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A group of people, gathered at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, Israel, stage a demonstration demanding the return of Israeli hostages in Gaza on August 2, 2025. [Saeed Qaq – Anadolu Agency]
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said on Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to “end the issue of the captives held in Gaza by starving them to death after failing to locate and kill them through bombing.”
In a statement published on Telegram, al-Rishq expressed regret that “hunger has reached the Israeli captives,” but held “Netanyahu and his Nazi-like government fully responsible,” accusing them of launching “a starvation and thirst war against our people, the effects of which have now reached their captives.”
On Friday, al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, released footage of Israeli captive Evyatar David, who appeared severely underweight due to what was described as Israel’s ongoing starvation policy in Gaza.
Similarly, on Thursday, al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, released a video it said was the last footage of captive Rom Braslavski before contact was lost with the group holding him. In the video, Braslavski appeared to be in an extremely frail physical condition, allegedly due to the starvation imposed by Israel on Gaza.
Commenting on this, al-Rishq said, “Our resistance fighters treat their captives according to our religious teachings and human values. They feed them from what they eat and give them water from what they drink, just as all our people do.”
People walk down a street surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, July 29, 2025
ISRAELI ministers have again exposed how hollow are Western claims to back a two-state solution.
Yet global opinion on Israel’s colonial project has reached a tipping point — and the prospect of real change cannot be dismissed.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir leads settlers in a march through occupied East Jerusalem. En route, he calls for Israel to annex Gaza.
Defence Minister Israel Katz decrees: “We will strengthen our hold and sovereignty over Jerusalem, at the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount, forever.”
These are not aberrations: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that he will never tolerate a Palestinian state.
Faced with such extremism, any government serious about a Palestinian state would need to impose tough conditions on Israel: full withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza included.
Yet what conditions do they seek to apply?
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says Britain will recognise Palestine unless Israel “takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza.”
Feeble as that is, at least Starmer makes demands of the aggressor, Israel.
Canada’s Mark Carney decided to lecture the people being massacred. Canada would recognise Palestine — subject to democratic reforms, including elections in which (very democratically) Hamas would be banned.
France’s Emmanuel Macron repeated that an independent Palestine would need to be demilitarised — as if Palestine threatens the existence of Israel, rather than the other way around.
The coloniser’s mindset. Palestine can be “independent,” but only if it chooses leaders we like, and has no means of defending itself.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Vote Labour for Genocide.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
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Palestinians gather at an aid distribution point near the Zikim border crossing in a desperate attempt to receive limited flour supplies in Gaza City, Gaza, on July 29, 2025. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
The pièce de résistance in the political tsunami that swept across parliaments, streets of world capitals, and podiums, culminating in a cascade of recognitions for Palestine, was Israel’s starvation campaign. A deliberate deprivation that tore through the veil of diplomatic neutrality. When images of emaciated children and hollow-eyed families flooded the world’s screens, the silence shattered. From Madrid to Brasília, from Pretoria to Dublin, governments that once tiptoed around the issue found their voices. Chile, Spain, Norway—each stepped forward, not out of political convenience, but because the moral cost of inaction had become unbearable. The campaign was not just a humanitarian crisis—it was the moral rupture that forced the world to choose: complicity or conscience.
This rupture was not born in isolation. It followed months of mounting evidence, from UN agencies and human rights organizations, that Israel’s siege on Gaza had crossed every red line of international law. The deliberate targeting of food supplies, the obstruction of humanitarian aid, and the weaponization of starvation are not just morally abhorrent—they are prosecutable war crimes under the Rome Statute. And yet, the United States, long seen as the indispensable power in global diplomacy, chose silence. Worse—it chose endorsement.
The US endorsement of Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza is not just a policy misstep—it is a grotesque moral betrayal that will haunt the nation’s soul and forever brand President Trump’s legacy with shame. To support the deliberate starvation of children is to stand on the wrong side of humanity. The harrowing images of skeletal Palestinian toddlers conjure the darkest chapters of history—ghastly reminders of Jewish children in Nazi death camps. That such horrors are now mirrored with American complicity is a stain that no amount of spin or silence can erase. This is not hyperbole—it is history repeating itself in grotesque imitation. The very nation that once vowed “never again” now finds itself employing the same tactics it once condemned. And the man at the center of this moral collapse is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu, drunk on his cunning, believes he can outmaneuver justice, stretching the Gaza war like a smokescreen to dodge the noose tightening around him at home. In his desperate bid for survival, he’s not just burying Gaza in rubble and grief; he’s dragging America’s reputation through blood-soaked mud, staining it with shame and criminal complicity. Every day this war drags on is another day the US is tethered to a man who treats human suffering as a political chess piece.
Like a modern-day Macbeth, Netanyahu clings to power with bloodied hands, convinced that his mastery of manipulation can outwit fate. He drags the Gaza war endlessly, not for strategy but for survival, hoping the fog of war will obscure the reckoning awaiting him at home, the noose tightening with every indictment and protest. In doing so, he mirrors the tyrants of history who believed brutality could buy them time—Milosevic in the Balkans, Pinochet in Chile—men who misinterpreted carnage for control. And as he orchestrates this siege, he pulls the United States into the mire, staining its legacy with complicity, shame, and the kind of moral failure that history never forgets. Gaza burns, and with it, the illusion that this war is anything but a desperate man’s gambit.
What makes this moment especially perilous is the semi-silence of American institutions. What would it take for the growing dissent within the US Congress, the media, and civil society to reach a critical mass that convinces President Trump to pressure Netanyahu into ending the conflict in Gaza? Where is the moral clarity that once defined American leadership? The answer lies in a toxic blend of political inertia and strategic delusion—a belief that supporting Israel, no matter the cost is a geopolitical imperative. But this calculus is crumbling. The world is watching, and the moral ledger is being written in real time.
Trump, Netanyahu, the donor class, and the GHF death trap
President Trump must awaken to the peril of Netanyahu’s war of deception. This is not a statesman’s struggle—it is the desperate theater of a man cornered by scandal, clinging to power through destruction. If Trump continues to tether himself to Netanyahu’s intrigue, he risks allowing Netanyahu to drag him into a moral and political abyss from which there may be no return. History is merciless to those who stand beside tyrants in their final acts. The bloodshed in Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe—it is a trap. And unless Trump distances himself now, he will find his legacy shackled to a war that was never his, but whose shame will be his to bear.
Why does President Trump allow Netanyahu to run circles around him, dragging his reputation through blood and betrayal? The answer is simple: money and influence. The Zionist lobby and donor class that bankrolled Trump’s rise now demand unwavering loyalty to Israel, even as his MAGA base grows disillusioned. “My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump reportedly warned a prominent Jewish donor. Yet the financial leash remains tight, and Trump’s silence is bought at the cost of his legacy. The Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF), a private aid contractor with no prior experience in humanitarian relief, has become a grotesque symbol of failure and cruelty. Designed as an alternative to UN agencies, its distribution sites have turned into death traps. Over 1,400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food, shot by Israeli soldiers working alongside GHF contractors. Retired U.S. Green Beret Anthony Aguilar, who served as a subcontractor, testified: “What I witnessed were war crimes—indiscriminate violence against starving civilians.”
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Members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services pray by the bodies of fellow rescuers killed a week earlier by Israeli forces, during a funeral procession at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. [Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images]
An Israeli airstrike targeted the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in southern Gaza early Sunday, killing a staff member and injuring two others, the organization said, Anadolu reports.
Red Crescent said Israeli fighter jets hit the first floor of its building in the city of Khan Younis, setting it on fire and causing significant damage.
“Our headquarters’ location is well known to the occupying forces and clearly marked with the protective red emblem. This was not a mistake,” the organization said. “This deliberate attack on a protected Red Crescent facility is a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law — it is a war crime.”
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa earlier reported that a staff member was killed and three others were injured in the attack.
The society renewed its call for “accountability and for the protection of all humanitarian and medical personnel.”
The attack came after US envoy Steve Witkoff visited Gaza on Saturday to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory, where deaths by hunger and starvation have climbed in recent days.
“Gaza is now on the brink of a full-scale famine. People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods,” said to Qu Dongyu, head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal war on Gaza, killing more than 60,400 Palestinians since October 2023.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, Germany, on July 22, 2025. [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “unacceptable,” according to media reports. Anadolu reports.
“One thing is clear to us: The situation there is unacceptable. It must end as quickly as possible. As long as it (this conflict) continues, at least a minimum of aid, medical assistance, and food aid must be guaranteed for the population. And Israel, of course, bears a considerable degree of responsibility for this,” Merz told journalists in the southwestern city of Saarbruecken.
Despite the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, Germany has been one of the EU states to reject sanctions against Israel.
This was one of the reasons why EU governments were unable to agree on a proposal from the European Commission. The Commission proposed temporarily suspending Israel’s participation in the Horizon Europe research funding program.
According to Merz, his government will soon decide on the next steps in the Gaza conflict. He expects a report from Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul once he returns from his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Saturday.
“We will await this report and make all further decisions,” the chancellor said when asked whether the German government could imagine participating in sanctions against Israel.
The government had already discussed in the Security Cabinet last Monday “how we might proceed together with our European partners,” he added.
Germany’s center-right government is under mounting pressure to adopt a tougher stance on Israel over what international human rights organizations say is a genocide in Gaza.
The Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing over 60,200 Palestinians. The relentless bombardment has devastated the enclave and led to food shortages.
On Monday, Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, citing the systematic destruction of Palestinian society and the deliberate dismantling of the territory’s health care system.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
People walk down a street surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, July 29, 2025
