SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
haaretz
'A Horror So Vast, It Could No Longer Be Ignored': US Media Finally Centering Starving Gazans
However, one critic lamented that corporate media "continues to act like starvation is the unfortunate byproduct of 'war.'"
Jul 25, 2025
As more and more Palestinians, mostly children, starve to death due to Israel's 657-day obliteration and siege of Gaza, reliably pro-Israel U.S. corporate media outlets in recent days have centered the starvation crisis—which began in October 2023—while critics have decried passive language and anti-Palestinian tropes used in some reporting.
The Washington Post published at least two articles on the subject in as many days, including an Associated Press story by Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb, and Lee Keath titled "Dozens of Kids and Adults in Gaza Have Starved to Death in July as Hunger Surges" and an internal piece by Louisa Loveluck, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siham Shamalakh, Miriam Berger, and Abbie Cheeseman with the headline "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza as Deaths Rise From Hunger." The authors of the latter article noted that "Israel has severely limited the amount of food entering Gaza, where society is on the brink of collapse."
The New York Times on Friday published a morning newsletter article by Lauren Jackson titled "The Starvation Spreading in Gaza," which stressed that "hunger in Gaza is not new" amid an Israeli blockade that has choked the strip "for nearly two decades." Jackson's piece followed a Thursday front-page story by Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner, and Abu Bakr Bashir, with images by Palestinian photographer Saher Alghorra, headlined "Gazans Are Dying of Starvation."
Palestinian peace activist Ihab Hassan, who heads the Agora Initiative's Human Rights for Gaza project, said on the social media site X, "Starvation in Gaza made it to the front page of The New York Times—a horror so vast, it could no longer be ignored."
Carnegie Middle East Center senior editor Michael Young wrote on X, "Don't underestimate that a mainstream media outlet in the U.S. is finally stating the obvious, that Gazans are dying of starvation."
"But it's not as if they're just dying, for no reason; they are being denied adequate amounts of food by Israel, therefore are being killed," Young added. "Nonetheless, that the NYT presents the story in so blunt a way, under a heartbreaking photograph, must qualify as a turning point of sorts given how reluctant U.S. media outlets are to say anything bad about Israel."
Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C. and frequent media critic, offered a more accurate headline for the Times story—"ISRAEL IS STARVING PALESTINIANS TO DEATH."
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting's Counterspin blog took aim at the Post's "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza" headline, noting that "it's actual human beings stalking Gaza, who could right now choose to act differently."
Still, there have recently been remarkable discussions about Gaza in U.S. corporate media outlets that would have been all but unimaginable during past Israeli attacks on Palestine.
CNN's "NewsNight" with Abby Phillip on Thursday aired a panel discussion titled, "Why Is the U.S. Silent About the Starvation in Gaza?" The segment featured journalist Peter Beinart, who highighted the International Criminal Court's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation, U.S. support for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the Israeli government's ban on foreign journalists entering the strip.
"To say the United States is silent, it's much worse than that," Beinart said. "We are profoundly complicit and deeply responsible. It is our weapons that enforce this starvation. It is our diplomatic efforts that prevent international justice from being done."
"The blood is on our hands!" he stressed.
The CNN segment also featured a video clip of United Nations World Food Program Director Cindy McCain, whose warnings of a looming starvation emergency in Gaza began in October 2023.
Asked by Phillip if the images of starving Gazans making headlines around the world marked "an inflection point," Beinart replied, "Why did it take this long?"
Meanwhile, Israel's oldest newspaper, Haaretz, ran an editorial Thursday titled "Israel Is Starving Gaza."
"Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible," the Haaretz editors wrote. "According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 111 people have died from malnutrition since the war began, most of them children. Alarmingly, 43 of those deaths occurred just in the past week."
"The famine that has been created is another facet of Israel's cruel inhumanity towards the people of Gaza," the editors added. "It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in The Hague."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Vilification of Zohran Mamdani–and Why He's Right About Israel's Genocide
Bloviating about Mamdani's alleged antisemitism for criticism of Israel has garnered more attention than a shocking report that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot at civilians waiting for aid in Gaza.
Jun 30, 2025
It says a lot about how corrupted U.S. politics have become that so many elected leaders, Republicans and Democrats, are more enraged about the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City's opposition to the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza than they are about Israeli policy itself. And U.S. complicity with it.
That contradiction became especially apparent in recent days when the bloviating about Zohan Mamdani's alleged antisemitism for criticism of Israel has garnered more attention than a shocking report in an Israeli publication, Haaretz, that Israeli soldiers are "ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid."
The backdrop is an environment in which leaders of both parties for nearly two years have exploited campus protests against Israeli war crimes by weaponizing antisemitism to blunt widespread criticism of U.S. arms sales and other support for Israel's war.
At the same time, many Jews, especially younger ones, strongly supported Mamdani, for both his progressive program to address an affordability crisis in New York City as well as breaking ranks with Israeli apologists.
Hoping to scoring national electoral talking points against all Democrats, GOP politicians predictably rushed to label Mamdani as a "raging antisemite Communist" in the words of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Far-right Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) even called for him to be "subject to denaturalization proceedings" and deported.
Some Democrats also jumped on the fear mongering Islamophobia bandwagon, with several notable leaders failing to endorse the nominee of their own party. New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand falsely claimed Mamdani was condoning "global jihad."
What has Mamdani actually said that prompts such panic? He responded to the outbreak of the Gaza war by rightly noting "a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid" and called for equal rights for all religious and ethnic groups in Israel. Mamdani's most vociferous critics fail to note he has repeatedly and emphatically also condemned antisemitism and branded Hamas' October 7 attacks as "horrific war crimes."
At the same time, many Jews, especially younger ones, strongly supported Mamdani, for both his progressive program to address an affordability crisis in New York City as well as breaking ranks with Israeli apologists like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As Christi Olson noted on Twitter "Mamdani swept the most Jewish neighborhoods on Earth outside of Israel."
Mamdani's apt depiction of Israel's policy in Gaza as a "genocide"—that has infuriated those unwilling to accept that term—which has been increasingly apparent in recent days. While official death counts of Palestinians in Gaza are at an alarming 56,500 and counting, it has been reported that since the start of the war the population of Gaza has plummeted from 2.2 million to 1.8 million, reinforcing the likelihood that the official death count is a massive undercount.
Israeli Troops "Ordered to Shoot"
Following the collapse of a temporary cease-fire in February, Israel imposed a blockade of food that led to a famine—with the cost of civilian lives, including children. Israel was finally forced by international pressure to begin to allow dribs of aid into Gaza.
But that has been followed by repeated incidents of Israeli troops killing starving people walking long distances to get food at a small handful of aid sites. These are the stations operated by private security contractors (the untested, so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF) working for a U.S. contractor with the oversight of Israeli soldiers that Israel and the U.S. accepted after banning far more experienced United Nations aid relief workers.
At least 410 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, the U.N. human rights office has reported.
If American readers doubted that Israel was deliberately shooting starving, desperate people, Haaretz lifted the veil.
The death toll is more easily understood with the Haaretz bombshell expose June 27. It opens with a chilling revelation. "Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month."
That's quite a contrast with most of the U.S. media silence. When The New York Times finally provided front page coverage June 26, they carefully avoided blaming Israel. The headline read: "The Lethal Risk of Seeking Food in Gaza," as if the hundreds were dying of heat stroke or food poisoning, merely noting the "life-risking endeavor for Palestinians." It took eight paragraphs to get to Israeli troops "opened fire on the approaches to the new aid hubs" which they described merely as "warning shots."
Only farther down did the Times add that "France on Tuesday condemned what it said was Israeli gunfire at civilians gathered around an aid distribution point in Gaza, saying it had left dozens of dead and wounded."
If American readers doubted that Israel was deliberately shooting starving, desperate people, Haaretz lifted the veil.
"Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat," Haaretz reported.
That was just the opening:
"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between 1 and 5 people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force—no crowd-control measures, no tear gas—just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars."
"We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish—the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light."
Haaretz is a left of center publication that is repeatedly threatened by the Netanyahu government. But it has not been daunted and continues to report what most Americans never read in major U.S. media. And the recent Netanyahu and Trump attacks on Iran have only further hidden the daily death toll.
"IDF officers told Haaretz that the army does not allow the public in Israel or abroad to see footage of what takes place around the food distribution sites. According to them, the army is satisfied that the GHF's operations have prevented a total collapse of international legitimacy for continuing the war. They believe the IDF has managed to turn Gaza into a "backyard," especially since the war with Iran began."
"Gaza doesn't interest anyone anymore," a reservist told Haaretz. "It's become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing."
It means something to Zohran Mamdani, and to far too few other U.S. politicians who have the courage to say it out loud. And it should mean something to the rest of us too, especially as this genocide would not be possible without the weapons, diplomatic cover, and collusion of our own government.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israeli Troops Recount Indiscriminate Murder of Civilians in Gaza 'Kill Zone'
"We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists," said one Israeli veteran, who added that random slayings have become "a competition between units" to see who can kill more people.
Dec 20, 2024
Israel Defense Forces commanders, soldiers, and veterans described a "kill zone" in the heart of the Gaza Strip where troops are ordered to shoot "anyone who enters," adding to the copious body of evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by IDF troops during their 441-day obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, this week published the accounts of anonymous IDF troops who received orders to kill unarmed men, women, children, and elders in the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land several miles wide that bisects Gaza from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea just south of Gaza City.
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" a commander in Division 252 told Haaretz. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."
Another senior officer in that unit told the paper that "the division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."
One Division 252 veteran said: "For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see. We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists. The IDF spokesperson's announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150, the next unit aims for 200."
A commander in Division 252 said that out of 200 "militants" the IDF said one unit had killed, "only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives. Yet no one questioned the public announcement about killing hundreds of militants."
A senior reserve commander asserted, "Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."
"It means ignoring that for over a year, we've operated in a lawless space where human life holds no value," he added. "Yes, we commanders and combatants are participating in the atrocity unfolding in Gaza. Now everyone must face this reality."
"Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."
Another Division 252 veteran recounted the time when "guards spotted someone approaching" and "we responded as if it was a large militant raid."
"We took positions and just opened fire. I'm talking about dozens of bullets, maybe more," he continued. "For about a minute or two, we just kept shooting at the body. People around me were shooting and laughing."
The soldier continued:
We approached the blood-covered body, photographed it, and took the phone. He was just a boy, maybe 16. That evening, our battalion commander congratulated us for killing a terrorist, saying he hoped we'd kill 10 more tomorrow. When someone pointed out he was unarmed and looked like a civilian, everyone shouted him down. The commander said: 'Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone's a terrorist.' This deeply troubled me—did I leave my home to sleep in a mouse-infested building for this? To shoot unarmed people?
One Division 99 reservist recalled watching a video feed from a drone showing "an adult with two children crossing the forbidden line."
"We had them under complete surveillance with the drone and weapons aimed at them—they couldn't do anything," he said. "Suddenly we heard a massive explosion. A combat helicopter had fired a missile at them. Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."
Soldiers who served in Division 252 described the first speech delivered by Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, who took command of the unit last summer and, according to one veteran in attendance, told its troops that "there are no innocents in Gaza."
"In the Middle East, victory comes through conquering territory," Vach said, according to the witness. "We must keep conquering until we win."
"Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."
One officer said Vach obsessed over carrying out the so-called Generals' Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—and sought to forcibly expel 250,000 people from the area.
The IDF responded to the Haaretz story in a statement claiming "strikes are targeted solely at military objectives, and before the strikes are carried out, many steps are taken to minimize harm to noncombatants."
However, the testimonies published by Haaretz are consistent with numerous other accounts provided by IDF soldiers and veterans, as well as Palestinian survivors and witnesses, and international medical personnel who worked in Gaza.
Earlier this year, South Africa—which is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—filed an emergency request with the tribunal citing "testimony from Israeli soldiers who have served in Gaza that Israeli soldiers treat evacuation zones as 'zones of extermination' in which all remaining Palestinians are considered to be legitimate targets."
American trauma surgeons who volunteered at the European Hosptial in Khan Younis described "horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians," including "a 3-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world."
Palestinian survivors have recounted IDF troops or drones killing young children and people holding white flags. Rescue workers and journalists attempting to document the incidents have also been killed.
These are some of the more than 45,000 Palestinians who, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, have been killed, and over 107,000 others who've been wounded, since Israel launched the war on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack.
On Thursday, the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch joined United Nations experts, rights groups including Amnesty International, more than a dozen national governments, and thousands of academics, jurists, and others who accuse Israel of genocidal acts or outright genocide in Gaza.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular