Homicide, genocide, and even, some say, deicide are evoked by a viral picture splashed on front pages and television screens around the world. Now that image is subject to a New York Times correction, or, as the Times put it, “Editors’ Note.” Published yesterday in the Gray Lady’s public relations X account, the Times now acknowledges that the story behind that picture, which took up nearly a quarter of its July 25 front page, omitted a crucial detail.   

The suffering 18-month-old, Mohammed Zakaria al-Matouq, lovingly held by his anguished mother, became a worldwide symbol of an Israel-inflicted famine in Gaza. As the Times now knows, Mohammed “also had pre-existing health problems.” An independent sleuth, David Collier, first uncovered hospital records showing Mohammed’s problems include cerebral palsy and hypoxemia. He was born with a serious genetic disorder.

The Times note reads like a child’s “sorry not sorry.” It reiterates its reporting that “children in Gaza are malnourished and starving.” It is not our purpose, though, to correct other publications’ corrections. What offends us is the wholesale vilification of Israel, which is presumed guilty before proven otherwise. Hamas, which first abused Mohammed in order to vilify Israel, has become the left’s favored narrator of the Gaza war it has launched. 

“We have published every one of the 18,500 known names of children killed by Israel’s military operations in Gaza,” a Washington Post reporter, Louisa Loveluck, boasts today. While the Post splashed “some of their names” in two pages, it acknowledged the list’s origin is Hamas’s Gaza health ministry, which “doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.” The Post’s virtue signaling is meant to send a message: Hamas’s message. 

Saying that Israel is responsible for all of Gaza’s woes is now received wisdom beyond the press. Prime Minister Starmer threatened yesterday to recognize “Palestine” in September. That is “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a cease-fire,” and other conditions. Never mind that Hamas consistently rejected cease-fire proposals and is mostly responsible for that “appalling situation.”

Perhaps the Labourite read of two unidentified “senior” Israeli military officials who told the Times that Hamas doesn’t substantially confiscate humanitarian aid. That charge is laughable even beyond the endless video clips showing armed Hamas men commandeering aid trucks: The United Nations notes the ever-rising cost of flour in Gaza markets. Yet, all flour there is donated free of charge. Why is it sold in markets to begin with?

Hamas is enriched by the ample aid that enters Gaza, and is largely responsible for the hunger deaths that it blames on Israel. It uses some of the proceeds to fill its coffers and to recruit terrorists, many of them underage. It then lists them as “children” in its death statistics. Portraying Israel as the party responsible for hunger and death feeds an inaccurate narrative against the Jewish state that is aided by the Moutaq picture that the Times exploits.