Trite to say, but Israel is losing global PR battle
Israel had a legitimate right to root out the terrorist organisation responsible for the October 7 atrocities that murdered 1200 Israeli citizens. However, 661 days later, the conflict is continuing to wreak unspeakable suffering on Gazans deprived of essential supplies of food and water.

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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Photographing famine
And now to a grim tipping point in what has become one of the defining conflicts of our time. With much of Gaza reduced to ruins and estimates courtesy of the Gazan health ministry of 60,000 dead including 17,000 children, the battle for food and water is now a crisis: MAN: I swear, it's been four days since we've eaten and I can't stand, look at my hands shaking. - Deutsche Welle News/SBS, 23 July 2025 Two million people fighting for the pickings delivered by a broken and vastly inadequate aid program. Those convoys that do get through are swamped, while hundreds of the hungry and desperate have been shot dead: CAITRÍONA PERRY: The UN Human Rights Office says more than 500 people have been killed trying to reach those aid points which are now run by the US and Israeli governments. A UN official has described the system as 'an abomination' and 'a death trap'. Israel rejects allegations that it has committed war crimes in Gaza. - BBC News, 25 July 2025 The UN says nearly a quarter of the 2.1 million people in Gaza are now facing famine-like conditions and last week more than 100 aid agencies and NGOs accused the Israeli Government of laying siege to Gaza and restricting the flow of aid, which Israel denies, claiming large volumes of food are being pilfered by Hamas: DAVID MENCER: There is a man-made shortage, but it's been engineered by Hamas. That's the point. That's the end of the sentence, which you don't include. This suffering exists because Hamas made it so. Here are the facts … There is no famine in Gaza. There is a famine of the truth. - Sky News UK, 24 July 2025 There can be little cavilling however that children in Gaza are facing hunger—the disabled and vulnerable among them hardest hit. Powerful evidence emerging in the past week courtesy of Palestinian journalists. But it was the images of one child which stopped the world. And a warning, these are difficult to see. These photographs of 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq whose emaciated body is being denied the baby formula it needs. Captured in the rubble of Gaza City by journalist Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, the shocking photograph spurred one of the world's most proudly conservative newspapers to draw up this extraordinary edition: FOR PITY'S SAKE STOP THIS NOW - Daily Express, 23 July 2025 … and galvanised newspaper editors from Toronto to Sao Paolo to fill page one with similar scenes of agony and deprivation: Forced into Famine - Toronto Star, 24 July 2025 DON'T LOOK AWAY - Daily Mirror, 26 July 2025 By Friday morning, Nine's The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were following suit. The AFR ran confronting images inside the paper on Saturday, while SBS and the ABC have run similar pictures online and on TV. We spoke to the photographer who took this harrowing image: I saw the tent of the family … and went inside to start taking pictures. It was an incredibly difficult environment in every sense … The woman in the photo is a widow; she lost her husband in the war. She is trying to raise her two children alone … The war has deprived them of everything. - Email, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, photographer, 26 July 2025 The BBC's International editor Jeremy Bowen, using a Palestinian freelancer, tracked down the boy's mother, Hedaya al-Muta'wi: JEREMY BOWEN: His name is Mohammed, he's 18 months old and he weighs six kilos… HEDAYA AL-MUTA'WI: He can't stand up on his feet or sit because of the fatigue. We can't get baby formula for Mo, because the prices are too high. I go from one hospital to another trying to get him formula. - BBC News, 26 July 2025 There are now also urgent concerns for the people behind the lens. On Friday Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, the BBC and Reuters warned their journalists were facing the threat of starvation. One of the ABC's own freelancers losing the ability to operate his camera and Al-arini told us he's not immune from the bleak realities either: I fainted three times while taking photos due to hunger and thirst … We lost our home, we are displaced, and the children cry constantly from hunger … The displacement, the fight for survival, and the struggle between life and death experienced by the people here are beyond imagination. - Email, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, photographer, 26 July 2025 The Sydney Morning Herald's veteran conflict photographer, Kate Geraghty, told us: There are moments in history when an image is so powerful … that it can effect change and sometimes end wars … … The images taken by the incredibly brave Palestinian photographers of children starving in Gaza … are such images. - Email, Kate Geraghty, Photojournalist, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2025 So consequential, the work of these photographers, on Saturday the Israeli military announced it would allow the resumption of air drops of food and reestablish safe routes for the deployment of aid convoys into the strip. Evidence the right image at the right time can move the world.

Sky News AU
3 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Labor recognising Palestinian statehood would be a ‘mistake'
The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan discusses Prime Minister Anthony Albanese walking both sides of the street on Gaza and Palestinian statehood. 'I think you have to view this all through the lens of domestic politics and especially managing the left and managing the Labor Party,' Mr Sheridan told Sky News host James Macpherson. 'The current worry the government has of not having another bit of trouble with the Trump administration, I think, recognising a Palestinian state would be a mistake.'

News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Starmer to press Trump on Gaza, trade in Scotland talks
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will press Donald Trump on ending "the unspeakable suffering" in Gaza, and also talk trade, when they meet Monday at the US president's golf resort in Scotland, Downing Street said. The talks will come a day after the US and the European Union reached a landmark deal to end a transatlantic standoff over tariffs and avert a full-blown trade war. Starmer is expected to push Trump on urging a revival of stalled ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas as a hunger crisis deepens in the besieged Palestinian territory. The meeting at Turnberry, southwestern Scotland, comes as European countries express growing alarm at the situation in Gaza, and as Starmer faces domestic pressure to follow France's lead and recognise a Palestinian state. The leaders will also discuss implementing a recent UK-US trade deal, as well as efforts to end Russia's war against Ukraine, according to a British government statement issued late Sunday. But it is the growing threat of starvation faced by Palestinians in Gaza that is set to dominate the talks, on the third full day of Trump's trip to the land where his mother was born. Starmer is expected to "welcome the president's administration working with partners in Qatar and Egypt to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza," a Downing Street spokesperson said. - 'Reject hunger' - Trump told reporters Sunday that the United States would give more aid to Gaza but he wanted other countries to step up as well. "It's not a US problem. It's an international problem," he said, before embarking on crunch trade talks with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen at the resort south of Glasgow. He also accused Hamas of intercepting aid, saying "they're stealing the food, they're stealing a lot of things. You ship it in and they steal it, then they sell it." Starmer and Trump's meeting comes after the UK PM backed efforts by Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to air drop aid to Gaza. Humanitarian chiefs remain sceptical those aid drops can deliver enough food safely for the area's more than two million inhabitants. On Sunday, Israel declared a "tactical pause" in fighting in parts of Gaza and said it would allow the UN and aid agencies to open secure land routes to tackle the hunger crisis. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres urged the international community on Monday to fight against hunger around the world. "Hunger fuels instability and undermines peace. We must never accept hunger as a weapon of war," he told a UN conference. - Tariffs - Last week, the United States and Israel withdrew from Gaza truce talks, with US envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of blocking a deal -- a claim rejected by the Palestinian militant group. Starmer held talks with French and German counterparts on Saturday, after which the UK government said they agreed "it would be vital to ensure robust plans are in place to turn an urgently-needed ceasefire into lasting peace". But the Downing Street statement made no mention of Palestinian statehood, which French President Emmanuel Macron has announced his country will recognise in September. More than 220 MPs in Britain's 650-seat parliament, including dozens from Starmer's own ruling Labour party, have demanded that he too recognise Palestinian statehood. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told ITV on Monday that "every Labour MP, was elected on a manifesto of recognition of a Palestinian state" and that it was "a case of when, not if." Number 10 said Starmer and Trump would also discuss "progress on implementing the UK-US trade deal", which was signed on May 8 and lowered tariffs for certain UK exports but has yet to come into force. Trump said Sunday the agreement was "great" for both sides but Reynolds told BBC Breakfast on Monday that "it wasn't job done" and cautioned not to expect any announcement of a resolution on issues such as steel and aluminium tariffs. After their meeting the two leaders will travel together to Aberdeen in Scotland's northeast, where the US president is expected to formally open a new golf course at his resort on Tuesday. Trump played golf at Turnberry on Saturday and Sunday on his five-day visit that has mixed leisure with diplomacy, and also further blurred the lines between the presidency and his business interests. pdh-jwp/jkb/jm