This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.”
Smoke rises amid destroyed buildings following an Israeli shelling in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, August 1, 2025
HAMAS branded US President Donald Trump’s special envoy visit to Gaza a “publicity stunt“ today.
Steve Witkoff’s visit comes as the humanitarian crisis in the enclave rapidly deteriorates and killings continue.
Medical sources in Gaza reported that at least 38 people were killed by the Israelis today, including 12 aid seekers, with more than 80 people wounded.
The US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) denied anyone was killed at their sites today and said most recent incidents had taken place near United Nations aid convoys.
Mr Witkoff visited the south of the strip today as international outrage continues to grow over starvation, shortages and deadly chaos near aid distribution sites.
…
All four of GHF’s sites have become flashpoints during their months of operation, with starving people scrambling for scarce aid.
Hundreds have been killed by Israeli gunfire.
…
Hamas said today that the visit by Mr Wikoff to Gaza “is nothing more than a publicity stunt aimed at containing the growing outrage over US-Israeli complicity in starving our people in the strip.
Trump with his paedophile friend Jeffrey EpsteinDonald Trump and his paedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein.Donald Trump picture with one of his wives, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.Donald Trump pictured with Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislane Maxwell.Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and one of Trump’s daughters.
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.