Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one of Israel’s most vocal antagonists in the Middle East, and he’s demonstrated that utilizing blatant Hamas propaganda to smear the Jewish state is not at all beneath him.

Erdogan used his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday to absolutely lambast Israel. That much was to be expected.

But when he pulled out a staged photo of Palestinian children “begging” for food, it was clear he was little more than a mouthpiece for Hamas jihadists.

Speaking at the General Assembly on September 23 Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan called on more countries to recognize a Palestinian state. The Turkish president said a ceasefire must be secured as soon as possible and humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza https://t.co/lpa2uZPO1N pic.twitter.com/2iJdPCzrJn

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 25, 2025

The photo in question, in which Palestinian women and children are seen with empty soup pots seeking food, was exposed as a staged scene last month by the German publication Bild.

Photographs taken from other angles revealed the Gaza photographer, Anas Zayed Fteiha, orchestrating the tableau by getting the women and children to pose beseechingly with their pots being offered not toward the food site but toward him.

WOW!
The biggest newspaper in Germany @BILD just exposed what other media outlets are trying to hide: The deliberate staging of Hamas propaganda by photographers in Gaza, that are later sold for tens of thousands of dollars to western media outlets to create a false narrative to… pic.twitter.com/UkQPyPNJMd

— Voice From The East (@EasternVoices) August 5, 2025

The entire scene presented by Erdogan was a lie, created and manipulated by Hamas as part of its propaganda offensive.

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