Tag: palestine

Gaza’s Hunger Games

Israel’s weaponization of starvation is how genocides always end.

I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

Starvation was weaponized by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933.

It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in World War II. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps.

“There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in The Ghetto Fights. “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.”

And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

This tactic is as old as warfare itself.

The report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise.

It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

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How Israel’s ‘Operation Salted Fish’ Turned Gaza Into a Killing Field

An investigation conducted by the Israeli outlet Haaretz has uncovered that Israeli soldiers have received orders to shoot unarmed, starving Palestinians near food aid distribution centers in Gaza, even in the absence of any threat. Soldiers characterised these locations as a “killing field.” Soldiers who spoke with Haaretz indicated that the directives to fire were explicit: “shoot to deter individuals from approaching aid centres both before and after their opening”. One soldier referred to the strategy as “Operation Salted Fish”—the name of the Israeli version of the children’s game “Red light, green light,” where Palestinians are effectively killed while awaiting UN food trucks. Accounts from soldiers disclosed that the IDF employed machine guns, tanks, grenade launchers, and mortars against crowds. (Archived report)

Soldiers have reported the presence of private security contractors near aid sites tasked with demolishing homes, suggesting that individuals were killed to facilitate destruction. The aid at the various distribution centres in the Strip is managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and operated by Israel with assistance from U.S. evangelical allies closely associated with Trump and Netanyahu. The checkpoints are open for only one hour each day. The report indicates that the IDF is actively suppressing evidence, including footage from aid centers, whilst utilising GHF as a front to maintain the facade of humanitarian assistance. The IDF has turned Gaza into a “Killing Field”, said the report—a term already used by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres during a press briefing on April 8, 2025.

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The UK’s Crackdown On Pro-Palestine Activists Has Reached New Orwellian Levels.

For years, the UK government has attempted to crack down on the activist group “Palestine Action”, due to their disruption of the Israeli arms manufacturing plant Elbit Systems, which manufactures weapons used to slaughter civilians in Gaza.

The UK government has consistently coordinated with officials from Elbit Systems to assure them that it will crack down on pro-Palestine protests.

As the Guardian has reported , because many court cases have led to “Palestine Action” activists being “acquitted for in the past with human rights defenses” UK government officials met with representatives of Elbit Systems to “reassure” them that they would crack down harder on the protests.

As the independent outlet Declassified UK reported, in 2022, “then home secretary Priti Patel met privately with Martin Fausset, the CEO of Elbit Systems UK, to ‘discuss protests and security’, Home Office documents revealed that the purpose of the meeting was to ‘reassure… Fausset that the criminal protest acts against Elbit Systems UK are taken seriously by the Government’”.

As journalist Kit Klarenberg reported, soon after this meeting, a UK court “ruled that human rights defenses could only be relied on in cases of vandalism of public property, not in cases where criminal damage has been caused to private property. Because Elbit is a private company, the Attorney General’s Office used this determination to dramatically increase prosecutions of Palestine Action activists.”

The Guardian also reported that this meeting with Elbit Systems was “attended by a director from the Attorney General’s Office, said to be representing the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).”

Tim Crosland from the Defend Our Juries group said “These disclosures, despite the extensive redaction, are the smoking gun on what has been obvious for a while: the government has been trying to put a stop to juries acquitting those who expose and resist corporate complicity in violations of international law and mass loss of life. Such political interference is a national scandal that goes right to the top – the corruption of democracy and the rule of law by those with wealth and power”.

The UK federal government has also coordinated with local police in an attempt to crack down on Palestine Action protestors, even giving a direct line of communication between Elbit Systems and UK police.

As Declassified UK reported, after “Palestine Action” activists disrupted an Elbit Systems drone factory in Leicester in 2023, “Britain’s policing minister Chris Philp held a briefing with Leicestershire police’s deputy chief constable regarding the ‘ongoing protests’”.

Notes from the meeting state that there were “Pushes for remand of those arrested and supports proactive action, show of police and clear[ly] expects us to be taking action against those that commit crime. Focus not on peaceful protestors and facilitating that but on the company”.

Another police file showed that Elbit Systems even shares intelligence on protestors with UK police, as Declassified UK reported, “Elbit Systems UK has ‘its own intelligence cell and shares[s] information with the Police across the country on a two weekly basis’, a police file observes.”

Along with Elbit Systems, the Israeli embassy in the UK has pressured the UK government to crack down on Palestine Action protests.

As the Guardian reported in August of 2023, “Israeli embassy officials in London attempted to get the attorney general’s office to intervene in UK court cases relating to the prosecution of protesters”.

The Guardian found that “The papers, obtained through a freedom of information (FoI) request by Palestine Action, indicate that embassy officials pressed for the director general of the attorney general’s office (AGO), Douglas Wilson, to interfere in cases related to protests on UK soil.”

Since the genocide in Gaza began, the UK government has gone further with its crackdown on Palestine Action activists.

In August of 2024, UK police arrested and charged 10 Palestine Action activists for entering an Elbit Systems facility in Filton, Bristol.

Documents have strongly suggested that the Israeli embassy interfered in the investigation into the Filton activists arrested.

As the Guardian reported in early September of 2024, the head of international law at Britain’s Attorney General’s Office, Nicola Smith, sent the contact details of the CPS (Crown Prosecutorial Service) and Britain’s counter terrorism police (SO15) -who investigated the Filton case- to the deputy Israeli ambassador to the UK, Daniela Grudsky Ekstein.

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Baby Formula Runs Out in Gaza, Newborns Face Imminent Risk of Death Amid Israeli Blockade: UNFPA

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) warned on Monday that hundreds of newborns in incubators at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis are at imminent risk of death due to a severe shortage of baby formula, as Israel continues to block the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

In a post on X, the UN agency said, “Infant formula has completely run out in the Gaza Strip, and they are at risk of death.”

On Thursday, two infants were announced dead due to a lack of medicine and nutrition, especially baby formula, at the Nasser Hospital, where lead doctors have been making demands to key figures, organisations and authorities to let in essential types of baby formula and other medical necessities to ensure the wellbeing of mothers and their children.
A total of 18,741 children in Gaza have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). This comes amid a months-long Israeli blockade, with Gaza’s entire population now facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
In the first two weeks of June alone, there were 1,648 new admissions, with 17 of the patients suffering from complications, it said.
“The current volume and pace of deliveries remain critically insufficient to meet the needs of Gaza’s entire population, which is facing high levels of acute food insecurity,” OCHA said.

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Bibi Fumes After IDF Soldiers Confirm Lethal Weapons Routinely Used On Crowds At Gaza Aid Sites

Soon after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began distributing aid to war-torn Gaza in May, disturbing reports emerged of Israeli soldiers killing unarmed Palestinians approaching aid points for food. As the world’s eyes turned from Gaza to Israel attack on Iran, the pace of these reported killings increased — with multiple incidents claiming more than 50 lives each. Now, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper has dropped a bombshell report, with Israeli soldiers and officers confirming the routine use of deadly force on unarmed Palestinians as a barbaric form of crowd control — with the practice carried out under orders from superior officers. 

Gaza’s Hamas-run health authority says 529 Palestinians have been killed at humanitarian aid sites or while waiting for food trucks just since late May, when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) took on the task of distributing food in the strip. While Israel’s defenders invariably discredit Gaza casualty counts, US Army Colonel Nathan McCormack, who previously headed up the Joint Chiefs’ Levant and Egypt branch, has said, “We (Department of Defense, Department of State and the U.S. Intelligence Community) consider the Gaza Health Ministry figures to be generally reliable.” A shadowy organization, GHF is led by an evangelical Christian leader with close ties to Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump. 

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‘Gaza must be eliminated’: Israel’s airwaves are filled with pro-genocide propaganda

“Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza.” That, in case you missed it, is a recent headline from the Guardian from Saturday. It’s the sort of statement that might have once shocked people but is now just another news bulletin.

Following Israel’s ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Iran earlier this month, which happened just as more people started speaking up about the genocide, attention has been averted from Gaza. But Israel’s assault on Gaza (and the West Bank), is continuing apace.

With the pressure off, the fear is that some of the most extreme voices in Israel will get exactly what they want in Gaza. Which, as retired Maj Gen Giora Eiland wrote in an Israeli paper on 12 October 2023, is to turn into “a place where no human being can exist”.

To remind you of what some of these voices have planned for Gaza, below is a collection of some of the more outrageous statements by Israeli lawmakers or influencers since 7 October 2023.

I’ve limited the collection to 20, but there are databases online with hundreds of statements which show a blurring of Hamas and the population of Gaza (including children) and a desire to inflict collective punishment. The end goal of all this is not the removal of Hamas from Gaza, but the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

  • “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza,” said May Golan, minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel on 7 October 2023.
  • “Flatten everything [in Gaza] just like it is today in Auschwitz,” David Azoulay, council leader for the northern Israeli town of Metula, said in an interview with an Israeli radio station, December 2023.
  • “[I]t’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. it’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved, it’s absolutely not true …” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said at a press conference on 13 October (in English).
  • “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth” Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, wrote on X 7 October 2023. Vaturi also wrote: “The war will never end if we don’t expel everyone.” (2 November 2023) and “To wipe out Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Don’t leave a single child there, expel all the remaining ones in the end, so they have no chance of recovery.” (9 October 2023)
  • “The children and women must be separated and the adults in Gaza must be eliminated. We are being too considerate,” Vaturi said during an interview with Kol BaRama radio in February 2025, when he also called Palestinians “subhumans” and said the West Bank would be turned into Gaza next.
  • “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview. This did not get much international coverage but was cited in the letter sent to the attorney general at the end of 2023 accusing the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring incitement to genocide.
  • “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, said October 2023. (Gallant was in this position at the time of the statement but is no longer in government)
  • “I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman. I hope you don’t stand behind that statement either. When fighting a group like this, the distinctions that exist in a normal world don’t exist,” said Likud parliament member Amit Halevi in the Knessest, in response to a statement from an Israeli doctor saying suffering children should get painkillers, May 2025.
  • “The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves,” said Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid in response to a Palestinian lawmaker bemoaning the loss of civilian life on 16 October 2023.
  • “There should be 2 goals for this victory: 1. There is no more Muslim land in the Land of Israel … After we make it the land of IL, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom …” said Likud member of the Knesset Amit Halevi on 16 October 2023.
  • “They [the children] are our enemies,” said Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset for the National Religious party, part of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Rothman was responding to a question from a Channel 4 (UK) interviewer asking “the children are your enemies?”

The following statements were all made on Channel 14: a far-right TV station that used to be a niche outlet but has morphed into one of the most watched news sources in Israel. Three civil rights organization have asked for an investigation into Channel 14 for its normalization of genocidal statements.

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Israeli Soldiers Ordered to Fire on Aid-Seekers in Gaza

Israeli soldiers speaking with Haaretz say they received orders to fire on desperate Palestinians attempting to reach aid distribution sites in Gaza. Over 550 Palestinians have been killed trying to get aid in the past month. 

“Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites,” the outlet explains. Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.”

Earlier this week, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that 549 Palestinians have been killed and over 4,000 injured since Israel restarted aid distribution near the end of May. The IDF has even fired on Palestinians waiting to receive aid with drones and tanks. 

One soldier explained to Haaretz, “It’s a killing field.” They added that the Israeli soldiers fired at the Palestinians even though the aid seekers did not present a threat. An officer told the outlet, “It’s neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.”

A doctor in Gaza speaking to NBC News about the aid sites in Gaza said, “It’s a death trap, it’s a slaughterhouse.” They report receiving dozens of patients daily who were wounded near the aid sites. 

Haaretz reports that Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinians near aid sites at least 19 times over the past month. Soldiers said some Palestinian militias backed by Tel Aviv have also fired on civilians, including the ISIS-linked Abu Shabab. 

On Thursday, at least 18 Palestinians were killed by an Israeli air strike while attempting to receive aid that the Gaza police had recovered from looters. 

At the beginning of March, Tel Aviv broke a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal with Hamas by cutting off all aid entering the Strip. Near the end of May, Israel began allowing the US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to distribute a limited amount of aid in Gaza. 

Human rights groups warned that the GHF’s distribution plan would be insufficient. Over the past week, children have died of deprivation. On Thursday, two infants at the Al-Nassar Hospital in Khan Younis died due to a lack of formula. 

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Canadian PM Carney Calls for ‘Zionist Palestinian State’

In an interview Wednesday Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada would only accept a “Zionist Palestinian state”. Two week earlier foreign affairs minister Anita Anand described Canada’s “unwavering support for Israel’s security” and next week an RCMP commissioner is set to speak at an event to assuage the concerns of Canadians who’ve fought in Gaza that they may be investigated under Canada’s war crimes legislation.

Canadian policy towards Israel is unique. No other faraway state has received a constant flow of Canadians joining its military. No other wealthy faraway country receives a remotely comparable amount of registered charity funds. No other state has a publicly financed special envoy to deflect criticism of its colonial violence or gets Ottawa to send letters threatening the International Criminal Court on its behalf. Nor is there another country in which the government sues to block proper labels on its wines or the Canadian embassy hosts parties for Canadians fighting in its military or the foreign minister says Canada would act as an “asset” for it on the UN Security Council.

I’ve written extensively about Canadian governments’ violating international law while professing its importance. In the case of Israel, the duplicity is even more glaring. Our governments have repeatedly failed to uphold Canadian law. The Minister of Justice, Global Affairs, RCMP and other government agencies have ignored their legal responsibilities regarding a genocidal apartheid state.

Issuing arms permits to Israel contravenes Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act yet Ottawa refuses to stop the flow of arms. According to the federal government, “Under the Export and Import Permits Act (EIPA), the Minister of Foreign Affairs must deny exports and brokering permit applications for military goods and technology if there is a substantial risk that the items would undermine peace and security, or could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws.”

By any credible account, the Israeli military has long committed “serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws.” Israel has launched a series of deadly wars on the besieged population of Gaza (2008, 2014, 2021). It’s also killed over a thousand in the West Bank and beginning in 2013 Israeli forces began bombing Syria on a near weekly basis.

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IDF Chief Says ‘Campaign Against Iran Not Over’ But Focus Will Shift to Gaza for Now

Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, said on Tuesday that while a “chapter” in the conflict with Iran is over, Israel’s “campaign” against the country is not and that for now, the IDF will focus on the destruction of Gaza.

“We have concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over. We are entering a new phase, one that builds upon the achievements of the current operation,” Zamir said after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran began to hold.

“Now, the focus returns to Gaza, to bringing the hostages home and toppling Hamas rule,” Zamir added. During the 12 days of Israeli attacks on Iran, the Israeli military continued its genocidal onslaught in Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians each day.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also said that Israel will now turn all of its “strength” on Gaza. “Now [we turn] with all our strength to Gaza, to complete the task: to destroy Hamas and return our hostages and to ensure, with God’s help, many years of security and growth from strength for the people of Israel,” he said.

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HARVARD REPORT: The Hidden Numbers Behind Gaza’s Real Death Toll

A recent report prepared by Garb Yaakov, a Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and published on The President & Fellows of Harvard College Dataverse website, has substantiated what critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza have long asserted, regarding the actual number of individuals killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. The report suggests that the real number significantly surpasses the officially reported death toll, as victims who are buried under debris or dismembered are not included in mainstream reports.

Yaakov Garb’s report [Garb, Yaakov, 2025, “The Israeli/American/GHF ‘aid distribution’ compounds in Gaza: Dataset and initial analysis of location, context, and internal structure”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QB75LB. Harvard Dataverse] has analysed the Israeli military’s own data and combined these with careful spatial mapping to reveal a “demographic horror story”. The report presents maps, locational data, and an initial concise analysis of the Israeli/American/GHF aid distribution facilities that were swiftly constructed and commenced operations in Gaza in May 2025. The overall geographic relationship of these facilities to the Gazan population and the infrastructures of Israeli military control over Gaza, along with their consistent internal design, indicates that their architecture is primarily tailored to align with Israeli military strategies and tactics, rather than being focused on a comprehensive humanitarian relief effort. The reports unequivocally demonstrate that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) compounds are strategically placed and built to be inaccessible to most, particularly to the one million residents of Gaza City, cut off by the Netzarim corridor. The current system fails to support the 1.85 million accounted for, let alone the 377,000 missing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

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