The UN quietly stated last week that 100% of Gazans’ basic food needs are being met for the first time since 2023.
In the January 5 statement, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric announced that the January humanitarian aid to Gaza meets 100% of the minimum caloric standard and that there is sufficient stock for all citizens.
This comes just weeks after the international furor caused by Israel’s announcement that it would be suspending the operations of dozens of NGOs over their failure to register through the proper system. Fifty NGOs warned that this would negatively affect aid going into the strip; however, the new UN statement indicates that these fears were unfounded.
More surprisingly, perhaps, is that a week later, not one international mainstream media outlet has covered the UN’s announcement. The story was covered by various fringe outlets, such as The European Sting, Radio Algeria, and the Senegalese news agency Pana Press, but not by any major outlets. The Jerusalem Post searched in seven languages.
The question remains why the mainstream media has not highlighted this positive announcement. The BBC, for example, has had scores of reports on aid to Gaza in the last month, including the December 29 piece “UN-backed Experts Say Gaza Food Supplies Improving, but 100,000 Still in ‘Catastrophic Conditions.’” And yet the update did not get the same coverage.
The New York Times has similarly covered Gaza aid stories multiple times in the last few weeks, including “Gaza City Famine Averted, Global Experts Say, but Palestinians Face Major Difficulties Accessing Food” in mid-December. Again, no coverage for the new UN statement.
The Post was not the only one to notice this trend; Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, made the same point in a post on X/Twitter, writing, “This is a headline you won’t find in the BBC or the New York Times, which continue to lie and say that Israel is preventing humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s embassy in South Africa also commented, writing on Facebook, “An unpopular fact that mainstream media will not publicize, and [they will] continue to drive a false narrative that Israel is preventing humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.”
Fitting into the narrative
It is not unusual for international media to jump into action to cover a story that fits into the narrative of Israel as the bad actor, but then stay silent when a story doesn’t. This was seen just two weeks ago with the banning of the aforementioned NGOs from Gaza, with international media suggesting that all aid to the enclave would now be cut off. Very few outlets, however, publicized the IDF’s assurance that the banned groups were producing only 1% of the aid and that the 24 organizations that were not banned are producing 99% of the total aid volume.
One might think that international media would jump for joy at the news that the Gazan people are having their nutritional needs met, over two years into the war.
The silence surrounding the announcement raises the uncomfortable question about whether success stories in Gaza are considered newsworthy at all.