Tag: starvation

Leaked Cabinet transcript reveals Israel chose to starve Gaza as a strategy of war

Israel decided to starve the people of Gaza as a strategy of war and in order to sabotage the ceasefire deal, according to Israeli cabinet meeting minutes leaked on Wednesday to Israel’s Channel 13.

The document purports to show that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused multiple proposals that would have secured the release of the remaining Israeli captives during the ceasefire between January and March 2025. Netanyahu decided to break the ceasefire, against the advice of top Israeli military and security officials, and to cut off all aid to Gaza to “force Hamas to surrender,” the leak shows.

The Israeli cabinet’s meeting, dated March 1, was to discuss the fate of the ceasefire with Hamas as the first phase of the agreement was set to expire. The prospective second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to see the beginning of talks on the permanent end of the war. The minutes released by Channel 13 show that army and intelligence officials argued for concluding the ceasefire deal, while cabinet ministers opposed it.

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Trump Shows Strong Support for Israel as Palestinians in Gaza Starve to Death

President Trump has shown strong support for Israel in recent days, while much of the world has been outraged over the images of Palestinians who are starving to death due to the US-backed Israeli siege on Gaza.

After the US and Israel quit ceasefire talks, Trump blamed the lack of progress on Hamas and suggested it was time for Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza. “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad,” Trump said on Friday, referring to Hamas.

For its part, Hamas has said that it was surprised by the US and Israel quitting the truce talks and that it was committed to continuing the process until a deal was reached.

In recent weeks, Trump has been claiming that a ceasefire deal was close, but now he is appearing to suggest that Israel should escalate its genocidal war. “They’re gonna have to fight, and they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of [Hamas],” he said.

Israeli officials told Axios that they weren’t sure if Trump’s comments were a negotiating tactic or a “green light” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to use even more extreme military measures. The report said the Trump administration was rethinking its Gaza strategy, but there’s no sign it’s considering putting pressure on Israel to reach a ceasefire.

Israeli officials also told Axios that Trump has applied virtually no pressure on Netanyahu to end the slaughter in Gaza in recent months. “In most calls and meetings, Trump told Bibi, ‘Do what you have to do in Gaza.’ In some cases, he even encouraged Netanyahu to go harder on Hamas,” one official said.

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New footage exposes ragtag US mercenaries firing toward Gaza aid seekers

Following an AP investigation accusing a US mercenary firm of firing on desperate Gaza aid seekers, the company has released extensive new footage in an attempt at damage control. But the video only further implicates the scandal-plagued operation.

On July 2, the Associated Press released an exposé containing short videos which appeared to show American mercenaries associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opening fire on aid-seekers in Gaza during an incident in southern Gaza this May. The footage was supplied by a former employee of UG Solutions, a firm charged with securing GHF distribution sites.

“I think you hit one,” one soldier of fortune says to another following a loud burst of gunfire.

“Hell yeah, boy!” another exclaims.

In an apparent attempt to control the damage from the AP investigation, UG Solutions has distributed a pair of videos comprising over seven minutes of footage to the press. 

The newly released footage offers an unprecedented glimpse of the disturbing interactions between the starving population of Gaza and well-armed, clearly unprepared Americans hired to provide security for GHF’s chaotic aid operations.

Filmed by one of its own employee, the recordings were seemingly distributed in an effort to show UG Solutions’ agents have not fired live bullets on unarmed crowds of Palestinians. According to a UG Solutions statement, the videos “not only clarify what happened, but provide critical context, which contradicts that [sic] AP’s reporting and shows that the accusations are unfounded.”

However, a closer examination by The Grayzone demonstrates that the video was anything but exculpatory. 

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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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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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