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
united nations security council
Entire UN Security Council Except US Says Gaza Famine 'Man-Made' as 10 More People Starve to Death
While acknowledging that "hunger is a real issue in Gaza," the US ambassador to the UN repeated a debunked claim that the world's leading authority on starvation lowered its standards to declare a famine.
Aug 27, 2025
Every member nation of the United Nations Security Council except the United States on Wednesday affirmed that Israel's engineered famine in Gaza is "man-made" as 10 more Palestinians died of starvation amid what UN experts warned is a worsening crisis.
Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members issued a joint statement calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas, and lifting of all Israeli restrictions on aid delivery into the embattled strip, where hundreds of Palestinians have died from starvation and hundreds of thousands more are starving.
"Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately," they said. "Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course."
"We express our profound alarm and distress at the IPC data on Gaza, published last Friday. It clearly and unequivocally confirms famine," the statement said, referring to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification's declaration of Phase 5, or a famine "catastrophe," in the strip.
"We trust the IPC's work and methodology," the 14 countries declared. "This is the first time famine has been officially confirmed in the Middle East region. Every day, more persons are dying as a result of malnutrition, many of them children."
"This is a man-made crisis," the statement stresses. "The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law."
Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the UN's International Court of Justice, denies the existence of famine in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Court of Justice for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.
The 14 countries issuing the joint statement are: Algeria, China, Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia, and the United Kingdom.
While acknowledging that "hunger is a real issue in Gaza and that there are significant humanitarian needs which must be met," US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea rejected the resolution and the IPC's findings.
"We can only solve problems with credibility and integrity," Shea told the Security Council. "Unfortunately, the recent report from the IPC doesn't pass the test on either."
Shea also repeated the debunked claim that the IPC's "normal standards were changed for [the IPC famine] declaration."
The Security Council's affirmation that the Gaza famine is man-made mirrors the findings of food experts who have accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the strip.
The UN Palestinian Rights Bureau and UN humanitarian officials also warned Wednesday that the famine in Gaza is "only getting worse."
"Over half a million people currently face starvation, destitution, and death," the humanitarian experts said. "By the end of September, that number could exceed 640,000."
"Failure to act now will have irreversible consequences," they added.
Wednesday's UN actions came as Israel intensified Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, the campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from Gaza, possibly into a reportedly proposed concentration camp that would be built over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.
The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) on Wednesday reported 10 more Palestinian deaths "due to famine and malnutrition" over the past 24 hours, including two children, bringing the number of famine victims to at least 313, 119 of them children.
All told, Israel's 691-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the GHM.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Reporters Without Borders Urges UN Action After Israel Massacres Gaza Journalists
"This massacre and Israel's media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately."
Aug 11, 2025
The international advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Monday called on the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting following the massacre of six Palestinian media professionals in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera reporters Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa, and independent journalist Mohammed al-Khaldi were killed Sunday in a targeted Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike on their tent outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The IDF claimed that al-Sharif—one of the most prominent Palestinian journalists—"was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell," repeating an allegation first made last year. However, independent assessments by United Nations experts, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) concluded that Israel's allegations were unsubstantiated.
Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill warned last year that the IDF's portrayal of al-Sharif and other Palestinian journalists as Hamas members was "an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder" for showing the world the genocidal realities of Israel's U.S.-backed war.
"Tonight Israel murdered the bravest journalistic hero in Gaza, Anas al-Sharif," Scahill said Sunday on social media. "For nearly two straight years, he documented the genocide of his people with courage and principle. Israel put him on a hit list because of his voice. Shame on this world and all who were silent."
Al Jazeera condemned Sunday's massacre as "a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza."
RSF issued a statement accusing the IDF of killing the six men "without providing solid evidence" of Hamas affiliation, a "disgraceful tactic" that is "repeatedly used against journalists to cover up war crimes."
The Paris-based nonprofit noted that Israeli forces have "already killed more than 200 media professionals"—including at least 19 Al Jazeera workers and freelancers—since the IDF began its annihilation and siege of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas.
These include Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and photographer Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in a targeted strike on the al-Shati refugee camp in July 2024 following an IDF smear campaign alleging without proof that al-Ghoul took part in the October 7 attack. The IDF claimed that al-Ghoul received Hamas military training at a time when he would have been just 10 years old.
"RSF strongly condemns the killing of six media professionals by the Israeli army, once again carried out under the guise of terrorism charges against a journalist," RSF director general Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement. "One of the most famous journalists in the Gaza Strip, Anas al-Sharif, was among those killed."
"This massacre and Israel's media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately," Bruttin continued. "The international community can no longer turn a blind eye and must react and put an end to this impunity."
"RSF calls on the U.N. Security Council to meet urgently on the basis of Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in times of armed conflict in order to stop this carnage," he added.
Israel's latest killing of media professionals sparked international condemnation. On Monday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, called for an investigation into the massacre, saying that "journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment."
Recognizing the possibility that he would become one of the more than 61,500 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, al-Sharif, like many Palestinian journalists, prepared a statement to be published in the event of his death.
"This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice," he wrote. "I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland."
"Make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family," al-Sharif added.
Since October 2023, RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court—which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—requesting investigations into IDF killings of journalists in Gaza and accusing Israel of a deliberate "eradication of the Palestinian media."
The six journalists' killings came as Israeli forces prepared to ramp up the Gaza invasion with the stated goal of occupying the entire coastal enclave and ethnically cleansing much of its Palestinian population.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Monday afternoon that at least 69 Palestinians, including at least 10 children and 29 aid-seekers, were killed in the past 24 hours. An IDF strike on Gaza City reportedly killed nine people, including six children. Five more Palestinians also reportedly died of starvation in a burgeoning famine that officials say has claimed at least 222 lives, including 101 children.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Open Letter to Israel Foreign Minister Sa’ar
The great threat to Israel’s survival is not the Arab nations, the Palestinians, or Iran, but the policies of Israel’s extremist government.
Aug 11, 2025
H.E. Gideon Sa’ar
Foreign Minister
Government of Israel
August 9, 2025
Dear Mr. Minister,
I write to you following your speech at the United Nations Security Council on August 5. I attended the session but did not have the chance to speak with you following the session. I want to share my reflections on your speech.
In your speech your failed to recognize why almost the entire world, including many Jews such as myself, are aghast at your government’s behavior. In the view of most of the world, with which I concur, Israel is engaged in mass murder and starvation; you would not have known it from your speech. You failed to acknowledge that Israel has caused the deaths to date of some 18,500 Palestinian children, whose names were recently listed by The Washington Post. You blamed all the mass murder of civilians by Israeli forces on Hamas, even as the world watches video clips every day of Israeli forces killing starving civilians in cold blood as they approach food distribution points. You lamented the starvation of 20 hostages but failed to mention Israel’s starvation of 2 million Palestinians. You failed to mention that your own prime minister worked actively over the years to fund Hamas, as The Times of Israel has documented.
Whether your oversights are the result of obtuseness or prevarication, they would be a tragedy for Israel alone were it not for the fact that you attempted to rope me and millions of other Jews into your government’s crimes against humanity. You declared at the U.N. session that Israel is “The sovereign state of the Jewish people.” This is false. Israel is the sovereign state of its citizens. I am a Jew, and a citizen of the United States. Israel is not my state and never will be.
Your language about Jews in your speech betrayed the gulf between us. You referred to Judaism as a nationality. This is indeed the Zionist construct, but it runs counter to 2,000 years of Jewish belief and Jewish life. It is an idea that I and millions of other Jews reject. Judaism for me and for countless others outside of Israel is a life of ethics, culture, tradition, law, and belief that has nothing to do with nationality. For 2,000 years, Jews lived in all parts of the world in countless nations.
The great Rabbinic sages of the Babylonian Talmud in fact explicitly proscribed a mass return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, telling the Jewish people to live in their own homelands (Ketubot 111a). Sadly, the Zionists undertook massive campaigns including financial subsidies and scare tactics to induce Jewish communities to leave their own homelands, languages, local cultures, and relations with their fellow inhabitants to draw them to Israel. I have traveled throughout the world visiting nearly empty synagogues and vacated Jewish communities, with only a few elderly Jews remaining, and where these few remaining Jews insisted that their communities once lived in peace and harmony with the non-Jewish majorities. Zionism has weakened or put an end to countless vibrant communities of our co-religionists around the world.
The Jewish Prophets taught again and again that unjust states do not long survive.
It is an ironic fact that when Zionists convinced the British Government in 1917 to issue the Balfour Declaration, the one Jew in the Cabinet, Sir Edwin Montagu, strenuously objected, stating that he was a British citizen who happened to be Jewish, not the member of a Jewish nation: “I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion.”
In this context, it’s also worth recalling that the Balfour Declaration states clearly and unequivocally that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Zionism has failed that test.
Your government is committed to the permanent occupation of all of Palestine and stands in violent, unrelenting opposition to a sovereign State of Palestine. The founding platform of Likud in 1977 hides nothing in this regard, declaring openly that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” To accomplish this, Israel demonizes the Palestinian people and crushes them physically, through mass starvation, murder, ethnic cleansing, administrative detention, torture, land seizures, and other forms of brutal repression. You yourself shamefully declared that “all Palestinian factions” support terrorism.
Your counterpart at the U.N. Security Council session, Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour, declared just the opposite. He stated clearly: “The solution is ending this illegal occupation and ending this disastrous conflict; it is the realization of the independence and sovereignty of the Palestinian state, not its destruction; it is the fulfillment of our rights, not their continued denial; it is respect for international law, not its trampling; it is the implementation of the two-state solution, not a one state reality with Palestinians condemned to genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid.”
Israel stands against almost the entire world in its endeavor to block the two-state solution. Already, 147 countries recognize the State of Palestine, and many more will soon do so. One-hundred and seventy U.N. member states recently voted in support of the right of the Palestinian people to political self-determination, with only six opposed (Argentina, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Paraguay, United States).
Your presentation utterly neglected the powerful “New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State solution,” issued by the world community at the High-Level International Conference on Implementing the Two-State Solution held on July 29, 2025, just one week before your own speech at the U.N. Security Council. Saudi Arabia and France co-chaired that high-level conference. Arab and Islamic nations all over the world called for peace and normalization of relations with Israel when Israel abides by international law and decency in line with the two-state solution. Your government rejects peace, because it aims for domination over all of Palestine instead.
Israel holds on to its extremist position by a slenderest of threads, backed (until now) by the United States but by no other major power. We also should acknowledge a major reason for the U,S. backing until now: Christian Evangelical Protestants who believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is the prelude to the annihilation of the Jews and the end of the world. Those are your government’s allies. As for overall American public opinion, disapproval of Israel’s actions now stands at 60%, with only 32% approving.
Mr. Minister, the global revulsion you cited is against the actions of your government, not against Jews. Israel is threatened from within by zealotry and extremism that in turn bring worldwide disapprobation of Israel by Jews and non-Jews alike. The great threat to Israel’s survival is not the Arab nations, the Palestinians, or Iran, but the policies of Israel’s extremist government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The two-state solution is the path—and the only path—to Israel’s survival. You may believe that nuclear weapons and the U.S. government are your salvation, but brute power will be evanescent if Israel’s grave injustice toward the Palestinian people continues. The Jewish Prophets taught again and again that unjust states do not long survive.
Sincerely yours,
Jeffrey D. Sachs
New York City
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular