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Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

If you don't believe Gaza's health ministry, how about Agence France-Presse?

The journalists' association of the French wire service Agence France-Presse (AFP) warned on Monday that staff working with the agency in Gaza are at risk of starvation and that "without intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die."

In the statement, the SDJ said that AFP's journalists in Gaza have warned that they no longer have strength to report, with one photographer, Bashar Taleb, saying in a post on Facebook: "My body is thin and I can no longer work."

"Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can recall seeing a colleague die of hunger," the SDJ said in a post on X.

https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/22/afp-journalists-at-risk-...

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I fully believe that Gazans are starving, I just don't think it's Israel's fault. Hamas is stealing and withholding food, and other resources.

Israel controls 80% of the territory in Gaza and all the aid posts. This is a complete fabrication by the media that has no correspondence to what people in the ground are saying.

> Hamas is stealing and withholding food, and other resources.

And this, blocking all food from the enclave will surely make the value of Hamas' stolen food worthless, right?

Wouldn't the smart decision for Israel be to flood Gaza with food aid, till any stolen supplies were worthless?

And that has nothing to do with israel blocking aid agencies from bringing in food?

Nothing to do with israel destroying farms and crops?

Hamas bad. We can all agree hamas bad. But to blame starvation on hamas when israel is in control of the food supply… how do you mental gymnastics your way to that??

I wasn’t aware of that media outlet, just FYI (and to reinforce your point) it seems that while there is a significant left bias, generally AFP’s journalism is considered reliable and credible.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/afp-fact-check-media-bi...

Are reporters taking food from Gaza’s or, how is that distributed?

AFP is like the third biggest news agency on this planet and you're linking to bothsides.bad?!

AFP is previously unknown to me, and yes I did because its actually reinforcing the parents point about being a reliable source.

Maybe read before commenting, or perhaps allow people to be ignorant and admit that openly; jumping down my throat because I don’t already know your favourite news outlet solves what exactly?

(also don’t think I don’t see the irony of your bio being: “I usually don't know what I'm talking about.”)

I wasn't trying to jump down your throat for not knowing AFP, I just thought it was a somewhat funny-absurdist situation to have a major news agency ranked for reliability by some website with a name that's basically a maga dogwhistle (not saying it is affiliated, as it predates maga). I can see that my phrasing was quite bad.

Oh, I don't doubt for a minute that the are starving people. The whole reason for Palestinian people to exist is to flip the script (hey it's tiny Israel against the whole giant Arab world) into it's evil Israel against Palestinian people who just want freedom. They are waging the CNN war after they lost, you know, the war war. If there are no starving people to produce for the France Presse cameras, they will create some.

That's the most deranged take I've seen so far. That's like saying native Americans existed to make the colonizers look bad.

Do you have a link to a recent picture of this Bashar Taleb? I've found the Gaza famine to be very different from any other famine I've ever looked into - people seem to go from healthy to "died from starvation" without ever getting thin.

If you google for "famine yemen", you see very thin children, with just skin on bone - all the fat and muscle is gone. If you google for "famine gaza", they just seem a lot healthier.

Must be your bubble because I see thin starving kids every time I open social media.

But not Bashar Taleb?

Have you ever watched the TV show Alone? It’s an outdoor survival competition reality show. In it people regularly end up medically evacuated due to starvation or malnutrition.

Sometimes you can tell by looking at someone’s face they’re starving - but usually you can’t. Usually it’s when they strip down for the periodic medical exam when you can actually tell how starved they are.

Do you want a recent photo of this man, or do you want him to strip naked for you to judge his weight loss?

Why is one man stripping naked for you something you need before you’ll believe the hundreds of different people saying that people are starving?

Like, seriously. What if he’s lying? He could be, of course - but would you then believe everyone is lying? Or what if he’s telling the truth about weight loss, and you see proof - will you then turn around and say well yeah but he’s probably just starving himself for attention?

You need proof one man is starving to believe hundreds?

Do you just believe everything you read on the internet? Or do you only believe it once $N others believe it on the exact same dubious evidence?

Funnily enough, everybody's a sceptic when buying a used car.

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