Caption: Fabricated and Fake Photos of Starvation

One of the key tactics used by terrorist organizations is to create false narratives and manipulate images in order to garner public sympathy and condemn legitimate state actions.

Hamas, a notorious terrorist group responsible for the deaths of 10 Nepali students and the kidnapping of Bipin Joshi, has recently been successful in launching a coordinated fake campaign against the state of Israel. Despite Hamas's history of violence and ongoing terror activities, major international media outlets have fallen for their false propaganda, including the circulation of fabricated and doctored photographs.

Hamas is currently receiving backing and support from terrorist organizations, leftist intellectuals, and religious fanatics as they work to generate negative sentiment towards Israel's efforts to protect its citizens.

According to the government of Israel, a concerning surge of misleading information, manipulative narratives and fabricated or AI-generated images, have been observed over the recent weeks, targeting the State of Israel, tarnishing Israel’s image and misrepresenting the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Hamas Propaganda has gone as far as exploiting images of seriously ill children, with some Western media outlets unfortunately publishing them. For example, a widely shared article that used an image of a child in a frame begging. However, a similar photo featuring a Yazidi girl in the identical frame, dates back to 2014. This image has further been falsely circulated as a young girl begging for food in Gaza in 2025. Similarly, unrelated photos of children, suffering from medical conditions such as cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis, have been misused in false reports about starvation in Gaza. The dissemination of false information in a coordinated manner is driven by Hamas’s propaganda, portraying a humanitarian crisis created by Israel in Gaza.

These actions not only violate journalistic ethics but also distort public understanding of the realities on the ground and serves the interests of terrorist organizations that thrive on chaos and deception.

Despite these efforts of tarnishing Israel’s image, Israel remains committed to providing humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, including the enormous quantities of food, water, medicine and other essential supplies. Israel has been facilitating the entry of hundreds of aid truck into the Gaza strip to designated locations to be collected and distributed by the UN. However, the UN has unfortunately failed to collect and distribute the aid effectively.

It is also critical to emphasize that Hamas, a terror organization, is deliberately endangering its own population by embedding its terrorists within civilian areas, using people as human shields, and turning schools, hospitals, and mosques into military shields.

The Embassy of Israel has observed that Nepali media have also been influenced by deliberately manipulated information about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We urge responsible media to verify the accuracy of such reports prior to publication.

Israel reaffirms its commitment to all genuine efforts for peace, dialogue, accountability and prosperity for all the people in the region.

Unlike his brother standing by his side, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq suffers from cerebral palsybut, BBC, CNN, Daily Express, and The New York Times spread a misleading story using a picture of a sick, disabled child to promote a narrative of mass starvation in Gaza — playing into the hands of Hamas's propaganda war.