciated Palestinian children have drawn international outrage.The allegation has been denied by Israel. “There is no starvation in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month.The ridicule Najjar faced is part of a broader trend.Israeli anchors on the country’s right-wing Channel 14 — sometimes described as the Hebrew Fox News — have laughed at “obese” mothers, alleging they steal their children’s food.For Najjar, the fact that her family’s reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating.”After all the suffering, and losing everything, and nearly dying, some people still had the heart to mock them,” she said, referring to her family.”My daughters lived there and their children went to sleep hungry…with bombs outside their tents,” Najjar said.Pro-Israeli commentators online also focused on her grandchildren’s apparently healthy appearance.Najjar told AFP they received medical treatment, including renourishment, at a hospital in Jordan before flying to Canada.- Deflecting attention -Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, said the posts targeting Najjar are “just one little piece” of a misleading online narrative.Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow removed a video she had posted on Instagram in which she welcomed arriving Palestinians because of abusive comments directed at the family.Comments on Chow’s video also cited the family’s physical appearance to broadly dismiss claims of starvation in Gaza.X’s chatbot Grok also misidentified a 2025 AFP photo of an emaciated child in Gaza, incorrectly saying it was taken in Yemen seven years ago, fuelling further claims that reports of starvation in Gaza have been fabricated.Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank, said the claims were reminiscent of falsehoods that emerged weeks into the war alleging Palestinians had posed as so-called crisis actors and staged their injuries. Wirtschafter said the hoax narrative “deflects from the real humanitarian harms that are happening right now.”- ‘Denial’ -Israel’s offensive has killed at least 61,430 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, figures the United Nations deems reliable.Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Forty-nine of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.When Najjar left Gaza last year, her daughters — all in their 20s — did not have Canadian citizenship.With the family separated, she lived with crippling fear at the prospect of receiving word that they had been killed.While her daughters now have citizenship and are in Canada with their children, her sons-in-law remain in Gaza, where the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification says “widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.””I just want the world to know the crisis is real,” Najjar told AFP. “Denial is deadly.”

Netanyahu floats ‘allowing’ Palestinians out of Gaza as mediators renew truce push

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday revived calls to “allow” Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip, as the military prepares a broader offensive in the territory.Past calls to resettle Gazans outside of the war-battered territory, including from US President Donald Trump, have sparked concern among Palestinians and condemnation from the international community.Netanyahu defended his war policies in a rare interview with Israeli media, broadcast shortly after Egypt said Gaza mediators were leading a renewed push to secure a 60-day truce.The premier told Israeli broadcaster i24NEWS that “we are not pushing them out, but we are allowing them to leave”.”Give them the opportunity to leave, first of all, combat zones, and generally to leave the territory, if they want,” he said, citing refugee outflows during wars in Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.In the Gaza Strip, Israel for years has tightly controlled the borders and barred many from leaving.”We will allow this, first of all within Gaza during the fighting, and we will certainly allow them to leave Gaza as well,” Netanyahu said.For Palestinians, any effort to force them off their land would recall the “Nakba”, or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.Netanyahu has endorsed Trump’s suggestion this year to expel Gaza’s more than two million people to Egypt and Jordan, while far-right Israeli ministers have called for their “voluntary” departure.- Cairo talks -Israel’s plans to expand its offensive into Gaza City come as diplomacy aimed at securing an elusive ceasefire and hostage release deal in the 22-month-old war has stalled for weeks, after the latest round of negotiations broke down in July.Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty announced that Cairo was “working very hard now in full cooperation with the Qataris and Americans”, aiming for “a ceasefire for 60 days, with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian detainees, and the flow of humanitarian and medical assistance to Gaza without restrictions, without conditions”.Hamas said in a statement early Wednesday that a delegation of its leadership had arrived in Cairo for “preliminary talks” with Egyptian officials.A Palestinian source earlier told AFP that the mediators were working “to formulate a new comprehensive ceasefire agreement proposal” that would include the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza “in one batch”.Netanyahu said in his interview he would oppose the staggered release of hostages, and instead would “want to return all of them as part of an end to the war — but under our conditions”.Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure a breakthrough since a short-lived truce earlier this year.News of the potential truce talks came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel has intensified its air strikes on Gaza City in recent days, following the security cabinet’s decision to expand the war there.- Intensified strikes -Netanyahu’s government has not provided an exact timetable on when forces may enter the area, but civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Tuesday that air raids had already begun increasing over the past three days.Israel is “intensifying its bombardment” using “bombs, drones, and also highly explosive munitions that cause massive destruction”, he said.Bassal said that Israeli strikes across the territory, including on Gaza City, killed at least 33 people on Tuesday.”The bombardment has been extremely intense for the past two days. With every strike, the ground shakes,” said Majed al-Hosary, a resident of Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.An Israeli air strike on Sunday killed four Al Jazeera employees and two freelance reporters outside a Gaza City hospital, with Israel accusing one of the slain correspondents of being a Hamas militant.Israel has faced mounting criticism over the war, which was triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 2023 attack.UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in.Netanyahu is under mounting domestic pressure to secure the release of the remaining hostages — 49 people including 27 the Israeli military says are dead — as well as over his plans to expand the war.Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel’s offensive has killed at least 61,599 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, whose toll the United Nations considers reliable.