The remarks sparked immediate backlash online, as many accused Jones of turning images of Palestinian children killed in Gaza into a punchline. Critics said the comment reflected a deep insensitivity toward the ongoing genocide and the suffering of civilians trapped in the besieged enclave.

NBC News correspondent Hala Gorani wrote that she had personally watched hundreds of hours of video footage from Gaza and confirmed that the images Jones referred to were authentic and not part of any “disinformation campaign.”

Imam Omar Suleiman was among the first to publicly denounce the comments, calling them “disgraceful and vile.” He said Jones’s words revealed a moral blindness toward the humanity of Gaza’s victims and condemned the attempt to trivialize their suffering while shifting blame to so-called “foreign disinformation.”

The controversy over Jones’s words comes amid growing anger online over the behavior of certain Israeli influencers, who have been criticized for mocking Palestinian victims of war on social media.^[1]