The New York Times’ Gaza Photographer: What He Shows and What He Hides

Saher Alghorra is a Palestinian photojournalist whom the New York Timeshas greatly relied on to show its readers images of war and peace in Gaza. Alghorra is a past master at concealing Hamas’ actions and presenting the IDF in the worst possible light. That hasn’t bothered the New York Times. On West 43rd Street, he’s been deemed perfect for the job. More on the Times’ anti-Israel bias in its photo coverage of the Gaza war can be found here: “Blood Libels and Omissions: Two Pulitzer Photography Categories The New York Times Could Win,” by Jennifer Kouzi, CAMERA, August 17, 2026:

A recent New York Times article endeavors to show readers present-day Gaza with a series of photos by a Pulitzer prize-winning Gazan Times photojournalist. There is no acknowledgment by The Times, however, that this same photojournalist was responsible for a grotesque blood libel during the two-year Israel-Hamas war – one that The Times put on its front page and has yet to apologize for.

About a year ago, Saher Alghorra photographed an emaciated young boy, Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, cradled by his mother. The photo was placed on the front page of The New York Times on Friday, July 25, 2025, and online the day prior, in a story called “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation.” The caption falsely claimed that Mohammed had been born healthy before suffering from malnutrition during the war. It took several days, after The Times had been accused of advancing a blood libel, for the paper to revise the story to include that the child had underlying medical conditions that affected his muscle development.

The Times notably posted its Editors’ Note on the @NYTimesPR social media account on X, which has approximately 96,000 followers, instead of the general @nytimes social media account on X, which has 53.7 million followers….

Why didn’t the New York Times publish its correction to such an inflammatory photograph, carrying such a weight of false accusation, on its main account on X, with nearly 54 million followers, but instead, only on another account, one with 96,000 followers? Who at headquarters made that sinister decision?

Where are the photos of Hamas fighters, the ones firing at Israelis, or hiding in tunnels that snake underground from Gaza into Israel? Where are the photos of Hamas fighters embedding themselves in civilian apartments, schools, mosques, or stealing humanitarian aid, or killing any Gazans who dare protest their rule? In Alghorra’s photographs, they never make an appearance.

How did Alghorra photograph a years-long war with no photos of any military activity on the Gaza side? Not one militant is photographed. Not one tunnel entrance. Not one green (Hamas) bandana. No rocket launchers, no horrifying hostage release ceremonies, no riding around on pick-up trucks with guns shooting into the air. Not even, as political theorist and essayist Shany Mor noted, a uniformed Gazan taking a smoke break.

Alghorra showed the world nary a single photograph demonstrating this was a two-way fight….

In addition to pointing out this noticeable omission, Mor noted that at the outset of the Israel-Hamas war, the terror group’s ground forces numbered approximately 40,000 – larger than the armies of most NATO countries.

The Times’ publication of Alghorra’s carefully curated photo subjects is also interesting in light of a contemporaneous article it published the following day, entitled “Netanyahu Walks ‘Political Tightrope’ on Trump’s Gaza Disarmament Deal” (Aug. 10), by Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman. In it, the authors briefly mentioned the Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 and saw 251 kidnapped as the catalyst for the Israel-Hamas war.

The article featured three photos: one, by Alghorra, of several Palestinians near a pile of rubble “inspecting a house after it was hit by an Israeli strike late last month” and a second by another Times photographer, of an Israeli soldier inside a Gaza tunnel.

Rubble, and more rubble. To arouse outrage. To tug at your heartstrings. Rubble, preferably photographed with carefully chosen Palestinian children sitting forlornly nearby. That’s Alghorra’s stock in trade. Even better if he can also fit in the same frame a bunch of stern-looking IDF soldiers who, we are supposed to believe, are threatening those little children.

Just as Alghorra’s work never showed Hamas, neither did the third photograph in Rasgon and Boxerman’s piece. Captioned to portray the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, Nova Music Festival massacre, the photo depicted little more than a few tents and abandoned trash. Absent were any indicators of the rocket fire, raping, shooting, killing or kidnapping that took place on that day. Rather than convey the reality of the massacre, the image presented a sanitized scene that offered readers no context or explanation whatsoever.

The same way the photos Alghorra took omitted Hamas from the story and spread a famine libel like wildfire, the paper’s poor photo choice intentionally obfuscated what went on at the Nova Music Festival and elsewhere in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The New York Times’ audience deserves candor, not curation.

After reading this piece — do the Times people read their critics, or do they just shut their eyes? — might editors at the New York Times be moved to hire a different photojournalist to take photographs in Gaza? Here are some things that replacement for Alghorra might capture on film: trucks delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza, accompanying a text explaining that the Israelis have facilitated the delivery of 182,000 tons of such aid since October of 2023; armed Gazans guarding that aid from being stolen by Hamas; other armed Gazans fighting Hamas, the terror group that they blame for their current immiseration, for control of turf; photos of Hamas terrorists coming out of the hospitals, schools, and mosques where they had been hiding, as they surrender to the IDF soldiers; piles of Hamas weapons found in those same hospitals, schools, and mosques; photos of the tunnels that snake from under Gaza to Israel; IDF soldiers taking severely wounded children out of Gaza, in order that they may be transferred for specialized care to hospitals in Jordan.

Those photographs won’t undo the damage Alghorra’s photographs have done to the image of the Jewish state, by showing innocent Gazans who for some reason have been invaded by a ruthless army of occupation. But it’s a start, showing that there are two sides fighting each other in this war. And until now, one of those sides — that of Hamas — has scarcely been acknowledged in the photos being published by the New York Times.