Owen Jones in The Guardian: Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. It couldn’t have done it without the west’s help. The current hand-wringing by Keir Starmer and other western politicians is empty bluster. They knew what was happening all along.

"Israel has perpetrated the biggest slaughter of aid workers in history, killing more than 400 by the spring. It waged a relentless war against Gaza’s main humanitarian agency – Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency – and banned it from the occupied territories last October. Its military killed police officers charged with escorting aid and preventing looting. It’s not just the blocking of aid from entering. Israel’s onslaught has left nearly all agricultural land unusable, as well as damaging 80% of cropland. Nearly all livestock and most plant life is dead. Gaza’s port and fishing vehicles have been destroyed, and Palestinians defying Israel’s ban on fishing face slaughter.The massacre of starving Palestinians looking for aid has been a consistent theme..."  Owen Jones

 

Wed 30 Jul 2025 03.00 EDT

Palestinians waiting for food aid from a charity in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, 29 July 2025. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

What have we done? As the UN-backed monitor declares that “the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip”, this should have been the question ricocheting between the walls as Keir Starmer met Donald Trump this week. Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza is, after all, a crime confessed to, designed and implemented in plain sight. Starmer has said the UK will recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire and a two-state solution, but don’t be beguiled: Palestinian national self-determination is an inalienable right, not a bargaining chip, and it’s the most symbolic action he could take rather than, say, imposing sweeping sanctions and ending all arms sales. The hand-wringing of western politicians and media outlets will not feed Gaza’s emaciated children, any more than it will absolve them of guilt.

Israel’s leaders have said, explicitly, repeatedly, from the very beginning, that they are deliberately starving Gaza’s people. “Man-made famine is not something that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Martin Griffiths, the UN’s former humanitarian chief, tells me. On 9 October 2023, Israel’s then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced “a complete siege on [Gaza]: no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel”, justified on the grounds: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”. The next day, the Israeli general charged with humanitarian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank – Ghassan Alian – declared that the “citizens of Gaza” were “human beasts” who would suffer “a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

The following week, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised “we will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip”. These statements were not reported at all by many western media outlets – or, if they were, it was in passing and with no explanation given about their objectively illegal intent. It’s as though these statements were being uttered in a parallel universe, because if they were accurately covered with due prominence, then our media would have been forced to cover Israel’s onslaught as a criminal enterprise, rather than a war of self-defence.

Israel’s western allies knew exactly what it was up to.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/30/israel-starvation-gaza-keir-starmer-west

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