Consider the case of the infamous New York Times front page photograph of the mother holding what she alleged to be her starving, scrawny son. Certainly, it is disgraceful but not atypical that the NYT cropped out this child’s healthy, slightly older brother, which should have raised immediate questions to any honest reporter. It is not even surprising that it was later revealed that the gaunt child actually suffered from cerebral palsy and looked that way even before the war, that other such phony pictures were similarly disseminated, or that the NYT issued a mealy-mouthed clarification (although not an apology).

Two points are surprising. Did any enterprising journalist even think of returning and asking the mother why she lied so brazenly? And has anyone noticed that this is a recurring pattern?

In August 1982 during the First Lebanon War, an irate Ronald Reagan was shown a photograph of a Lebanese child who had lost both arms, allegedly in an errant Israeli airstrike on a residential area in East Beirut. He called Menahem Begin, demanded an immediate ceasefire, and even termed what was happening in Beirut a “holocaust.” He noted in his diary how profoundly affected he was by the image of the wounded child.

Except that the picture was also fake.

As the Washington Post – no friend of Israel, then or now – reported three weeks later, the Lebanese child had actually suffered fractured wrists as the result of Palestinian Arab shelling of Christian neighborhoods in East Beirut. No lost arms, no fault of Israel. The camera angle was manipulated to make it look as if the arms were amputated. But never mind, mission accomplished: Israel was impugned.

The “starvation” in Gaza is of a similar nature and recalls another Lebanese War libel. In September 1982, Lebanese Christian Phalangists entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut and killed anywhere from 700-1500 Muslims, mainly civilians, in order to avenge the assassination just two days earlier of their leader, newly elected Lebanese Christian president Bashir Gemayel. That this was the culmination of mutual massacres between Lebanese Muslims and Christians going on for at least a decade was of no concern to those who wanted to blame Israel for the atrocity. As Menahem Begin expressed it quite pithily, “Gentiles murder Gentiles, and they want to hang the Jews.”

That sentiment has not changed. Succinctly, in Gaza, Hamas starves its people, and they want to hang the Jews.

Except that no one is starving in Gaza, and to the extent that there is “food insecurity,” which is quite common in any war zone, it is part of the Hamas pattern that consistently and repeatedly utilizes its own people as human shields, revels in their victimization, and enjoys their martyrdom. What we do not seem to internalize is that this is not happenstance. This is the Hamas strategy.

Hamas cannot defeat Israel or directly achieve its fantasy of Israel’s destruction and elimination. What it can do – and they have quite willing accomplices across the world and many useful idiots among the Jews – is gradually weaken us through demoralization, loss of faith in the justice of our cause, and playing on the natural compassion Jews have for all sufferers – even when those sufferers are our tormentors.

Thus, just like in the First Lebanon War, Israel’s leftist media and their adherents are again trying to cause us to forget Hamas’ invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, the role played by thousands of “innocent civilians” in raping, murdering, pillaging, and capturing and holding hostages, and the reality of Hamas’ defiant insistence on destroying Israel and murdering every Jew in the world.

Most of this comes from their intense hatred of PM Netanyahu, which by now has far exceeded what was then the left’s intense hatred of Menahem Begin, which today is seemingly overlooked. But some of their reaction is undoubtedly influenced by the government’s meandering path to victory, its overpromising and under-delivering, and the falsified images of injured children that has unleashed Jew hatred across the world or at least brought it out of hibernation.

In that spirit, a small group of leftist Orthodox rabbis – mostly, the old and unrepentant Oslo and Gaza Expulsion crowd, and mostly American – circulated a letter decrying the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza” as “one of the most severe in recent history,” one in which the Israeli government is not “absolved” from “sharing responsibility for the profound suffering of Gaza’s civilian population.” They will get the usual suspects to sign, signal their virtue to the world, feel good about themselves, and accomplish nothing.

They are also completely oblivious to the fact that they are playing Hamas’ game. In their misguided mercy for evildoers, they are aiding and abetting the enemy, which of course would not spare them when Hamas came for them, either in Israel or overseas, just like Hamas did not spare the leftist denizens of the Gaza envelope on October 7. Sadly, among many Jews, this is what passes for rabbinic leadership.

Similarly, the New York UJA Federation announced this week a donation of $1,000,000 to a Gaza relief fund run by Israel. I am not certain that will impress our enemies. As one of my astute rabbinic colleagues suggested, it is a shame that UJA did not have that much money in 1945 or they might have donated it to rebuild Dresden. And I do not doubt that many among their donors are quite gratified that UJA is contributing to the rehabilitation and wellbeing of these modern Nazis.

The world delights in the libels against Israel because its enmity against Jews is largely latent but chronic. It loves believing the worst about us. Consequently, every faked picture, every doctored statistic, every wild accusation – the wilder, the better – is believed because they want to believe it. Genocide, mass murder, mass starvation, concentration camps, torture, ethnic cleansing – say that the Jews are doing it and there is a ready market for it.

What we don’t ever seem to realize is that Hamas is simply employing taqiyya, an ancient Muslim doctrine that permits, even encourages, lying to your enemies in order to further the cause of Islam. (Ironically, part of taqiyya is denying that it exists and defining it as “the concealment of religious beliefs in order to avoid persecution,” quite similar to the way we are supposed to understand jihad, not as a holy war against infidels, but “as a personal religious struggle.” Sure.) That is why the Gazan mother could blithely lie about her son’s “starvation” and not be challenged on it, the Gaza Health Ministry casually fabricates its statistics, and Hamas can level any accusation against Israel that will further its objectives.

The tendentious world might buy it, but that does not excuse Israelis, rabbis, or good people anywhere for falling for the enemy narrative. And make no mistake – when Jews bewail the “suffering” in Gaza, they are advancing the narrative of Hamas and strengthening them in their war against Israel.

Add to that the notorious canard about “extreme settler violence.” Aside from the fact that statistics say otherwise, every attack on any Arab in Judea and Samaria is attributed to “settler violence.” This includes Arab terrorists killed by the IDF, Arabs who attack Jews who then defend themselves, or any Arab who suffers any injury even if another Arab causes it accidentally. It is always “settler violence,” arrests and indictments first, details and facts later, if ever.

We would do well to utterly discount any Arab report on any matter that relates to Israel or Jews. Just assume it is false until proven otherwise. This would strike a much-needed blow for truth as a value – and it should also give pause to our “destroyers and demolishers from within” (Yeshayahu 49:17) who in their misguided pursuit of what they perceive as justice and mercy have made themselves promoters of our enemy’s narrative and accomplices to its agenda. We should not be propagating their libels or abetting the libelers.

It would be far better if we understood the madness around us as the expected enemy counterforces to the process of redemption that is underway, which we all (and certainly rabbis) should not be impeding but encouraging. Then we will merit the continuation of the Heavenly assistance that has sustained us until today and will bring redemption in the near future.

Image Credit: Jewish Star; Star of David by Alex Promios via Wikimedia Commons, Accessed with a CC BY 2.0 license