14000 Babies, 48 Hours and the Truth

We live in a world of clickbait headlines. You'll never believe what so and so has just done. 5 easy ways to change your life. 14000 Gazan babies will die in 48 hours from malnutrition.  So horrific. So damning. So outrageous. 

And, thankfully, so not true. The lie was propagated by Tom Fletcher on the BBC's Today programme. He provided no evidence for the figures which were simply made up. Later, after the announcement had made shockwaves (as, if true, it should) through social media, it turns out that there is a report that there could be 14100 cases of acute malnutrition in children between April 2025 and March 2026. Awful, still. Obviously. Just not 14000 babies will die in two days. And it matters. The truth matters. It has to matter or else we may as well just start posting whatever nonsense we want, which suits our agendas and biases.  

There are two crucial points. The first is that the situation in Gaza is bad. Of course it is. And it can be bad and something must be done without just making stuff up to make it look worse. Thousands dying can be bad without disgracing the memory of the Holocaust and baiting Jews by calling it a genocide, which it is not. Thousands of children being malnourished in a year unless more aid is distributed can be awful and tragic without clickbait articles about 14000 babies dying in two days. Exaggerating the situation helps no one. Spreading misinformation, no matter how well-intentioned and genuine, helps no one. Second, there is a real risk as a result of this misinformation. How many people will see that headline and not google it? How many people won't bother reading all the way through the BBC article I linked above? How many will take the numbers at face value? How much anger and hatred will that foster? As someone who has sat across from someone who asked me, fairly calmly, why I liked murdering babies almost as if he genuinely believed I a) murdered babies and b) enjoyed it, trust me misinformation matters and not just theoretically.

Blood libel against the Jews is nothing new. The social media age has just made it much more prevalent.

You can't even criticise Israel anymore

There is a consistent theme in discourse surrounding Israel-Palestine: claims of antisemitism are dismissed, without fail, as attempts to prevent criticism of Israel. This is stated, without qualification, across social media, in debates and in articles about the subject. It will sometimes be stated explicitly, lamenting the fact that critics of Israel are simply dismissed as antisemites (and their free speech is thus being infringed). Other times it is more implicit. One particualrly insiduous example of this was in the Financial Times Weekend Edition 15/03/2025 where Fara Dabhoiwala writes:

Meanwhile, his [Donald Trump's] administration is attacking universities and scholarship, bullying news organisations and futting the federal workforce in order to suppress voices and ideas it dislikes - criticism of Israel...

Zero context. Zero engagement. Merely the statement that Trump's administration is attempting (only) to supress criticism of Israel. 

Of course, if it were true, then we should all be concerned. No country is above criticism. Free speech must include, obviously, the right to criticise Israel and/or any other country. I may draw some conclusions about a fascination with criticising Israel over and instead of criticising any other country, but such speech should not be 'suppressed'. The only issue? That's not what is happening. Dabhoiwala knows that. He knows that the concern is violent antisemites who were intimidating, bullying and harrassing Jews. But he does not want you to know that. He does not even mention antisemitism. 

For the Pro-Palestinian activist, antisemitism does not exist. It is merely Jews, pesky Jews, attempting to deflect from criticism of Israel. Of course, the irony is that this is, itself, antisemitic. Denying Jews, and only Jews, the right to define what constitutes racism against us is antisemitic. Gaslighting Jews by claiming that you are just criticising Israel when you harrass, attack, bully, shout at Jews while insisting the right to protest past Synagogues to cause maximum distress to Jews is antisemitic. Calling the war against Hamas a 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing' (it isn't) and accusing Jews of whitewashing Israel's "crimes" when we point out the historical and legal inaccuracy of this statement is deeply antisemitic. Using the terms genocide or Holocaust to cause maximum distress to Jews while engaging in soft Holocaust denial is, you guessed it, antisemitic. 

But Dabhoiwala and his ilk would have you believe it is merely criticism of Israel. Shouting 'Free Palestine' at me, a visible Jew, is not antisemitism, just expressing a genuine desire for a Free Palestine. Asking me, a visible Jew, why I like killing babies is not antisemitism, but just an attempt to engage in meaningful debate about Israel. Protesting outside a synagogue is not antisemitism, but exercising one's right to protest. Chanting from "the river to the sea" is not a genocidal slogan calling for Palestine to replace Israel from the river to the sea and the murder of all Jews, but...you get the idea. Nothing is antisemitism. Certainly nothing the Jews see as antisemitic. 

And, of course, it is not lost on me that no doubt I will be accused of attempting to shut down criticism of Israel. Let me be clear: if you need to accuse me of shutting down the debate on Israel to make your point, you are an antisemite. If you need to make your point by harrassing Jews, you are an antisemite. If you need to protest near a synagogue to make your point, you are an antisemite.