ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has harshly criticised Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other foreign leaders for accusing Israel of allowing inadequate supplies of food into Gaza. According to Netanyahu:

“Since October 7, Israel has sent 92,000 aid trucks into Gaza ... That includes 1.8 million tons of aid ... More than enough food to feed everyone in Gaza. Yet as we had let the aid come in, Hamas stole it ... I tell you this: no army in the world has ever gone to such lengths to provide aid to the civilian population in the midst of intense combat.”

Multiple lines of evidence, however, refute Netanyahu’s claims.

For example, in a January 13 2024, press conference, Netanyahu stated, “We provide minimal humanitarian aid … If we want to achieve our war goals, we give the minimal aid.”

And in the Spring of 2024, the US Agency for International Development and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration provided an assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking deliveries of food and medical aid into Gaza. 

Moreover, in June of that year, the global poverty organisation Oxfam issued a press release titled “Famine risk increases as Israel makes Gaza aid response virtually impossible.”

More recently, in October 2024, a group of 99 US medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza sent an urgent letter to then-president Joe Biden. The letter asserted that conditions are so dire that malnutrition in pregnant women is resulting in spontaneous abortions, and that babies are starving to death daily because mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed, coupled with a lack of formula and clean water.

The letter also concludes that there is strong evidence of Israel’s “widespread violations“ of International Humanitarian Law.

Similarly, the International Criminal Court asserts that there is reasonable evidence to conclude that Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant “intentionally and knowingly“ deprived civilians in Gaza of food, water and medical supplies.

The US Agency for International Development established the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net) in 1985, in response to famines in east and west Africa and a need for better warning of food crises. The system went dark after the Trump administration sharply cut US foreign aid.

Fews Net regularly published updates on the Gaza Strip, such as its November 12 2024 report titled “If food supplies remain blocked, then famine (IPC Phase 5) will most likely occur in North Gaza.” However, the pages for these reports now state, “This fews.net page can’t be found.”

The disappearance of Fews Net’s regular reporting has left a gap in independent, evidence-based analysis of food insecurity in the region, even as conditions on the ground have deteriorated.

Notably, Israel did not allow any humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip for 77 days, from March 2 until May 18.

This recent blockade is part of a much longer pattern: Israel’s restrictions on the movement of food into Gaza actually date back to 1991, well before Hamas came into power in 2006. Government documents reveal that, between 2007 and 2010, Israel deliberately reduced food imports into Gaza to what officials described as “minimal subsistence” levels.

Dov Weisglass, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was quoted as saying the policy was “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” Army officers devised mathematical formulas to calculate the specific amounts and types of food permitted for Gaza residents.

Netanyahu has also boldly declared: “To those who say that Israel stands alone, I say we’re not alone. Justice stands with us. The truth stands with us. History stands with us.”

Yes, history will judge. Its verdict will be that Israel, with the complicity of the US and other Western powers, conducted a highly effective campaign of propaganda and atrocity denial that allowed it to systematically inflict immense suffering and death upon Palestinians. 

History will judge this as a complete and utter failure of humanity.

Terry Hansen is a retired educator in Milwaukee.