[progne]

Blown up hospitals can be secondary to firing rockets from the parking lot and using them as ammo dumps and military headquarters. You can take this line of reasoning back to the big bang without addressing the quality of evidence of a severe food shortage.

[cholantesh]

They can be, but given how many times Israel's made the assertion only to go "oopsie doodle, our multibillion dollar intelligence apparatus made a boo-boo and it turns out that there actually was not an installation under this civilian infrastructure", this isn't as robust a premise as you think it is. Anyway, the quality of evidence seems to suffice for doctors, NGOs, human rights watchdogs, practically anyone who isn't an Israeli official or an apologist thereof, probably something worth considering.

[progne]

The fact that the two highest profile examples of starvation in Gaza have confounding conditions makes me suspect otherwise. If it is as widespread as feared, it should be easier to find pictures of starving Gazans than fat Gazans.

It is notable that in the same famous photo of the emaciated Mohammed Zakaria al‑Mutawaq in the NYT article, his not-malnourished looking brother Joud was cropped out. And their mother is not emaciated. Is she supposed to be starving her younger child to feed herself and her other son? To me this is evidence of press cooperation with a propaganda campaign.

I submit that if you find either side in this propaganda war to be credible by default, you do the other side a disservice.

[cholantesh]

>The fact that the two highest profile examples of starvation in Gaza have confounding conditions makes me suspect otherwise. If it is as widespread as feared, it should be easier to find pictures of starving Gazans than fat Gazans.

Sure, if Israel wasn't actively targeting journalists and cutting off telecoms from within the strip, and the case for starvation rested entirely on a couple of photographs in mainstream US broadsheets.

>It is notable that in the same famous photo of the emaciated Mohammed Zakaria al‑Mutawaq in the NYT article, his not-malnourished looking brother Joud was cropped out. And their mother is not emaciated.

You're right, just like it's notable that in the retraction, they didn't mention that his 'confounding condition' was caused by her malnutrition during pregnancy, per the same report that was used to force said retraction. Also, emaciation is not present in all cases of malnutrition.

>To me this is evidence of press cooperation with a propaganda campaign.

But, not say, calling it the 'Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry' to diminish the credibility of the casualty figures which were good enough for the WHO and UN? Odd.

>I submit that if you find either side in this propaganda war to be credible by default, you do the other side a disservice.

If you were sincere about this standard, you would apply it to yourself. Even this statement is implicitly propagandistic, if not conspiratorial.