Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman accuses The New York Times of publishing a false Gaza starvation image while refusing to show genuine footage of emaciated Israeli hostages.
Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has launched a blistering attack on The New York Times, accusing the paper of fueling anti-Israel sentiment through manipulated narratives while burying undeniable evidence of Hamas’s abuse of Israeli hostages.
In a post on X, Friedman blasted the Times for running a widely circulated photo of an emaciated child in Gaza as alleged proof that Israel was “starving” Palestinian children. The truth, he said, was far different: the boy suffered from a genetic disorder unrelated to malnutrition. The child’s healthy sibling—visible in the original image—was deliberately cropped out to bolster the false narrative.
“Notwithstanding its resources in Gaza, this was the best evidence the Times had of intentional malnutrition—and it proved nothing because the entire accusation was false,” Friedman wrote. Although the paper later issued a retraction, it did so quietly, on a little-known X account with virtually no followers.
By contrast, Friedman pointed to newly released footage of hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, who have been held in Hamas tunnels since October 2023. The images show the men visibly skeletal and emotionally shattered—but Friedman says such undeniable proof of Hamas’s brutality is nowhere to be found in the Times or other mainstream outlets.
Linking media bias to global political hostility toward Israel, Friedman said: “People ask me how could 27 Democratic senators vote to cut off assistance to Israel, or how could the UK, France and Canada vote to recognize a Palestinian terror state? It all begins with skewed and manipulated information designed to pour fuel on the fire of Jew-hatred.”
While singling out The New York Times for what he called its “distinguished history of abandoning Jews in crisis,” Friedman stressed that the problem runs deeper. “It’s on the woke left and the woke right. We must fight it with all we’ve got!”
