Article  Starmer declares Gaza starvation caused by Israel must be remedied (UK brewing)

(Jul 27, 2025 07:03 PM)C C Wrote: UK Prime Minister announces humanitarian relief to combat catastrophic starvation in Gaza
https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/07/uk-p...n-in-gaza/

INTRO: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday announced that the UK will airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children for more specialized medical aid.

"Evacuate" them where?

Quote:The British leader condemned the mass starvation of the Palestinians by Israel, calling this “utterly horrifying” and “completely unjustifiable.”

Maybe Starmer is unaware that Gaza started a WAR with Israel. The war could end tomorrow, if Hamas simply surrenders unconditionally. But none of the Europeans will say that, because their Muslim minorities have grown so large that they fear civil disorder if they do.

After all, Berlin was bombed and shelled massively in 1945, without any suggestion that the allies were somehow responsible for feeding the population of Berlin at the time (several million, probably greater than the population of Gaza). There was no suggestion that they back off and allow Hitler and his government to survive, on the grounds that further attack would harm too many Germans.

After the Nazi government was gone and Germany had surrendered, the US and Britain did try to feed Berlin in the Berlin Airlift.

Quote:Starvation of civilians through the blockade or denial of humanitarian aid may constitute war crimes and potentially genocide. Under Article 6© of the Rome Statute, for example, “deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” qualifies as genocide.

So was the invasion of Germany in 1945 "genocide" against Nazis? Against Berliners? It would seem to fit the definition. Any collection of people can be called "a group" so that any war can be termed "genocide" since it seeks to eliminate the enemy.

Historically, genocide referred to destroying an entire race or stock, defined by descent. The Jews claim to be such a group defined by mythical blood descent from the patriarchs, though in real life that's doubtful. The people of Gaza have no such myth of common ancestry.

Even worse, the whole idea of races and stocks of people defined by ancestry has been totally rejected by today's wokism. (At least for Europeans, nobody doubts it about the Chinese or American Indians.) So anyone who speaks of "British stock" or the "German race" in distinction to more recent migrants, is immediately condemned as a "nativist", which is supposedly a bad thing. The whole EU project is designed around erasing the historical European nations and peoples, and hence could arguably be described as genocidal.

Quote:While genocide necessitates the highest burden of proof, many scholars argue that patterns of targeting children through food deprivation, especially if militarily disproportionate, could meet the threshold of genocide.

Israel is targeting Hamas, which hides their remaining weapons while blending in among the civilian population of Gaza. Hamas needs to announce their unconditional surrender, turn over their remaining arms and stop fighting the Israelis. Doing so would allow aid to flow into Gaza as it did into Berlin after VE Day. Until Hamas gives up or otherwise ceases to exist, the people of Gaza will continue to suffer.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Two prominent Israeli rights groups on Monday said their country is committing genocide in Gaza, the first time that local Jewish-led organizations have made such accusations against Israel during nearly 22 months of war.

The Palestinians, their supporters and international human rights groups make that claim, and the International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel.

But in Israel, founded in the wake of the Holocaust, even the government's strongest critics have largely refrained from making such accusations.

That's because of the deep sensitivities and strong memories of the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews, and because many in Israel view the war in Gaza as a justified response to the deadliest attack in the country's history and not an attempt at extermination.

Shattering a taboo in Israel

The rights groups, while prominent and respected internationally, are considered in Israel to be on the political fringe, and their views are not representative of the vast majority of Israelis. But having the allegation of genocide come from Israeli voices shatters a taboo in a society that has been reticent to criticize Israel's conduct in Gaza.

Guy Shalev, director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, said the Jewish-Israeli public often dismisses accusations of genocide as antisemitic or biased against Israel.

"Perhaps human rights groups based in Israel, and coming to this conclusion, is a way to confront that accusation and get people to acknowledge the reality," he said.

Israel asserts that it is fighting an existential war and abides by international law. It has rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.

It is challenging such allegations at the International Court of Justice, and it has rejected the International Criminal Court's allegations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant committed war crimes in Gaza. Both face international arrest warrants.

Israel's government on Monday didn't immediately comment on the reports by B'Tselem and PHRI. Israeli officials largely blame civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying it uses civilians as shields by embedding militants in residential areas.

"Israel's claim that Hamas fighters or members of other armed Palestinian groups were present in medical or civilian facilities, often made without providing any evidence, cannot justify or explain such widespread, systematic destruction," the B'Tselem report said.

The reports echo international claims

The rights groups, in separate reports released jointly, said Israel's policies in Gaza, statements by senior officials about its goals there and the systematic dismantling of the territory's health system contributed to their conclusion of genocide.

Their claims echoed those of previous reports from international rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Like other rights groups, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have not been allowed into Gaza during the war. Their reports are based on testimonies, documents, eyewitnesses and consultations with legal experts.

The group has long been outspoken about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. It halted cooperation with the military nearly a decade ago, saying the army's investigations into wrongdoing weren't serious, and it has accused Israel of being an apartheid state.

The PHRI report was a detailed, legal-medical analysis focusing on what it called the step-by-step dismantling of Gaza's health and life-sustaining systems including electricity, clean water and access to food.

Its report says Israel has committed three of the acts of genocide defined by international law, including "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

The Israeli rights groups said repeated statements by Israeli officials and the military endorsing the total destruction, starvation and permanent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, combined with policies on the ground, have demonstrated that Israel is intentionally trying to destroy Palestinian society.

A "painful" conclusion
The term "genocide" strikes a chord in Israel, where Israelis grow up learning about the Holocaust and hearing survivors' harrowing stories, while promising it would never happen again.

The 1948 Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the murder by Nazi Germany of 6 million Jews. It defines genocide as acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

"As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, it's very painful for me to be reaching this conclusion," said Shalev from PHRI. But after growing up in a society where the Holocaust was so important, it demands some kind of responsibility, he said.

Until now, Israeli criticism of the war in Gaza has been focused on Netanyahu and whether his wartime decision-making has been politically motivated and delayed the return of hostages — 50 of them still in Gaza.

Broader scrutiny of Israel's conduct in Gaza has been limited for multiple reasons. Despite the vast destruction and death in the territory and Israel's growing international isolation, most Israelis have believed for much of the war in its righteousness.

And with most Jewish Israelis serving in the army, it's difficult for most people to fathom that their relatives in uniform could be carrying out genocide. Some soldiers, however, have refused to fight in the war.

Jeffrey Herf, a historian who has published much on antisemitism, said the allegation of genocide doesn't take into account that there is a war between two parties. He said it ignores Hamas as a military force and Israel's right to defend itself.

Israelis' focus is on the hostages, not Palestinians

After groups like B'Tselem in recent years accused Israel of apartheid, more mainstream voices in Israel also picked up the claim, although in less sweeping ways.

Israeli historian Tom Segev said he's not sure the new reports and their allegations will have an impact on the public.

"The major thing for Israelis is a question of the hostages, not necessarily the fate of the population in Gaza," he said. But he said what's happening in Gaza is undermining the ideological and moral justification for the existence of Israel.

The rights groups said the international community hasn't done enough to protect Palestinians and are calling on the world, including Israelis who have stayed silent, to speak up.

"We have an obligation to do everything we can to speak the truth about this, to stand by the victims," said Sarit Michaeli, the international director for B'Tselem."

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/28/nx-s1-548...physicians

"There is "real starvation" in Gaza, Donald Trump has said, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted there was no such thing.

Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu that it was a "bold-faced lie" to say Israel was fuelling hunger in Gaza, the US president replied: "I don't know... those children look very hungry... that's real starvation stuff."

Speaking during a meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, Trump said: "Nobody's done anything great over there. The whole place is a mess... I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way."

His comments came after the UN's humanitarian chief said "vast amounts" of food were needed to stave off starvation."--- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62nr9rglm9o

All talk of saving Gazans from starvation is pointless if someone doesn't introduce legitimately safe food distribution sites that actually allow aid-seekers access to food most of the time, instead of intermittently shooting and killing them. Or placing those in locations where aid-seekers get slain just trying to reach them on foot. (LINK)

It seems to be a given that the Strip has been reduced to such rubble that there is no practical way to re-establish a viable community along it again. Even if the mess was magically cleared up and rebuilt -- how long would it be before the whole thing is trashed again due to another major terrorist incident? Even if Gaza was made into an independent state, it is still going to remain a host of terrorism and eventually be blasted into ruin again.

But there's no possibility of ever relocating the Gazans to a safer part of the world. Transporting them elsewhere would be a war crime (below), in addition to accommodating Israel's ultimate desire of being rid of them in that manner. So the laws of the world's humanitarian establishment itself wants them stuck forever in this perpetually reoccurring hellhole.

Accordingly, there is going to be an eventual limit as to how much constant attention can be given to the incurable horrors of Gaza. There is only one true remedy, and the global welfare bodies do not advocate that solution, even if the alternative ultimately means Gazans being exterminated by starvation and other problems of residing in a battlefield wasteland.

Plans to relocate Gazans to a ‘humanitarian city’ look like a crime against humanity (excerpts) : The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are refusing to implement a government plan to move hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into a what it calls a “humanitarian city” in Rafah on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt...

Army reservists have reportedly also complained that the plan amounts to a war crime. In my view, as an expert in international law, they are correct. Forcibly relocating a population is prohibited, even in war. It is also a crime against humanity and could even amount, under certain circumstances, to genocide.

There is some important historical context to consider before examining the legal issues at play. [...] It is clear to me that the forced relocation of Gazans to a “humanitarian city” would violate international law...

(Jul 28, 2025 09:56 PM)confused2 Wrote:

Syne Wrote:No, you have no historical connection to America. Simple reasoning you seem incapable of.
My standards are basic history. Learn some.

So a historical connection to America turns Europeans into Americans but doesn't (by your standards) turn Palestinians into Palestinians. This is why I say your standards are based on whatever nonsense you feel advances your favoured outcome.

What historical connection? Palestinians aren't even an ancestry.
There wasn't even such a thing as a Palestinian until near the fall of the Ottoman Empire, in 1922. Compare that to Jewish rule of the region (Kingdoms of Judah and Samaria) in the 10th century BCE. So Palestinian claims to land are a modern contrivance, while Jews have a historical claim on the land... and even a longer history of continuous occupation of the land.
Arabs living there since 1922 don't magically threaten the Jewish claim to the land. Just like recent immigrants to the US don't threaten US sovereignty.

There is no "nation of Palestine" for anyone to even become a citizen of.
Thanks for verifying your historical ignorance.

---

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I)
Under the guise of medical expertise and scientific fact, PHR-I promotes distorted and false narratives, aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing Israel in the international arena.

B'Tselem
B’Tselem is part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel.

---

(Jul 28, 2025 10:06 PM)Yazata Wrote: "Evacuate" them where?
...
Maybe Starmer is unaware that Gaza started a WAR with Israel. The war could end tomorrow, if Hamas simply surrenders unconditionally. But none of the Europeans will say that, because their Muslim minorities have grown so large that they fear civil disorder if they do.

After all, Berlin was bombed and shelled massively in 1945, without any suggestion that the allies were somehow responsible for feeding the population of Berlin at the time (several million, probably greater than the population of Gaza). There was no suggestion that they back off and allow Hitler and his government to survive, on the grounds that further attack would harm too many Germans.

After the Nazi government was gone and Germany had surrendered, the US and Britain did try to feed Berlin in the Berlin Airlift.
...
So was the invasion of Germany in 1945 "genocide" against Nazis? Against Berliners? It would seem to fit the definition. Any collection of people can be called "a group" so that any war can be termed "genocide" since it seeks to eliminate the enemy.

Historically, genocide referred to destroying an entire race or stock, defined by descent. The Jews claim to be such a group defined by mythical blood descent from the patriarchs, though in real life that's doubtful. The people of Gaza have no such myth of common ancestry.

Even worse, the whole idea of races and stocks of people defined by ancestry has been totally rejected by today's wokism. (At least for Europeans, nobody doubts it about the Chinese or American Indians.) So anyone who speaks of "British stock" or the "German race" in distinction to more recent migrants, is immediately condemned as a "nativist", which is supposedly a bad thing. The whole EU project is designed around erasing the historical European nations and peoples, and hence could arguably be described as genocidal.
...
Israel is targeting Hamas, which hides their remaining weapons while blending in among the civilian population of Gaza. Hamas needs to announce their unconditional surrender, turn over their remaining arms and stop fighting the Israelis. Doing so would allow aid to flow into Gaza as it did into Berlin after VE Day. Until Hamas gives up or otherwise ceases to exist, the people of Gaza will continue to suffer.

Exactly. There is a huge discrepancy in the standards the media, EU countries, leftists, etc. hold Israel to. It isn't consistent with how any other country has been treated throughout history. I can only find antisemitism as a motive. Why else single out Israel alone?

“Education is not memorising that Hitler killed 6 million Jews. Education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required. Education is learning how to spot history repeating itself.” ---Noam Chomsky

Platitudes are not arguments. You can't justify calling Israel Nazis by doubling down on calling them Nazis.
Antisemites would though.

With references to “slaughter” in Gaza and Israel’s successful efforts (with U.S. complicity) to quell protest and expressions of sympathy among Palestinians in the West Bank, Chomsky returned often to the apartheid theme. At one point he described Gaza’s living conditions as being worse than the bantustans, the so-called homelands of apartheid South Africa. He later referred to Israel’s actions in sealed-off Gaza as a campaign of extermination.

His comments were punctuated by his familiar refrain that the United States and Israel are “rogue states.” With few exceptions, U.S. support of Israel has been unflagging, he said.
- https://www.bu.edu/articles/2010/noam-ch...ael-again/

"This is preventable starvation,” said Alex de Waal. “It is entirely man-made.”

A leading global authority on famine on Monday accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip, remarks that came amid a steadily rising death toll from malnutrition caused by the 654-day U.S.-backed Israeli siege and obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.

“I’ve been working on this topic for more than four decades, and there is no case since World War II of starvation that is being so minutely designed and controlled,” Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Al Jazeera.

“This is preventable starvation. It is entirely man-made,” de Waal added. “And every stage of this has been predicted, and at every stage action could have been taken—by Israel, by the international authorities, [the] international community, those who back Israel—to prevent what is happening now… Those steps have simply not been taken.”

The Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies—said Tuesday that 15 more Palestinians, including four children, died from malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of starvation deaths in the coastal enclave to at least 101, including 80 children, since October 2023. The ministry said that 21 Gaza children have starved to death over the past three days alone.

When combined with lack of medicine, malnutrition has claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives in Gaza, according to officials there.

“I am so hungry,” Ruwaida Amer, a 30-year-old Gaza woman, wrote for +972 Magazine Monday. “We are starving. My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid. Gaza’s children are dying in front of our eyes, and we are powerless to help them.”

Another Gaza woman, Amina Badir, told Amer while clutching her starving 3-year-old: “Tell me how to save my daughter Rahaf from death. For a week she’s eaten nothing but a single spoon of lentils each day.”

“She’s suffering from malnutrition. There’s no treatment, no milk at the hospital,” Badir added. “They’ve taken away her right to live. I see death in her eyes.”

Gaza medical officials say 17,000 children are severely malnourished in the strip. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, also known as the IPC scale, 85% of Gaza’s people are in Phase 5, defined as such “an extreme deprivation of food” that “starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident.”

The “complete siege” imposed on Gaza immediately following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel has fuelled widespread starvation and disease, and has been condemned as a war crime. The International Criminal Court last year ordered the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged murder and forced starvation of Gazans. The International Court of Justice is also weighing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa.

Amid intense international pressure, Israel partially lifted its siege of Gaza in May. However, de Waal and others say the move is wholly inadequate to prevent the famine taking hold in the strip.

“The partial lifting was not to bring in the kind of humanitarian program that we have been familiar with as humanitarians over the decades,” de Waal told Al Jazeera Monday. “It was to bring in a type of rationed program that is simply an arm of the Israeli military.”

Israel has also come under intense criticism for its method of delivering aid in Gaza via the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose distribution points have been the sites of near-daily massacres. Israel Defence Forces (IDF) officers and troops say they were ordered to shoot and shell desperate aid-seekers at GHF distribution centres. Officials said at least 10 aid-seekers were killed on Tuesday alone.

“The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible.”

“As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near [United Nations] and other humanitarian organisations’ aid convoys,” U.N. human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told Agence France-Presse.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said Tuesday that “the killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible,” adding that the “IDF must stop killing people at distribution points.”

Overall, at least 59,029 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 142,000 others have been wounded, and at least 14,000 more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.

Other international humanitarian experts also weighed in on the growing Gaza famine, with Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, telling Al Jazeera Monday that the “man-made” starvation in the strip “is a war crime.”

“Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians and has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israel’s 20-month starvation campaign.”

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters Tuesday that “our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left.”

“Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in,” he explained. “That’s why we are so angry. Because our job is to help.”

“Israel is not yielding,” Egeland added. “They just want to paralyse our work.”

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/07/fam...ince-wwii/

While Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu "bold-facedly" denies starvation is happening in Gaza, here's the latest report from Doctors Without Borders..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKlGXYquvi0

John Menadue’s refusal to publish my response to an obscurist rant about the Israel lobby weaponising antisemitism to suppress discussion of Israel and Gaza in his online journal, Pearls & Irritations, is unsurprising but nonetheless disturbing.

It exemplifies a troubling pattern in the way Israel, Jews and antisemitism are discussed in ostensibly left-leaning spaces. What begins as a critique of Israeli policies often slips into outright antisemitism, cloaked under the guise of moral outrage against “Zionism” or Israel’s so-called “crimes”. The refusal to engage with dissenting views only deepens the intellectual and moral dishonesty that pervades these platforms.
...
His accusation that Jews – or “Zionists”, as Menadue prefers –are weaponising antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel is as old as it is offensive. It frames Jews as manipulative, using their historical trauma to stifle legitimate debate. This is a classic antisemitic trope: that Jews wield undue influence over public discourse, particularly through emotional manipulation.

Let me be clear: criticism of Israeli government policies is not inherently antisemitic. But when that crosses the line into questioning Israel’s right to exist, or when Jews everywhere are held accountable for the supposed actions of Israel’s government, it becomes antisemitism, plain and simple.

Claiming that pointing out antisemitism is a form of “weaponisation” is designed to shut down any discussion about the rising tide of Jew-hatred. It not only ignores the real and present danger of antisemitism but also perpetuates it by allowing hateful rhetoric to masquerade as valid political critique.

Menadue claimed we are “witnessing the first live-streamed genocide in history”. To call Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” is not only factually incorrect but deeply irresponsible. Israel, like any state, has the right to defend itself against terrorism. What is happening in Gaza is tragic, but it is the result of a complex conflict in which both sides suffer and in which Hamas – a terrorist organisation – is cynically using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Furthermore, to suggest that pointing out antisemitism is a strategy to deflect attention from Israel’s actions is an attack on Jews everywhere. It diminishes the very real experiences of Jewish communities facing a surge in antisemitism since October 7. Around the world, Jews are being harassed, synagogues are being vandalised and Jewish students are being ostracised on university campuses – not because they support the Israeli government, but because they are Jewish. Calling it out is not “weaponisation”.
- https://www.australianjewishnews.com/reb...ishonesty/

It's always easier to ad hom someone as an antisemite rather than address their actual points. As if that somehow invalidates their claims. It doesn't.