Gaza’s Starvation, Israeli Lies and the Tail that Wags the Dog
Whenever Israel yields to international pressure and allows aid trucks into Gaza, it devises other methods to ensure that food is never delivered. On the same day, July 26, Israel announced airdrops and “humanitarian corridors” for UN convoys, its forces murdered 53 humans seeking aid in those corridors. Aid distribution points, rather than feeding the starving population, Israel turns them into killing zones. Time and again, since December 2023, Palestinians have been paying with blood for a loaf of bread or a bottle of water.
In less than two months, death by Israeli bullets at the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has reached over 1,054, averaging about 20 murders daily. Since July 26 when Israel announced the new “humanitarian (death) corridors,” the murder toll has more than doubled compared to those killed daily at GHF distribution centers, 325 last week alone. Meanwhile, the tokenistic airdrops by Arab collaborators are nothing short of a disgrace.
The $60 million Donald Trump brags about giving to GHF is nothing but blood money funding the deaths of hungry Palestinians. For the starved, GHF stands for Gaza Humiliation Front, not a lifeline, but an Israeli murder-line. Instead of wasting American taxpayer money on GHF death traps, Trump should consider restoring U.S. funding to UNRWA, the only agency that has offered real hope to Palestinian children for more than 75 years.
Steve Witkoff’s visit to a GHF center in Gaza, followed by his statement that there is no starvation, was a textbook case of confirmation bias. His tour did not show the absence of starvation, but rather his willful blindness not to see. Witkoff sought out information that would reinforce his predetermined narrative to whitewash starvation.
To be sure, no one had seriously expected him to witness starvation at a carefully staged (safe) site, far removed from the people. He was invited to a hospital, to see the emaciated children, and hear directly from the life-saving medical professionals. Instead, he chose a photo op and listen to the mercenaries of death at GHF.
The engineered starving in Gaza, supported by the U.S., has always been a central pillar of Israel’s psychological warfare; a calculated strategy aimed at expelling the population or driving them into a survivalist frenzy. Israel, and the U.S. funded GHF, have become the perfect linchpin of this Israeli designed contraption. Replacing a well-established UN infrastructure that operated 400 distribution centers, GHF offered only four aid points. These limited sites made it easier for Israel to surveil, shoot at the starving, and leave the survivors to fight over the meager crumbs that remained.
GHF role was exposed by Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. Special Forces officer, West Point graduate, and recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Choking back tears, Lt. Col. Aguilar recounted the story of a child who “walked 12 kilometers to reach” one of GHF’s food distribution sites. “He got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it…” and then he was shot dead by the Israeli army. I urge readers to listen to the powerful three minutes testimony from a decorated U.S. military officer.
Still, the Israeli-managed “free” Western media has too often acted as Israel’s public relations arm. It downplays Israel’s horrific crimes and markets Israeli falsehood, such as the baseless claim that the resistance steals food aid. This fabricated narrative persisted even after USAID concluded that Israel failed to provide any evidence supporting that food aid was being diverted. Or they excuse the lack of food on a faulty distribution system, not the Israeli blockade. When in fact, other than for Israeli military hindrance, under UN oversight, there has been no issues delivering food to all of Gaza. Israel’s objective is simple: deflect responsibility by blaming the starving for their own starvation.
Even after these lies were debunked, the Trump administration continued to parrot Israeli disinformation. Notably, however, following his trip to Scotland, Trump’s tone has noticeably softened, acknowledging for the first time, the taunting images of starving babies. Perhaps, a few days outside the Washington bubble of his Israel-first advisors, has offered him a rare glimpse of reality.
Meanwhile, it took one video of an emaciated Zionist captive for Israelis to cry Holocaust. But not the food blockade against 2.3 million humans (including the Israeli captive soldiers), nor the images of starving Palestinians murdered at Israel’s humiliating food lines, or babies with hollow eyes, abdominal bloating, and skeletal limbs. These barely get their attention. Instead of showing human empathy, they chose to dismiss the haunting photos of dying infants, maybe because these children were less “chosen.”
Early last June, I wrote on the Israeli scheme to “lie, deny, and distort the truth.” In the article, I detailed a long list of Israeli lies and how the American media disseminated the disinformation with little to no effort to verify or challenge. You see, Israel does not just enjoy political impunity from the U.S. administration; it also has the freedom to lie with complete immunity from the American media.
The daunting question remains, how many lies must Israel tell before the media call them out, just as they do with the American President, Donald J. Trump—or other nations?
A recent example of how the Israeli-managed “free” media misrepresents facts is the latest failed ceasefire talks. Listening to U.S. media, BBC and government mouthpieces, one might conclude that the Palestinian negotiators rejected a “generous” offer for a ceasefire. In reality, the talks collapsed because Netanyahu sought only a pause to secure the release of captive Israeli soldiers, refusing to agree to end the war, or the starvation blockade.
No rational party would accept, let alone consider, such a half-measure. When Palestinians rejected a proposal short of a lasting ceasefire, Netanyahu cried foul. President Trump, and his envoy Witkoff, rushed to absolve his intransigence and refusal to accept a permanent ceasefire, and then blamed the Palestinians.
The reluctance, or perhaps intimidation of the Arab mediators like Qatar and Egypt to publicly challenge Washington’s pro-Israel stance has only deepened the media distortions. The mediators’ silence allowed Netanyahu’s false narratives to dominate international discourse, while serving as a fig leaf for the blatant submissive American bias.
Nonetheless, the tide could be turning. France and UK’s recent promise to recognize the state of Palestine, although long overdue, signals the growing frustration with Netanyahu’s lies and deceit. The European officials made it clear, they were no longer willing to tolerate the Israeli farce. The symbolic act, however, would never atone for Britain’s original sin: the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised European settlers a homeland in Palestine, while failing to enshrine the rights of the indigenous Palestinians on their land. Nor does it exonerate France who conspired with Britain in the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement to carve up the eastern part of the Arab world.
Still, recognition matters. Fourteen other countries are poised to follow France’s lead next month. The growing calls demanding Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire, is also telling. These governments have finally realized, what their subjects had long known, that the absence of peace is not due to Palestinian rejectionism, but to Netanyahu’s deception and insatiable thirst for the never-ending wars.
Despite the dominance of Israeli-embedded journalists and pundits in Western media, the world is finally waking up to the true face of Israel. Alternative media has, to a great extent, succeeded in piercing through the wall of Israeli lies, offering an unfiltered view into the lived horrors of starvation and the genocide. No amount of Israeli propaganda can obscure the images of skeletal ribs jutting from the bodies of dying children. The sight of starving infants suckling on their bony fists, indicts the liars more powerfully than any polished Israeli hasbara could ever hide.
To that end, a recent Gallup poll shows a clear shift in the U.S., where American support for the Israeli military action in Gaza has dropped to 32%, and disapproval has soared to 60%. For a while, Israel was enabled to “fool all the people some of the time,” and it continues to “fool some of the people all the time,” but ultimately, and as the latest poll shows, it “cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Yet babies are starving, the genocide continues and there is no ceasefire is in sight. This is only possible because Netanyahu and AIPAC continue to wag the dogs of Washington.
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