What's missing with that Daily Express front page on Gaza

The newspaper does deserve credit for addressing the horror but there's a problem when you get into the detail.

Previously: Radicalisers with a byline

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Yesterday’s Daily Express front page was striking in two ways: Firstly, it showed a shocking image of Muhammad Zakariya Ayoub al-Matouq, a one-year-old dying of starvation in Gaza, alongside the headline For Pity’s Sake Stop This Now. Secondly, this was the front page of the Daily Express, making the demand for action in Gaza — the Daily Express, the anti-immigration, right-wing rag of a paper.

Understandably, the newspaper’s decision to run with that splash provoked a lot of comment along the lines of “even the Daily Express sees how wrong this is” and “the Labour government is now to the right of the Daily Express on Gaza”. But I’d argue that the Express is getting credit for doing the bare minimum months too late. And go beyond the arresting sight of that front page, and you’ll find a story that talks a lot about the effects of the famine without saying very much about the causes.

Take this paragraph from the report that accompanied the front page:

After life-saving aid was initially let in, all crossings into Gaza have been closed since March 2, effectively halting a trickle of food, medicine, and aid, which has now almost completely dried up.

All crossings into Gaza have been closed since March 2, but closed by whom? The passage is phrased as though it’s discussing a natural disaster rather than a deliberate action by the state of Israel. In August 2024, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.” He later said his comments had been “misunderstood”.

The word “Israel” appears only twice in the Express story; once in reference to the way the Israeli government has banned international media from Gaza and secondly in the following sentence:

The total number of deaths due to malnutrition since the start of the war with Israel now stands at 101, of which 80 are children.

That is the closest the reporting gets to matching cause with effect.

The Express front page included a subhead saying that the suffering in Gaza “shames us all,” but its coverage doesn’t make any suggestions about what the UK government might do to put pressure on Israel and barely mentions Israel at all. It is as though the dire situation in Gaza is a famine caused by the weather rather than a deliberate policy of starvation.

The UK suspended 30 of roughly 350 arms export licences to Israel last year, but that didn’t include exports of F-35 fighter jet parts. They’re still being used in Gaza by the IDF. In a parliamentary debate in July, Labour MP Steve Witherden said: “The components which create the fighter jets that Israel has used to level Gaza are 15% British-made — we cannot hide from that. Without British arms export licences, these jets could not fly; they could not drop their bombs.” Stern letters signed by the Foreign Secretary, like the one issued this week, come off as little more than foot stomping when other concrete actions haven’t been taken.

The Express front page is a ‘think of the children’ moment. Considered in the most positive way possible you might think that it could change a few minds in its readership. The comments beneath the story online suggest otherwise. Similarly, I don’t believe this represents some incredible change in the editorial direction of the Daily Express. It is tapping into the natural human impulse to feel devastated when children are suffering but the Express was fully behind the start of this war.

This is a case where its worth remembering the title of Omar El Akkad’s powerful book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The Daily Express should not be given too much credit for a single front page versus its many years of contributing to a climate where these horrors can happen. This is the very definition of a too-little, too-late moment.

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