Humanity’s Fight Against the Perpetrators of Starvation and Extermination  

On August 3, 2025, well over 100,000 thousand Australians swept across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, protesting Israel’s genocidal starvation of Gaza, stopping traffic for hours. Julian Assange was at the front of the march, and social media was alive with imagery and solidarity. One protester posted, “What struck me at #MarchforHumanity was the awesome diversity of Sydney. Friendly eye contact, nods, talk between people of every age, ancestry, gender, families…interacting in harmony and happiness.” Author Trita Parsi observed that “One has to be blind not to see that Israel has completely lost the majority of the world – including in the West…No level of intimidation, surveillance, or threats can force the majority of humanity to support and defend apartheid and genocide.” Syrian girl said “We are a wave. Or rather a flood. We moved with water in the rain on the #SydneyHarbourBridge…Once it crashes the structures that Zionism built will go tumbling down with it.” Max Blumenthal noted that “The flood is growing,” and The Intercept said we seemed to have woken up to the genocide in Gaza.

For weeks the world has seen pictures of skeletal children starving with no relief in sight. As Heba Almaqadma, a 24-year-old Palestinian journalist still living in Gaza City said, “In Gaza, Hunger Has Overtaken Bombs as Israel’s Cruelest Weapon.” Pictures of Starving Palestinians have been juxtaposed against images of Jewish holocaust survivors, and the mirroring of Israeli crimes with those of Nazis are made both visually and verbally. susan abulhawa has rightly called what she saw in Gaza a Holocaust, and we now understand that Gaza is being systematically annihilated.

Western media’s 22-months of pro-Israel rehearsals have faltered slightly in the wake of starving civilians, with critical openings appearing in CNN and MSNBC. Even the right-wing British newspaper the Daily Express ran the headline: “For Pity’s Sake Stop This Now,” alongside a picture of a starving Palestinian boy on the brink of death. The paper added that those “clinging to life in Gaza hell shames us all.” Journalist Matt Kennard wrote on X: “The Zionist holocaust regime has lost the Daily Express.”⁠ A few days later Isreal lost the BBC when it’s World Service reported it had complied “over 160 cases where children have been shot in Gaza, and found that in 95 cases the child was shot in the head or the chest. In most of these cases the victim was under 12 years old.”

Speak the Word ‘Genocide’ 

An angry congressman Al Green, pounds the lectern almost shouting, “We are witnessing before our very eyes, Mr. Speaker, genocide in Gaza.” He asked, how can we ‘see what’s happening in Gaza and not call it what it is?” Human rights groups that have until now withheld judgment on the genocide, are coming to their senses. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tsalem released a report, that though flawed, finally admitted “Our Geocide, is Happening Now,” and in a long overdue announcement, Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, has for the first time publicly concluded that the Gaza “war” is a genocide. These statements follow a long list of organizations from Amnesty International to Doctor Against Genocide that have known this for months. Adding to the growing chorus of voices, acclaimed Israeli writer David Grossman told the Italian daily La Repubblica, “after the images I saw and after talking to people who were there…with immense pain and a broken heart, I have to face what is happening before my eyes. ‘Genocide.’” He understood genocide to be “avalanche word,” arguing that “once you say it…it brings even more destruction and suffering.” But the destruction and suffering in Gaza was allowed to happen precisely because political elites and legacy media refused to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The New York Times still gaslights the world with headlines like this, “No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” by Bret Stephens.

In the US, lawmakers and pundits alike have been criticizing Israel, and for the first time ever, one quarter of the senate voted to block arms sales to Israel. Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) spoke with sincerity when he said. “It’s a war crime to starve a population to get what you want from your enemy.” No doubt the precipitous drop in favorability toward Israel among Democratic voters has shaken them up. Zeteo reported that “more Americans than not” are against the genocide. As one analyst put it, for Democrats, standing with Israel is political suicide. Israel is even losing Republicans. Pointing to statements against the genocide by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Calson, Breaking Points called the way Republicans have turned against Israel, a “historic flip.”

Hunger and Our Humanity

Watching another person starve is unbearable, especially when it’s a child. For most of us it’s a fist striking deep into our heart that hits our most basic humanity. Actor, writer and humanist, Stanley Tucci offers some reasons for this in his book Taste, a chronicle of his love of food, its allure, preparation and depictions. Tucci tells us how he learned early on that “audiences love to watch people eating [and] drinking” on screen, because “there is something very compelling about watching” people do these basic things. He attributes this to the way “it humanizes them and therefore allows us to connect to them.” Watching movies about food and cooking shows on TV make us all feel part of a human family. And this is why it is such an emotional blow when we must watch fellow human beings go hungry.

We’ve watched bomb strikes and seen the pictures of the hideous dystopian landscapes of Gaza in rubble, we’re heard devastated doctors testify about the targeted assassinations of children, and those paying attention know the IDF targets starving, unarmed civilians trying to get food for their families at ‘distribution hubs.’ We’ve heard the words of a former special forces veteran Anthony Aguilar who explained that the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in committing war crimes in Gaza. Devastated after a hungry Palestinian child, who received no food, kissed his hand and was then deliberately shot dead, Kristal Ball wrote “I have seen the former Green Beret who has done 9 combat tours shake and break down today over what he saw being done to human beings in Gaza.” She added, “The horror must end and everyone who was complicit must be held to account. Our collective humanity is at stake.”

A weakened, hallowed-eyed person or skeletal crying child is not yet dead. In the words of UNRAW, people in Gaza are “walking corpses.” One doctor from Gaza posted an image of a skin and bones child saying simply, “We are starving.” And they are still suffering. This causes us to gasp and grasp for solutions. It propels us to demand that food come immediately. It’s the only way to find relief from the pain of watching such a deliberate, slow destruction of humanity, and indeed the destruction of our own. And all the while Israel claims the photos are fake.

These human responses to suffering are nothing like the ways the perpetrators react to the Palestinians they are starving to death.

The Evils of Starvation, It’s Perpetrators and Enablers 

It’s not rhetorical, ad hominin, unkind, and certainly not antisemitic, to say that Israeli leaders perpetrating the crime of forced starvation have lost their humanity. They are the ones who excitedly told us what they would do from the start, and they’ve been doing it ever since. Recently they’ve doubled down on pronouncements that reveal a deep psychopathology fueled by years of hated, and more recently, by the support and impunity offered by world leaders propelled by the mounting corporate profits rolling in from the business of genocide. They are ensnared in verbal webs of fabrication and dehumanization, even though these same perpetrators regularly announce their true intent. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said in his latest hate rant, “We will not allow a single gram of aid into the Gaza Strip until its people kneel and beg. Gaza must be leveled to the ground. There is no such thing as innocent people.” Then in the next breath, Israel makes the false claim that Hamas is stealing the food and aid. Watching the likes of Ben Gvir and others mouth such unthinkable hate while doing such unthinkable crimes is another assault on our sensibilities. So too are the unconscionable actions taken by Israelis who have recently flocked to the border to help block aid from getting into Gaza. And 79

When Shimon Elkabetz chairman of the Israel Film Council, openly urged the mass slaughter of Palestinians on Israel’s channel i24 saying, “Kill them, exterminate them… just like using a lice comb,” the newly elected Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is unabashedly anti-genocide, posted “Genocide isn’t hidden. It’s broadcast.” But not by US corporate media. And when Ofer Kassif, a member of the Knesset, read David Grossman’s statement out to the Knesset, he was forcibly removed from the podium to shouts of “He will not say ‘genocide’ in here!” US corporate media did not report the incident, but Haaretz did.

US congressman Randy Fines (R-FL) is playing the role of genocide enabler for Israel. Over a picture of the devastated Gaza Strip, when an Israeli asked, “Did Gaza deserve it?” Fines answered “Yes.” There is ample documentation of the reach Israeli lobbyists have over US politicians, and just how far this has gone became apparent in Trump’s latest missive declaring that the US government will not provide disaster preparedness funds to states in the US boycotting Israel.

Western Media Complicity

Then there are those who have followed the trajectory of establishment media’s abysmal coverage of Israel’s genocide. Assal Rad responded to a CNN broadcast titled, “Palestinians are Starving or being Killed by Israeli Troops While Seeking Aid Almost Daily. How Did we get Here? In outrage, Rad answered with, “You and your colleagues covering up their genocide.”

Corporate media have covered up essential facts and used words that hide the nature of Israel’s crimes against humanity. But why has the BBC suddenly shifted coverage? Because, according to journalist Owen Jones, “everybody knows that the utter calamity engulfing Gaza is going to be impossible to hide.” Jones is angry and relentless in his condemnation. “For the Guilty Men of the media: you all had ample warning for 21 months! You did this! Everything that now happens is on you.”

Francesca Albanese also slammed western media, calling for investigations into how mainstream media have portrayed and dehumanized Palestinians to devastating effects. And FAIR revisited the leaked memos at the New York Times that prohibited journalists from using “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” at a time when it could have made a difference. Albanese’s eloquent condemnation of the West’s refusal to articular humanitarian values and follow international law to stop Israel were condensed into these prose; “Israel has written one of the darkest pages of human history and the world is still holding the pen.”

Charging Global Humanity with Antisemitism

Still holding the pen, they write laws that criminalize those who call on Israel to stop the starvation. As Arundhati Roy pointed out. “The only moral thing Palestinian civilians can do apparently is to die. The only legal thing the rest of us can do is to watch them die. And be silent. If not, we risk our scholarships, grant lecture fees and livelihoods.” Israel and its supporters step up the attacks, and AIPAC accuses Bernie Sanders, a Jewish senator who lost family in the Holocaust, of “blood libel” for announcing “The Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza intensifies. Malnutrition is rampant, children are starving to death, people are shot while waiting for meager food rations — and US weapons allow it to happen. Trump and Congress must act NOW. Stop the slaughter. Feed the people.” UK journalist Jonathan Cook wrote about how the ‘blood libel’ charge helps keep the West silent on Israel’s genocide. The more depraved Israel’s actions are, the more antisemitic it is to point them out. The reality is he says, through Israel, the West can hide “boilerplate colonialism” as a uniquely Jewish project.

The pretzeled logic of the charge of antisemitism is now being dismantled like never before, as writers expose the IHRA definition that falsely identifies criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

When Democratic Delegate form Virginia Sam Rasoul, whose family was displaced by Israel, wrote about the ‘evils’ of Zionism, his words prompted a series of attacks from Democratic colleagues like Tim Kaine. Kaine—who won’t use the word genocide because the “tragedy” doesn’t warrant the term—“forcefully reject[s] any claim that Zionism, the desire of Jewish people to have a state of Israel, is inherently racist or evil.” Rasoul shot back, arguing that Zionism can no longer be considered simply an “aspirational belief that there should be a safe place for a homeland for Jews.” Instead, he pointed out that Zionism has led to “the manifestation of an ethno-supremacist state that has produced not only this occupation, but an apartheid regime that now has committed the ultimate act of terror, which is a genocide on the people of Gaza.” Rasoul charged the “apologists for the State of Israel,” of having “nothing else but to claim everything is antisemitic. The reality is that my Jewish friends are less safe because they’ve bastardized antisemitism. And prevented us from really being able to take on truly antisemitic behavior.”

Nothing can stop the condemnation of Israel or the global protests against genocide.

Humanity’s Compassionate Fight 

Humanity reacts with actions great and small trying to grab the attention of the world and make the starvation stop. Just like in Sydney, they go into the streets in London as they defiantly raise the Palestinian flag at the Royal Opera House, and the statue of Jessus in Rio De Janeiro is adorned with the Palestinian flag. Celebrities wrap themselves in the flag and truck drivers in Chicago display it. Richard Gere reading a poem by Mahmoud Darwish is just one example of performers in solidarity with Palestinians. More go back into the streets in New York City and protest outside UN headquarters, and 50 Jewish activists are arrested chanting “Let Gaza Live,” as they shut down the offices of Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirstin Gillibrand for arming Israel. Demonstrators bang pots and bans in front of Fox News and NBC News in Washington DC, protesting media complicity in the genocide. Anti-genocide demonstrators block cruise ships carrying Israeli tourists docked at Greek islands, and Belgum has arrested two IDF soldiers for war crimes. Activists carrying supplies to Gaza on the Freedom Flotilla Handala, are arrested by the IOF, and soldiers beat US labor organizer and human rights defender Chris Smalls. Dedicated analysts and activists at Code Pink stand in solidarity with their fellow humanitarians. Ms. Rachel, described as this generation’s Mr. Rogers, is called to advocates on behave of children in Gaza, and Francesca Albanese continues to speak the truth. US Representative Rashida Tlaib calls for a complete arms embargo on all weapons to Israel, and Amnesty International is demanding the release of Dr. Abu Safiya who is being tortured for treating patients in Gaza. Norway’s international development minister Asmund Aukrust said that Israel was eroding principles that protect civilians everywhere, and is pulling investments from a company that outfits Israeli fighter jets. The Mayor of Athens tells the Israeli Ambassador, “We won’t take lessons from those who kill children.”

As Ramzy Baroud observed, the fight for critical mass has been achieved, “No other country, no other conflict, no other cause has permeated public spaces as profoundly as that of Palestine.” This happens when an idea, “initially championed by a minority group, decisively transforms into a mainstream issue…and begins to exert real and tangible influence in the public sphere.” Some have called it a dam breaking, or the Overton window. What is clear is that the world condemns the monstrous deeds of Israel’s twisted Zionist state. After susan abulhawa saw on August 5, that Israel bombed the UNRWA clinic in Gaza City destroying what’s left of Gaza’s health system, she called Israelis DEMONS, and Linda Mamoun observed that there has been zero media coverage of the killings.

Israel, its Western Supporters and the Sham of Palestinian Statehood 

Some statements critical of Israel made by Western leaders are rightly being viewed with skepticism. Why have they waited until this 11^th hour to object? The notorious apologist for Israel and recipient of  $1.5 million from AIPAC, Richie Torres said, “All parties, including the U.S. and Israel, have a moral obligation to do everything in our power to ease the hardship and hunger that’s taken hold in the Gaza Strip.” Torres is coming up against a primary challenger who is against the genocide. Officials such as Keir Starmer, have known from the start what Israel was doing, and the UK provided assistance. Why do they speak up now? It’s likely a self-interested calculation, not an authentic human response or moral outrage, and such announcements do not result in meaningful actions. As Max Blumenthal said of the newfound concerns from top US Democrats like Obama and Clinton, it’s “reputation-washing after years of silence.” Self-serving protestations are designed to avoid the charge of participating in a genocide. As Omar El Akkad wrote in the title of his book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Already Been Against This.”

Though 147 states out of the 193 member states in the UN recognize a Palestinian state, a few Western countries and their allies, most notably Canada, France and the UK, have put forth a proposal to recognize Palestine “as if it were a new idea.” Mondoweiss wrote, that though it may be political theater, it could serve a meaningful purpose in the future. For now, Mitchell Plitnick argues, it should be clear “that nothing short of boycotts and sanctions, as advocated by the BDS movement around the world, will change Israeli policy. It beggars belief that Macron, Carney, and Starmer don’t know this.” When the Electronic Intifada and The Nation dug into the proposal, they found it little more than a re-packaging of Israeli war goals in the face of the IDF’s failure to defeat Hamas, a fact that even the New York Times had to admit. It turns out starvation is genocide, not a winning military strategy. According to Ali Abunimah, Israel will be given what amounts to total control over Palestinians by using PLO collaborators to serve as a new government. Demands that Hamas destroy itself would leave the new Vishay state with no popular representation or actual resistance, and living under occupation and apartheid would be worse. Israel will not be held accountable for the genocide. Such a plan will not stop the genocidal starvation of Palestinians. The Nation’s Ahmad Ibsais called it a “despicable sham” and argued “they’re offering colonial lies dressed up as liberation.” And Abunimah, noted “I haven’t heard a single Palestinian anywhere saying that what they want from the ‘Western’ genocide regimes that arm and support “Israel’s” extermination of Palestinians is their recognition of a nonexistent Palestinian state ruled by traitors in Ramallah. Not one.”

As Western leaders  express their “heartfelt concerns,” in the words of Palestinian Heba Almaqadma, “We do not need pity. We need pressure on those who are blocking food [and] have the power to stop this but choose not to.” The President of Irland has proposed a plan. He’s calling on the United Nations to invoke Chapter 7 of its Charter and bypass the Security Council to pave the way for an internationally enforced corridor to allow 6000 trucks, enough food for 3 months, to pass into Gaza. But the starvation would stop if the US simply decided to make it so.

This genocidal starvation is an unbearable assault on Palestinians, and on all our humanity, and with the exception of the monsters perpetrating it and their supporters, the whole world is demanding that it stop.

Update: In the last few days Israel has announced its final “liquidation of Gaza,” and to ensure there would be no documentation of it, they targeted another Press Tent killing 6 journalists, 5 that worked for Al Jazeera, including the dedicated Anas al-Shafir. In coverage that demonstrates utter disregard for Palestinian life, and their complicity in genocide, both the New York Times and the BBC gave disproportionate space to Israel’s baseless smears and claims against Al Jazeera, and in the words of Jonathan Cook, “The BBC helped Kill Anas al-Sharif.”

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