Horror As Israel Implements the “Mass Death” Phase of Its Genocide in Gaza Through the Deliberate Starvation of the Entire Population
21.7.25
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It hardly seemed possible, when a six-week ceasefire began in Gaza in January, after 15 and a half months of the most horrendous war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions undertaken by the State of Israel against the trapped Palestinian population, that the situation could get worse.
However, since the start of March, when Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire deal without any justification whatsoever, the situation has indeed become worse, to such an extent that it is now appropriate to regard what is happening in Gaza as the “mass death” phase of Israel’s genocide.
Three particular developments have led to the current situation.
The first of these began on March 2, when Israel imposed a sustained siege on all supplies of food, water, medical supplies and fuel in Gaza, which has been deeper and even longer-lasting than the initial siege imposed in response to the attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, when, notoriously, defense minister Yoav Gallant stated, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
The second development began on March 18, when Israel resumed its intensive bombing of civilian targets, primarily by incinerating displaced families in tents and in former schools, and targeting house after house that had remained standing, often killing entire extended families, while, as usual, maintaining its convenient fiction that it was directing its attacks at Hamas “terrorist infrastructure.”
Because no one in the Israel media, or the western media, has ever adequately challenged these risible claims, Israel has learned that it can get away with the most egregious attacks on civilians — as, for example, when, on June 30, it used a 500 lb. bomb to destroy Gaza’s last beachfront cafe, killing dozens of civilians. When challenged (a hugely rare event), Israel claimed, without providing any evidence, that it was targeting “Hamas operatives.”
In May, the intensity of the attacks increased with astonishing ferocity when Israel launched “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, a depraved new initiative that envisaged the entire occupation of the Gaza Strip, and which, despite the horrors reported by Palestinians themselves, on nights that they described as the worst they had ever experienced, stirred so little disgust worldwide that, on Israel’s Channel 12 news channel, Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, from the far-right Religious Zionism party led by the depraved messianic settler minister Bezalel Smotrich, felt empowered to say, live on air, that “100 Palestinians can be killed in a single night and the world doesn’t care.”
That seemed to be a benchmark for what the world would tolerate — although it wasn’t news because, on average, a hundred Palestinians a day, mostly civilians, have been murdered by Israel over the last 21 months. In recent weeks, however, emboldened by the world’s persistent indifference, even this horrific benchmark seems to have been pushed upwards, with, often, several hundred Palestinians killed every day.
The third development, which, horrifically, contributes every day to this mounting and inexcusable civilian death toll, began on May 26, when a US-Israeli-led private initiative, the inaptly-named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), began distributing food at a number of aid points, whilst also targeting and killing desperately starving aid seekers, a grotesque situation that has drawn comparisons with “The Hunger Games” and the South Korean series “Squid Game.”
The particular depravity of the humanitarian aid “death trap” in Gaza
The full sordid story of the development of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has yet to be told, but its origins can traced via Israel’s persistent hatred of UNWRA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which, for almost as long as the State of Israel has existed, since the blood-soaked founding of the country in 1948, has supported Palestinians expelled during the 1948 Nakba (“catastrophe”), as well as those living in the territories that Israel occupied in 1967 — the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
After the International Court of Justice imposed provisional measures on Israel in January 2024, to prevent what it regarded as plausible genocidal intent in connection with its assault on Gaza under the 1948 Genocide Convention, and which included a requirement to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”, Israel responded by snubbing the Court, and inventing a scandal whereby, it was alleged, 12 of UNWRA’s employees (out of 13,000 in Gaza, and 40,000 in total) were suspected of taking part in the October 7 attacks. This outlandish claim became public just days after the ICJ ruling, when the US announced that it was temporarily suspending its funding to UNWRA.
Numerous western countries followed suit, but although most of that funding was later restored, and Israel’s claims, as usual, were never substantiated, the fake scandal paved the way for western indifference towards UNRWA, and by association, numerous other respected international aid agencies with long experience of working in the Gaza Strip, and, eventually, to the malignant creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Specifically, Israel falsely claimed that the established aid organizations had, as Reuters described it, “allowed Hamas militants to divert aid.” This was clearly nothing more than a smokescreen for the new GHF plan, which Israel had been dreaming of since the early months of its genocide. The UN and other international aid groups refused to cooperate with it, describing it as “ inadequate, dangerous and a violation of impartiality rules”, and the “weaponization of aid”, and they were not alone.
The day before its launch, its director, Jake Wood, a US military veteran and social entrepreneur, resigned, stating that “it is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” He also said, “I urge Israel to significantly expand the provision of aid into Gaza through all mechanisms” while also urging “all stakeholders to continue to explore innovative new methods for the delivery of aid, without delay, diversion, or discrimination.”
Jake Wood’s dramatic resignation, and the compelling reasons he gave for doing so, should have derailed the implementation of the GHF’s work, but that didn’t happen. As thousands of trucks of humanitarian aid from the UN and other agencies remained blocked at the border by Israel, along with vast amounts of aid in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt, evidence emerged that Israel was working with criminal gangs to disrupt whatever supplies were available, and, as food became more and more scarce, prices skyrocketed. Three months ago, the World Food Programme noted that food prices had “skyrocketed up to 1,400 percent compared to during the ceasefire”, and, just today, UNRWA posted a receipt from an outlet in Gaza that still had meagre supplies of food showing the following costs: 1kg of sugar – $100; 1kg of rice and flour – $30 each; 1kg of lentils – $23.
As a result, starving Palestinians were largely obliged to walk for miles to enter what swiftly became known as the GHF “death traps”, where, from the very first day that operations began, desperate aid seekers have been shot and killed by IDF soldiers and US mercenaries.
On July 3, the Associated Press published accounts provided anonymously by two US contractors, who stated that their colleagues were “using live ammunition and stun grenades” on the Palestinians, and that they “were coming forward because they were disturbed by what they considered dangerous and irresponsible practices.” They added that “the security staff hired were often unqualified, unvetted, heavily armed and seemed to have an open license to do whatever they wished.” An accompanying video contained the following exchange between US contractors, after around 15 gunshots rang out. “I think you hit one”, one man said, to which the reply was, “Hell, yeah, boy!”
On the same day, the BBC spoke to a former security contractor, who told them that he “witnessed colleagues opening fire several times on hungry Palestinians who had posed no threat, including with machine guns.” He also said that contractors “were given no clear rules of engagement or standard operating procedures, and were told by one team leader, ‘if you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later’”, and added that team leaders referred to the Palestinians as “zombie hordes, insinuating that these people have no value.”
On July 15, Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), announced that, since the introduction of the GHF program, “we have recorded 875 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 674 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites,” with the rest “killed while seeking food ‘on the routes of aid convoys or near aid convoys’ run by the UN or UN-partners still operating” in Gaza.
The “mass death” phase of Israel’s deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza
Meanwhile, over two months since the World Food Programme warned that 470,000 people in Gaza were “facing catastrophic hunger” under the most deadly phase, Phase 5, of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classifications, when “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident”, and that the entire population was “experiencing acute food insecurity”, the situation now is even worse.
For days now, Palestinians in Gaza have been posting relentlessly about the severity of their starvation.
Anas Al-Sharif, Gaza’s most tenacious journalist, recently published a steady stream of posts, including the stark message, “Gaza is Being Starved to Death”, and, to quote just one more example from hundreds of posts on X, another journalist, Nahed Hajjaj, wrote, “Do not be surprised when we journalists stop covering news here. I swear by God that today I could not get up from the hunger. There is no food. Even if someone has money, there is nothing in the market to even purchase. We are all starving. We are all dying.”
In the hospitals, babies are dying because their mothers are too starved to produce milk, and, despite weeks of desperate pleas to the world, Israel continues to prevent all formula milk from entering Gaza. Visiting doctors from other countries, recounting tales of horrors beyond anything they have witnessed before when they finally get through to the handful of surviving hospitals, have also spoken about how their efforts to bring in formula milk with them have been thwarted, as it has been confiscated on the way in.
For weeks, doctors have also been raising urgent requests for fuel, without which all the medical equipment in these last few facilities, including incubators for premature babies, will stop working, and in the meantime the wounded, who are still arriving in floods at the hospital because of the relentless ongoing bombing attacks, are ill-equipped, through starvation, to respond to what limited medication there is available, and are dying because their systems are breaking down, and they cannot heal.
The scale of the starvation is so severe that even organizations that, to date, have managed to locate some food are pointing out that nothing is available anywhere. Yesterday, Doctors Against Genocide posted that “the only meal hospital staff in Gaza were receiving — provided by World Central Kitchen — has stopped”, because the US-based aid agency “has run out of food”, and the incredible Palestinian-run Sameer Project, which has been assiduously finding ways to source food through its extensive contacts on the ground, was also obliged to concede defeat, stating, “For the first time since we launched the Sameer Project 15 months ago, we didn’t do food distributions for 3 days in a row. We are scrambling to find anything for the most malnutritioned cases on our lists.”
Beyond the starvation, Israel has spent the last four months destroying entire towns, and almost all of Gaza’s surviving buildings
As if this wasn’t enough, Israel continues to impose new evacuation orders, squeezing the surviving population into ever smaller areas along the coast. 85% of Gaza is now militarily occupied, and anyone still alive in any of the occupied areas is now regarded as a legitimate target for summary execution.
In addition, as the BBC reported — finally — in an excellent and detailed interactive feature on July 18, entitled, “Israel levelling thousands of Gaza civilian buildings in controlled demolitions”, since Israel broke the ceasefire four and half months ago, the destruction of what remained of the built environment has been relentless.
The BBC reported that “entire towns and suburbs — once home to tens of thousands of people — [have been] levelled in the past few weeks”, with vast amounts of that destruction “caused by planned demolitions, both to already damaged buildings and ones that appeared largely intact.”
While an IDF spokesman typically claimed that “Hamas concealed ‘military assets’ in civilian areas, and that the ‘destruction of property is only performed when an imperative military necessity is demanded’”, the BBC report was, for a change, skeptical.
Using satellite footage, the BBC showed the complete Hiroshima-style erasure of Rafah, and of the farming town of Khuza’a, by the coast in Khan Younis Governate, close to the Israeli border.
“Before the war”, as the BBC noted, “the town had a population of 11,000 people and was known for its fertile farmlands and crops such as tomatoes, wheat and olives.” Now, however, it has been completely erased. The IDF said that it had “demolished 1,200 buildings in Khuza’a”, all of which it alleged were part of “terror infrastructures” run by Hamas.
South east of Khan Younis, similar destruction took place at Abasan al-Kabira, a town “where about 27,000 people lived before the war.” In just 38 days, between May 31 and July 8, it was almost completely destroyed.
The BBC spoke to several human rights lawyers who were profoundly alarmed, and “suggested the campaign could amount to war crimes.”
Eitan Diamond, a senior legal expert at the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre in Jerusalem, told the BBC that there was “little justification” for Israel’s actions under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which covers the protection of civilians in wartime. He said, “International humanitarian law prohibits such controlled destruction of civilian property during armed conflict, except under narrow conditions of absolute military operational necessity. Destruction of property because of concerns or speculations about its possible future use (for example, that it will be used to launch attacks in the future) falls well outside this exception.”
Professor Janina Dill, the co-director of Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, reminded Israel that, as the occupying power, it “must administer a region for the benefit of the population”, which, she said, was “incompatible with a military approach that simply makes the territory uninhabitable and leaves nothing standing.”
The BBC also noted that there was “no sign of a let-up in the pace of the demolitions”, noting that “Israeli media reported last week that the IDF had received dozens of D9 bulldozers from the US, which had been suspended under the Biden administration.” The BBC also verified “dozens of adverts posted to Israeli Facebook groups” in recent months “which were offering work in Gaza to demolition contractors” from outside of Israel, reported by Arwa Mahdawi for the Guardian on July 9, in which she noted how Israel’s genocide in Gaza was being “outsourced.”
The “Final Solution”: the “concentration camp” proposal, and ongoing extermination disguised by lawless and unfeasible “voluntary migration” plans
And all of this, of course, is preparing the ground for an even more malevolent aim, if no one manages to intervene to stop Israel: the establishment, on the last tiny shards of Gaza that are not occupied, of a “concentration camp” for the remainder of the population, where the illusion of “voluntary migration” will be dangled over them, as Israel continues to let starvation and disease kill them, just as the Nazis did to the Jews in their extermination camps.
In recent days, the unviability of the “voluntary migration” plans, which have never been anything more than a thin disguise for continued extermination, have been fully exposed as the distraction they are. Last week, the Mossad spy chief David Barnea visited Washington, D.C. seeking help from the US government for its resettlement plans, which, Barnea reportedly told Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, consisted of just three countries which Israel has been “speaking [to] in particular” — Ethiopia, Libya and Indonesia.
All three proposals are preposterous. The US State Department regards Ethiopia as unsafe, due to “sporadic violent conflict and civil unrest”, and a security situation that “may deteriorate without warning”, and, for Libya, the State Department’s message is “Do not travel to Libya for any reason due to crime, terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” As for Indonesia, which Witkoff first talked of as a destination for “humanitarian resettlement” shortly after Trump took office, he failed to explain under what earthly circumstances hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could, even if they were willing, be moved across a distance of 5,500 miles, or 9,000 km.
When the illusion of “voluntary migration” falls away, all that is left — as I, and many others, have been writing about for the last four months, not least from within Gaza itself — is an ever more sustained policy of extermination of every front imaginable, as hundreds dying every day will soon turn into thousands if the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation isn’t immediately disbanded, and UNWRA and other international aid agencies are not allowed to bring in and properly distribute humanitarian aid supplies on a colossal scale.
Israel is clinging onto its delusions — that its genocide is somehow a legitimate form of self-defence; or even a human right — and it has succeeded in taking over governments across the western world while cowing the Arab world into silence or complicity. However, none of these countries will ever recover even the faintest scintilla of moral authority if, as so many of us now so rightly fear, Israel’s “Final Solution” to its perceived Palestinian “problem” is allowed to proceed to its logical, Auschwitz-tainted conclusion.
Let the aid in, let the Palestinians live, and bring the horrors to an end before the leaves fall once more and a shattered world is made to endure the second anniversary of the most grotesque demonstration of vengeance, self-righteous genocide and naked colonial ethnic cleansing just two and a half months from now, when, if it is not stopped before, the situation will shock the conscience even more than the Nazis’ death camps did to the Russians who liberated them in the dying months of the Second World War.
“Never again” was always meant to apply to everyone. It certainly wasn’t meant to carve out an exception for people who regard themselves as “the chosen people”, because that’s how the horrors of the Holocaust happened in the first place.
Israel’s leaders — and those of the many other countries who have been vicariously reliving their own histories of colonial slaughter, whatever other lies they may tell themselves — all need to be disarmed, discredited and hurled into banishment from humanity forever after the unprecedented depravity of the last 21 months.
Bur first the killing has to stop, and vast amounts of humanitarian aid have to be allowed into Gaza.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.
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19 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
My new article has one purpose: to highlight the fact that Israel is now engaged in the “mass death” phase of its genocidal assault on the trapped civilian population of the Gaza Strip, brought about through a ban on all supplies of food (and water, fuel and medical supplies), in place since the start of March, and, since May 26, through the replacement of the well-established aid systems provided by UNWRA and other international aid agencies with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-Israeli initiative that, from the beginning, has involved desperate starving civilians, on a daily basis, being shot at and killed.
I also point out how the combination of starvation, relentless and ongoing bombing, and the ban on fuel and medical supplies (including formula milk for babies) is creating a nightmare in Gaza’s few surviving hospitals, and I also cover other depraved aspects of Israel’s ongoing campaign.
These include the ongoing evacuation orders, which have led to a situation in which 85% of the Gaza Strip is now militarily occupied by Israel, the deliberate erasure of entire towns and most surviving buildings, and the long-term aims, still touted by Israel’s leaders, of squeezing the remaining population into a “concentration camp” in the south, and the ongoing efforts to locate third countries willing to support the “voluntary migration” of the remaining population, a grotesque form of enforced displacement and ethnic cleansing, which should be seen for what it really is — a smokescreen for further extermination.
As was revealed last week, the only countries that Israel claims to be engaged with regarding this unforgivably illegal plan are Ethiopia and Libya, which are both unsuitably unstable, and Indonesia, which is too far away.
I close by reiterating the only demand that counts — for Israel to stop the killing, and for vast amounts of humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, via the UN and other reputable agencies.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 6:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Today the foreign ministers of 25 countries have at least issued a strongly worded statement, although, as ever, words mean nothing without actions:
“We, the signatories listed below, come together with a simple, urgent message: the war in Gaza must end now.
“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid. The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law.
“The hostages cruelly held captive by Hamas since 7 October 2023 continue to suffer terribly. We condemn their continued detention and call for their immediate and unconditional release. A negotiated ceasefire offers the best hope of bringing them home and ending the agony of their families.
“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and to urgently enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs to do their life saving work safely and effectively.
“We call on all parties to protect civilians and uphold the obligations of international humanitarian law. Proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a ‘humanitarian city’ are completely unacceptable. Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law.
“We strongly oppose any steps towards territorial or demographic change in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The E1 settlement plan announced by Israel’s Civil Administration, if implemented, would divide a Palestinian state in two, marking a flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution. Meanwhile, settlement building across the West Bank including East Jerusalem has accelerated while settler violence against Palestinians has soared. This must stop.
“We urge the parties and the international community to unite in a common effort to bring this terrible conflict to an end, through an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. Further bloodshed serves no purpose. We reaffirm our complete support to the efforts of the US, Qatar and Egypt to achieve this.
“We are prepared to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political pathway to security and peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region.”
The Foreign Ministers of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, and the EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-on-the-occupied-palestinian-territories
...on July 21st, 2025 at 8:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Mary MacGregor Green wrote:
it was said yesterday that all that is going on is a tsunami, right now … and yet … I can barely cope with this … it is beyond normal comprehension and I am helpless to stop this … and before all this, I would always say a prayer for those in Gaza/Palestine who have been bearing up under such oppression !!! for so long. They were an inspiration to me and to many. And now this … deliberate starvation. I have had times in my life when I didn’t have enough to eat and my brain was wracked by that … this is starvation …
...on July 21st, 2025 at 8:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your empathy, Mary. The last 21 months have been the most harrowing I’ve been through as a human with empathy, and I know it’s been the same for many, many millions of us worldwide. The collision with supremacism has been so grotesque that I can only hope that it will end up marking the demise of this particular mindset, but for now, of course, the future doesn’t matter. All that matter is to bring this seemingly endless, bloody, genocidal present to an end.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 8:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Annalise Zaverdinos wrote:
Thank you. Your voice is sorely needed. 💔
...on July 21st, 2025 at 10:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Annalise. It seems, however, that we can do little more than bear witness, when our leaders are so monstrously corrupt. I do hope that one day everyone complicit will be held accountable, but every day the agony of seeing desperate messages and images and films coming out of Gaza and not being able to do anything about it is truly heartbreaking.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 10:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
F*cked up and twisted … there isn’t or aren’t any more words.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 10:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I know, Damien. I’ve written so much, but it does nothing but provide evidence that at least I cared. It was a struggle to write this, because, like you say, it’s hard to believe that words even have a purpose anymore – or even that we have the language to describe what’s happening.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 10:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Cat Watters wrote:
The WORLD 🌎 has BEEN ENABLING EVIL USrael and ALL abusers for decades and leaving the Bill for that on the innocent. The Abusive “family” on steroids.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 10:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Well said, Cat. Good to hear from you. I hope you’re as well as can be living in the dystopian cruelty of Trump’s America.
...on July 21st, 2025 at 10:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Fiona Russell Powell wrote:
It was always going to happen. Also, UK MSM never published the full details of the “Gideon’s Chariots” plan, Israel’s press did. Our government knew all along but continued in its complete complicity, which is natural considering the government and Parliament has all the key positions filled by Zionists, who’ve all been manouevred into place over the last 15-20 years (the major push hasn’t taken that long). One only has to read about the history of Zionism to understand that this has always been the goal. However, the notion of the Greater Israel (which never existed, btw) isn’t the end of the ultimate plan. Zionism is just the other side of the fascist Nasty coin, after all. ☹️
...on July 22nd, 2025 at 12:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Fiona. I tried to spell out the significance of the “Gideon’s Chariots” plan at the time, but of course the entire online media landscape is now ruthlessly configured to suppress critical independent voices. This, for example, was my blunt but accurate assessment on May 7: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/05/07/israel-wants-to-kill-everyone-in-gaza/
As you note, the entrenchment of Zionist control of western governments, including our own, has been ongoing for many years, hence the coordinated “Israel has the right to defend itself” statements immediately after Oct. 7, which have never been refuted, or even adequately qualified. It does, however, shine an unerring and sustained light on how dismally warmongering and complicit most western governments are, to an extent that is even more blood-soaked and complicit than what came before Oct. 7, and I can only hope that, in the “war” in the west between the Israeli-ordered suppression of dissent, and the refusal of millions to comply, we, the latter, ultimately prevail.
...on July 22nd, 2025 at 12:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Giddings wrote:
I cannot believe our politicians help this genocide. How can this happen? I often ask myself.
Where is humanity? They should all be on trial.
Thank you, Andy.
...on July 22nd, 2025 at 12:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It seems almost inconceivable, doesn’t it, Anna, that our leaders refuse to recognize both the unparalleled depravity of what Israel is doing, and the significance of their evident complicity in it? Do they really think they can wish away enduring, lifelong moral condemnation and accountability because the representatives of Israel who have a hotline to them tell them that they must stand firm as this is, as it has been since Oct. 7, according to Israel, a war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness? Never has reality been so inverted.
...on July 22nd, 2025 at 12:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
AN UPDATE FROM GAZA: Nearly 40 people have died of starvation today, 50,000 newborns and infants are without baby formula or their mothers’ milk, 55,000 pregnant woman are starving – and 11,000 of them have reached critical levels of hunger. 100,000 women and children in total are suffering from acute malnutrition.
STOP THE GENOCIDE! LET THE AID IN!
Figures above from from a post on X by Palestinian activist and commentator Nour Odeh: https://x.com/nour_odeh/status/1947676358764646428
...on July 22nd, 2025 at 5:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Read every word of this powerful and compelling article by Prof. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who is currently at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, about the extent of Israel’s crime of mass starvation & the inexcusable complicity of the west:
I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children – why is the world letting it happen?
I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.
This is my third time in Gaza since December 2023 as a volunteer surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestinians. I experienced mass casualty events and raised the alarm about malnutrition back in January 2024. But nothing has prepared me for the sheer horror I’m witnessing now: the weaponisation of starvation against an entire population.
The malnutrition crisis has become catastrophic since my last visit. Every day I watch patients deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery. The surgical repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, then they die. It is happening repeatedly, and it is heartbreaking to watch. Four babies have died in the last few weeks in this hospital – not from bombs or bullets, but from starvation.
Families and staff do their best to try to bring in what they can, but there simply isn’t enough food available in Gaza. For infants, we have virtually no baby formula. Children are being given 10% dextrose (sugar water), which has no nutritional value, and often their mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed. When an international colleague tried to bring baby formula into Gaza, Israeli authorities confiscated it.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach is twofold: block food from entering Gaza while leaving desperate civilians no choice but to visit militarised distribution points to receive some limited supplies. Until May, Gaza had more than 400 aid distribution sites where people could access food safely. Now there are just four of these militarised zones in the south where starving families are in constant danger of attack.
I’m hearing about dozens of trauma casualties flooding Gaza’s emergency departments daily – many of them with gunshot wounds from these militarised distribution points. I have operated on boys aged 12 to 15, whose relatives say they were shot while trying to get food for their families. Last week a 12-year-old died on the operating table, shot through the abdomen at what can only be described as a death trap for those seeking basic sustenance.
My colleagues in the emergency department have also reported a disturbing pattern: injuries concentrated on specific body parts on different days – heads, legs, genitals – suggesting deliberate targeting of those body parts.
In recent days, I operated on two women who were shot by quadcopters while sheltering in their tents near one of the locations, according to the people who brought them in. One was breastfeeding her child when she was hit; the second was pregnant. Thankfully, both have survived their injuries so far. These women weren’t even seeking aid – they were simply sheltering in areas that are supposedly “safe” but exposed to indiscriminate fire from the IDF’s weaponised hunger apparatus.
It is not just the patients here who are malnourished, but also healthcare workers. When I first arrived, I barely recognised colleagues I had worked with last year – some had lost 30kg. At lunchtime, some doctors and nurses head towards the distribution sites, knowing they risk death but having no choice if they want to feed their families.
Nasser hospital is the last major functioning hospital in southern Gaza, but we’re operating at breaking point, reeling from previous attacks and overwhelmed by mass casualties, all while facing shortages of everything. Netanyahu’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system has funnelled desperate medical needs into this single facility while directly targeting healthcare workers and patients. Just this week, one of our dear theatre nurses was killed in his tent along with his three small children.
I want to be clear – what is being done to Palestinians in Gaza is barbaric and entirely preventable. I cannot believe we have come to a point where the world is watching as the people of Gaza are forced to endure starvation and gunfire, all while food and medical aid sits across the border just miles away from them.
The enforced malnutrition and attacks on civilians will kill thousands more if not stopped immediately. Every day of inaction means more children will die not just from bullets or bombs, but from hunger. A permanent ceasefire, the free and safe flow of aid through the UN-led system, and the lifting of the blockade are needed now – and all can be achieved with political will.
The UK government’s continued complicity in Israel’s atrocities is unconscionable, and I do not want to spend another day operating on children who have been shot and starved by a military our government supports. History will judge not just those who committed these crimes, but those who stood by and watched.
From inside Nasser hospital, I am telling you: this is deliberate. This is preventable. And this must stop now.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/gaza-israel-deliberate-starvation-ceasefire-aid
...on July 23rd, 2025 at 9:28 am
Andy Worthington says...
115 aid agencies urge governments to act in response to the growing “mass death” phase of Israel’s deliberate starvation policy in Gaza: “open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a ceasefire now.”
https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/1758-as-mass-starvation-spreads-across-gaza-our-colleagues-and-those-we-serve-are-wasting-away
...on July 23rd, 2025 at 9:32 am
Andy Worthington says...
28 countries recently called for an immediate end to Israel’s “war” in Gaza (it’s actually a genocide), but offered no plans beyond words. Check out their ongoing complicity via this handy chart from Al Jazeera showing the extent of their imports and exports with Israel.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10163898083583804&set=p.10163898083583804&type=3
...on July 23rd, 2025 at 9:50 am
Andy Worthington says...
Like many of you, I’m sure, I can’t do anything right now, because I can’t escape the crushing reality that the deliberate mass starvation by Israel of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip — which has been particularly prevalent since Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire agreement with Hamas on March 1, and then imposed its most devastating siege to date on all supplies into Gaza, of food, water, medical supplies and fuel — has created a crisis that is already so deeply entrenched that the number of starvation-related deaths is set to rise rapidly in the weeks to come.
The best explanation I have found regarding the boundless depravity of what is happening is a thread on X by Jeremy Kondynyk, the President of Refugees International, which I’m posting below in its entirety:
As a longtime humanitarian who has battled famines and hunger crises, I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality.
A thread on famine momentum, famine response, and what it means for Gaza today.
The latest reporting shows telltale signs of rapidly accelerating mortality – the kind of classic famine scenario we know from places like Sudan or Somalia.
Barring a massive reversal of Israeli policy, there is a little standing in the way of total collapse.
Throughout last year Gaza ebbed and flowed at the brink of famine, but never passed the tipping point.
Israeli aid obstruction kept Palestinians perpetually underfed but always relented just enough to avoid mass hunger mortality, as we wrote last September:
https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs/untangling-the-reality-of-famine-in-gaza/
That changed in March when the ceasefire collapsed and Israel imposed a blockade that de facto continues to the present day.
The GHF [the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and the other trickles of aid that Israel is permitting are not a meaningful “lifting” of that blockade, and are not changing the trajectory.
The result: starvation deaths that had previously been one-off cases are now emerging in growing clusters.
43 starvation deaths (at least) in the last three days [56, according to the latest reports], compared to 68 recorded over the course of the war.
Both figures are likely undercounts, but the trend here is key.
Famines gain momentum if they are not controlled early.
The time to prevent starvation deaths is weeks prior, when people reach a state of severe malnutrition.
The time to prevent severe malnutrition is months earlier, when long-term food deficits set in.
By the time people start dying in large daily numbers, both of those windows have been missed.
This famine has now gathered momentum, accrued over months of worsening deprivation and the collapse of the relief effort due to Israel’s blockade.
Once a famine gathers momentum, the effort required to contain it increases exponentially.
It would now take an overwhelmingly large aid operation to reverse the coming wave of mortality, and it would take months.
Gaza is entering its darkest chapter yet.
Normally the reports and images now emerging would trigger a massive international response.
So – what needs to happen?
By this point, food alone is not enough. For people weakened by prolonged starvation, famine can kill in multiple ways — and response strategy must cover them all.
When I led these operations for the US govternmen, they would cover:
– Food aid (obviously)
– Malnutrition treatment
– Health care (disease can kill malnourished people before starvation does)
– Clean water (for consumption and food preparation)
– Sanitation (to prevent spreading disease)
Famine response has made great strides over the years and can be miraculously effective when given the space to work.
The innovation and evolution in response tactics has made famines much rarer in recent decades.
But nothing like this is remotely possible right now.
Humanitarians can’t tackle the famine until the political and security obstacles are removed.
Israel’s aid restrictions and ongoing incessant violence towards Palestinian civilians make a proper famine response effectively impossible.
Instead of allowing and facilitating a genuine famine response, Israel is persisting with this GHF farce and using it as a pretext to block legit aid groups.
It is fundamentally unserious and cynical — and as the reports out Gaza make clear, it is failing on the merits.
Every world leader needs to ask themselves if they are ready to be complicit in a famine on their watch.
If they are not, they must act decisively now, using every possible political and diplomatic tool, to pressure Israel to lift this unlawful and murderous blockade.
https://x.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1948254557722583497
...on July 25th, 2025 at 6:43 pm