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Bodies of Palestinians are brought to the al Shifa Hospital after Israeli airstrike claimed Palestinian lives in Gaza Strip on July 23, 2025. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli army has killed 18,592 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, according to official data from Gaza’s Health Ministry on Thursday, Anadolu reports.
The ministry’s records showed that many of the victims were killed in their earliest days of life. Some died just hours after birth, struck by Israeli airstrikes or bombs.
Figures released by the ministry showed that the victims included nine babies killed on the day of their birth, five killed on the first day, five on the second day, and eight on their third day.
The ministry explained that the dead children also included 88 aged one month, 90 aged two months, and 78 aged three months.
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 healthcare 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.
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Relatives attend the funeral of five members of the same family who were killed in an Israeli airstrike while securing humanitarian aid near the Al-Sudaniyya area, at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on July 29, 2025. [Khames Alrefi – Anadolu Agency]
John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said that “the Israelis are executing a genocide in Gaza,” adding that the US is “complicit in that genocide,” Anadolu reports.
What is happening in Gaza is a systematic effort by Israel to dismantle the Palestinian national identity, Mearsheimer said in an interview with media personality Tucker Carlson published on Wednesday.
He added that Israel is targeting Palestinians specifically as a group, aiming not only to kill large numbers but also to erase their identity as a people.
Mearsheimer believed that the Israelis have long aimed to expel the Palestinian population from what they consider “Greater Israel.”
“If you look at Greater Israel, this includes the Israel that was created in 1948 and the occupied territories. This is the West Bank, Gaza, and what we call the Green Line Israel. That’s Greater Israel,” the scholar said.
“October 7th happens, and what the Israelis see is an excellent opportunity for ethnic cleansing. And they make this clear.
“In other words, it’s an excellent opportunity to go to war in Gaza and drive the Palestinians out of Gaza and solve that demographic problem that they face,” he added.
Israel also carried out large-scale ethnic cleansings in the region in 1948 and 1967, and Mearsheimer described the latest campaign in Gaza as “the third attempt at a massive ethnic cleansing.”
The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians. The relentless bombardment has devastated the enclave and led to food shortages.
Israel wants to ensure that its neighbors are ‘weak’
One of Israel’s goals is also to ensure that its neighbors are “weak,” said Mearsheimer, noting that “that means breaking them apart, if you can, and keeping them broken.”
He said the ethnic cleansing is a topic “that the Zionists talked about from the get-go, and they talked about extensively because there is no way they could create a Greater Israel without doing massive ethnic cleansing.”
David Ben Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and other prominent Zionist leaders are fully aware that achieving their goals would require doing “horrible things” to the Palestinians, he said.
The scholar highlighted that those Zionist leaders acknowledged this and even stated openly that they did not blame the Palestinians at all for resisting the actions planned by Jews arriving from Europe.
“They fully understood that they were stealing their land. And they fully understood that it made perfect sense for the Palestinians to resist, which of course they did,” Mearsheimer noted.
“They (Israel) start with the goal of ethnic cleansing. I don’t believe they want to murder all of the Palestinians in Gaza.
“They simply want to drive them out. But the problem is they don’t leave. And then the question is, what do you do? And what they do is they continue to up the attacks, increase the attacks, (and) kill more and more people in the hope that they will drive them out,” he added.
Israel lobby in US
Mearsheimer stressed that when a major power like the US has conflicting interests with another country, it prioritizes its own, following an “America first” approach. However, regarding Israel, it’s the opposite — it is “Israel first,” he stated.
Washington’s policy in the Middle East clearly reflects this, with plenty of evidence to support it, the scholar underscored.
Mearsheimer, who is also the co-author of the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, said that the reason for this is due to the Israel lobby in the US.
“I think the lobby is an incredibly powerful interest group, and I’m choosing my words carefully. It has awesome power, and it basically is in a position where it can profoundly influence US foreign policy in the Middle East. And indeed, it affects foreign policy outside of the Middle East.
“But when it comes to the Middle East, and again, the Palestinian issue in particular, it has awesome power. And there’s no president who is willing to buck the lobby,” he added.
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Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump,
Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner are called
evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz holds a press conference in Berlin, Germany on July 18, 2025. [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]
More than 200 prominent German celebrities and journalists on Thursday urged Chancellor Friedrich Merz to stop arms deliveries to Israel and to impose further sanctions on Tel Aviv over its deadly military campaign in Gaza, Anadolu reports.
In an open letter, the group pointed to the suffering of children in the Gaza Strip and stressed: “We, too, condemn the horrific crimes of Hamas in the strongest possible terms. But no crime legitimizes the collective punishment of millions of innocent people in the most brutal way.”
The letter added that in the Gaza Strip, children who are not part of the war yet bear its burden are starving and dying.
“More than 17,000 have already been killed. Hundreds of thousands are injured, traumatized, displaced, and starving.
The signatories – including actors Liv Lisa Fries (Babylon Berlin), Katharina Thalbach (Miss Merkel), and Benno Furmann (North Face) – acknowledged Merz’s criticism of the Israeli government in recent days. However, they urged the chancellor to take further steps, including halting all German arms exports to Israel, supporting the suspension of the EU Association Agreement with Israel, and demanding an immediate ceasefire and unhindered access for humanitarian aid.
“These steps are deeply aligned with European values and would make it unmistakably clear to the Israeli government that even its closest allies can no longer tolerate the suffering and that words are no longer enough,” the open letter said.
On Monday, Merz said his government is considering stepping up pressure on Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in the enclave.
The German government “reserves the right” to take concrete measures to increase pressure on Israel to improve “the catastrophic situation” in the Gaza Strip, he said.
He added that the Security Cabinet had not yet made any decisions on the matter but had discussed options.
“We reserve the right, however, to take such steps,” he stressed.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou (R) and Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu (L) at a ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, in Paris on 8 May 2025 (Thomas Samson/AFP)
Legal complaint accuses President Emmanuel Macron, three key ministers and scores of MPs of facilitating Israeli crimes against Palestinians
French lawyers have submitted a request to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an investigation into the role of French officials “in the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide” by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
In a 56-page communication made public by the French investigative media outlet Blast on Monday, the 114 lawyers named President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu and 19 lawmakers of the National Assembly’s European Affairs Committee.
A communication to the ICC is the equivalent of a criminal complaint to the court on an alleged crime falling under its jurisdiction.
It is addressed to the Office of the ICC Prosecutor in accordance with Article 15 of the Rome Statute, which states that the prosecutor may open proprio motu investigations (i.e. on their own initiative) based on information relating to crimes within the court’s jurisdiction.
The lawyers, representing an NGO called Pour la Justice au Proche-Orient (“for justice in the Middle East”) note that: “Far from taking concrete measures to prevent the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians, the members of the French executive cited in this communication have continued to support the criminal actions of the government of Israel by providing military, political, economic, diplomatic and propaganda support to that state, including by providing the means to commit the crimes in question.”
Even as media report more regularly on starvation in Gaza, coverage still tends to obscure responsibility—as with this CNN headline (7/26/25) blaming the baby’s death on the “starvation crisis” rather than on the US-backed Israeli government.
The headlines are increasingly dire.
“Child Dies of Malnutrition as Starvation in Gaza Grows” (CNN, 7/21/25)
“More Than 100 Aid Groups Warn of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strikes Kill 29, Officials Say” (AP, 7/23/25)
“No Formula, No Food: Mothers and Babies Starve Together in Gaza” (NBC, 7/25/25)
“Five-Month-Old Baby Dies in Mother’s Arms in Gaza, a New Victim of Escalating Starvation Crisis” (CNN, 7/26/25)
“Gaza’s Children Are Looking Through Trash to Avoid Starving” (New York, 7/28/25)
This media coverage is urgent and necessary—and criminally late.
Devastatingly late to care
An informative Wall Street Journal chart (7/27/25) shows the complete cutoff of food into Gaza at the beginning of 2025—a genocidal policy decision by Israel that was not accompanied by increased coverage in US media of famine in the Strip.
Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has severely restricted humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a war crime for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant have been charged by the International Criminal Court. Gallant proclaimed a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Aid groups warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza as early as December 2023. By April 2024, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN, 4/11/24) found it “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.”
A modest increase in food aid was allowed into the Strip during a ceasefire in early 2025. But on March 2, 2025, Netanyahu announced a complete blockade on the occupied territory. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.”
After more than two months of a total blockade, Israel on May 19 began allowing in a trickle of aid through US/Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) centers (FAIR.org, 6/6/25)—while targeting with snipers those who came for it—but it is not anywhere near enough, and the population in Gaza is now on the brink of mass death, experts warn. According to UNICEF (7/27/25):
The entire population of over 2 million people in Gaza is severely food insecure. One out of every three people has not eaten for days, and 80% of all reported deaths by starvation are children.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 147 Gazans have died from malnutrition since the start of Israel’s post–October 7 assault. Most have been in the past few weeks.
Mainstream politicians are finally starting to speak out—even Donald Trump has acknowledged “real starvation” in Gaza—but as critical observers have pointed out, it is devastatingly late to begin to profess concern. Jack Mirkinson’s Discourse Blog (7/28/25) quoted Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk:
I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality…. 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.
And there are long-term, permanent health consequences to famine, even when lives are saved (NPR, 7/29/25). Mirkinson lambasted leaders like Cory Booker and Hillary Clinton for failing to speak up before now: “It is too late for them to wash the blood from their hands.”
Barely newsworthy
Major US media, likewise, bear a share of responsibility for the hunger-related deaths in Gaza. The conditions of famine have been out in the open for well over a year, and yet it was considered barely newsworthy in US news media.
A MediaCloud search of online US news reports mentioning “Gaza” and either “famine” or “starvation” shows that since Netanyahu’s March 2 announcement of a total blockade—which could only mean rapidly increasing famine conditions—there was a brief blip of media attention, and then even less news coverage than usual for the rest of March and April. Media attention rose modestly in May, at a time when the world body that classifies famines announced in May that one in five people in Gaza were “likely to face starvation between May 11 and September 30″—in other words, that flooding Gaza with aid was of the highest urgency.
But as aid continued to be held up, and Gazans were shot by Israeli snipers when attempting to retrieve the little offered them, that coverage eventually dwindled, until the current spike that began on July 21.
FAIR (e.g., 3/22/24, 4/25/25, 5/16/25, 5/16/25) has repeatedly criticized US media for coverage that largely absolves Israel of responsibility for its policy of forced starvation—what Human Rights Watch (5/15/25) called “a tool of extermination”—implemented with the backing of the US government.
The current headlines reveal that the coverage still largely diverts attention from Israeli (let alone US) responsibility, but it’s a positive development that major US news media are beginning to devote serious coverage to the issue. Imagine how different this all could have looked had they given it the attention it has warranted, and the accountability it has demanded, when alarms were first raised.
