On 22nd January 2026, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Prabowo Subianto declared that the suffering of Gaza’s people had “very much decreased,” repeating the phrase three times, as if insistence could substitute for truth. He made the remark immediately after announcing Indonesia’s participation in a US-backed initiative called the Board of Peace for Gaza, citing increased humanitarian aid as proof that conditions were improving and suggesting that peace was now a realistic prospect.

That statement was not just wrong. It was grotesque.

At the very moment Prabowo was speaking, Gaza was still being attacked. In the days before and after his remarks, Israeli forces killed Palestinians through drone strikes and gunfire. Children were among the dead. Journalists were among the dead. Civilians were shot near hospitals, near homes, near displacement camps — the last scraps of civilian life left standing. A place where civilians are still being killed by a modern military is not a place where suffering has “very much decreased.” Saying otherwise is not optimism. It is propaganda.

Prabowo’s claim rests on a shameless distortion: that humanitarian aid equals reduced suffering. This is an insult to basic intelligence. Gaza is receiving aid because it has........

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