Palestinian-Canadian Mother Targeted by Online Mockery After Reuniting With Daughters From Gaza

Faiza Najjar, a 50-year-old Palestinian-Canadian, left Gaza last year without her four adult daughters due to travel restrictions. From Canada, where she lives with six other children, she spent months trying to secure their exit as food shortages in Gaza worsened.

Last month, she finally reunited with her daughters and seven grandchildren at Toronto’s airport. But when videos of their emotional embrace appeared online, pro-Israeli accounts mocked her appearance, claiming it disproved reports of starvation in Gaza. Some posts, viewed over 300,000 times, falsely implied she had just left the territory.

Najjar stressed she never claimed to be starving herself but said her daughters and their children often went to bed hungry under bombardment. The grandchildren, she noted, had received medical treatment and renourishment in Jordan before traveling to Canada.

The ridicule reflects a broader online campaign dismissing famine warnings from UN agencies, which say Israel’s severe restrictions on aid are driving “widespread starvation” in Gaza. Israel denies this, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting last month: “There is no starvation in Gaza.”

Pro-Israeli commentators, including on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14, have mocked “obese” Palestinian mothers, alleging they steal their children’s food. Similar narratives have spread through social media, sometimes fueled by misinformation—such as a recent AI chatbot error misidentifying a photo of an emaciated Gazan child as being from Yemen in 2018.

Experts say the falsehoods echo earlier war-time hoaxes alleging Palestinians staged injuries, serving to deflect from the humanitarian crisis. “Denial is deadly,” Najjar said. “I just want the world to know the crisis is real.”

The Gaza health ministry reports at least 61,430 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s offensive began, figures the UN considers credible. The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,219 people. Forty-nine of the 251 hostages taken remain in Gaza, 27 of them presumed dead.

Najjar’s daughters are now safe in Canada with citizenship, but their husbands remain in Gaza, where malnutrition, disease, and hunger-related deaths are rising.