After reneging on its January ceasefire agreement with Hamas, Israel imposed a total blockade on aid into Gaza on March 2 and cut off remaining electricity supplies a week later. It resumed its military assault on March 18. Since then, Gaza’s health authorities have recorded a further 8,196 fatalities and 30,094 injuries. The death toll from IDF actions since the present “war” began on October 7, 2023 has now passed 60,000.

United Nations data show that throughout July the IDF has been killing one person every 12 minutes. “An average of 119 Palestinians are being killed daily so far in July—the highest rate since January 2024. More than 401 Palestinians a day are being wounded, the highest figure since December 2023.”

To put this in perspective, this means that in the last month Israel has killed, on average, more people in Gaza every week than the 736 Israeli civilians who died during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel (many of them casualties of Israeli “friendly fire”)—the event that triggered, and has repeatedly been used to justify, Israel’s present “war.”

For Pity’s Sake, Stop This Now!

Aid agencies have been warning of imminent famine for months, threatening the lives of Gaza’s 2.1 million inhabitants—or whatever portion of them have survived nearly two years of IDF bombardment—who have no means of escape from the besieged enclave. Deaths from hunger are now rising exponentially, beginning with the most vulnerable.

As Nesrine Malik explains:

The children die first. In conditions of starvation, their growing bodies’ nutritional needs are higher than those of adults, and so their reserves are depleted faster. Their immune systems, not yet fully developed, become weaker, more susceptible to disease and infection. A bout of diarrhoea is lethal. Their wounds don’t heal. The babies cannot be breastfed as their mothers have not eaten. They die at double the rate of adults.

On July 29, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC—the world’s official famine watchdog—for the first time issued a famine alert for Gaza, as distinct from a warning, stating that:

The worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip. Conflict and displacement have intensified, and access to food and other essential items and services has plummeted to unprecedented levels.

Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths. Latest data indicates that Famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.

Immediate action must be taken to end the hostilities and allow for unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response. This is the only path to stopping further deaths and catastrophic human suffering.

Recent days have seen a tsunami of horrific headlines, illustrated by graphic photos of starving children. In the UK, the Guardian’s July 23 lead story blared: “‘We faced hunger before, but never like this’: skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza.” The article was illustrated with a mother-and-dying-child image that seems destined to become as iconic as Nick Ut’s famous Vietnam War photo “Napalm Girl.”

The front page of the Daily Express—a right-wing populist tabloid—carried the same photo, captioning the image “For Pity’s Sake, Stop This Now.” The accompanying article was headlined “The suffering of little Muhammad clinging on to life in Gaza hell shames us all.” The paper’s head of news Callum Hoare posted on X:

The brutal suffering in Gaza must end. The shocking image shows Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, one, who weighs the same as [a] three-month old baby due to the humanitarian crisis following the continued blocking of basic aid to civilians by Israel.

Spain’s El País showed a child’s outstretched hand holding a crust of bread under the headline, “Hunger in Gaza sparks global outcry to stop the war.” India’s Economic Times paired a front-page editorial calling Israel’s actions “genocidal” with a photo of empty cooking pots outside a damaged building. The Washington Post led with “Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza” and a photo of a another Palestinian woman holding another emaciated infant.

Is “balance” finally giving way to truth?

Western newsrooms are no longer taken in by IDF propaganda videos purportedly showing “senior Hamas terrorists boasting about their meals in underground terror tunnels” while gorging on fresh fruit—a tall order, since Israel has been blockading the Strip since March 2. Nor are they uncritically accepting Israeli official statements as statements of fact, as most of them have shamefully done for the last two years.

BBC News—which has repeatedly, and justifiably, been accused of systematically downplaying Palestinian sufferings and whitewashing Israeli war crimes—issued a joint statement on July 24 with AFP, AP, and Reuters, which backhandedly conceded that the IDF indeed is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. It began:

We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families. For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering.

Journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in warzones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them.

The statement neglected to mention that in the interests of keeping the genocidal truth under wraps, Israel has banned international media from Gaza and so far killed 232 local journalists in the course of its current “war”—more than the number of journalists killed in the US Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined.

Even the New York Times, which has been steadfast in its support for Israel throughout its “war” on Gaza, carried a long and damning essay by the renowned Israeli Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov headlined “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It when I See It.” To be fair, the paper carried an op-ed by Bret Stephens a few days later arguing “No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” in the interests not of truth but of “balance.”

Despite Israel’s increasingly implausible attempts to deny that there is famine in Gaza—or to shift the blame to Hamas (which a recent USAID investigation found is not “stealing aid,” a conclusion that was repeated later by IDF senior officers interviewed by the New York Times) or the UN (ignoring Israel’s own ban on UNRWA in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and refusal of visas to UN agency personnel)—the dam has broken.

When “aid distribution centres” become killing fields

In late May, under international pressure, Israel permitted the US-backed so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to distribute meagre and inappropriate aid packages through four centres set up to replace the 400-plus distribution points previously run by UNRWA and other international aid agencies. The GHF is a private body, staffed largely by US contractors, with no prior experience of supplying humanitarian aid in war zones.

Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that allowing this “minimal” aid was only done to keep US politicians onside. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir denounced the change in policy as “a grave mistake,” while Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu argued that “letting humanitarian aid in now directly harms the war effort to achieve victory.”

On July 8, following the death of five Israeli soldiers in a Hamas ambush—a drop in the ocean compared with the daily Palestinian civilian casualties—Ben Gvir demanded “a total siege, a military crushing, encouraging immigration and settlements” and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Netanyahu to “immediately halt” aid for Gaza. They could hardly have made it clearer that Israeli combatants’ deaths will be paid for many times over by Palestinian civilian lives, whatever the Geneva Conventions might say.

Outside of the so-called “humanitarian zones,” to which over 90 percent of Gaza’s inhabitants have been compulsorily evacuated and now live in squalid tents—which the IDF still regularly hits, claiming to target “Hamas militants” but killing and maiming many more civilians with every strike—82.6 percent of the Gaza Strip is now within the Israeli-militarized zone or under displacement orders. Three of the GHF centres are located in the ruins of Rafah in the south, the other in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been massacred when lining up for food at GHF centres or trying to reach them. As of July 15, per the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 875 people had been killed trying to access food for their families, 674 of them in the vicinity of GHF sites. That number has now passed 1,000.

Interviewed for the BBC World Service on July 25, retired US special forces officer Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar, a former Green Beret, explained why he had quit his job with GHF:

I witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians… Without question I witnessed war crimes by the [IDF], using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, and tank rounds against unarmed civilians… I have never witnessed such a level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population—an unarmed, starving population.

Lies, damned lies, and hasbara

Charging that “Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” on June 30 more than 240 international charities and NGOs, including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Amnesty International, issued a joint statement calling for “immediate action to end the deadly Israeli distribution scheme (including the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) in Gaza, revert to the existing UN-led coordination mechanisms, and lift the Israeli government’s blockade on aid and commercial supplies.”

Donald Trump’s Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, former Republican governor of Arkansas, knows better. On July 24 he posted on X two photographs, which we are to assume were shot in Gaza though no date or location is given, with the comment:

Here are photos of UN trucks & enough food to feed all of Gaza but it sits rotting! UN is a tool of Hamas! US based GHF is actually delivering food FOR FREE and SAFELY. UN food is either looted by Hamas or rots in the sun! Photos from yesterday. pic.twitter.com/syvtbhxYHJ

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 24, 2025

Huckabee, whose “evangelical Christian beliefs,” per the official US embassy website, “include support for Israeli control over their ancient and indigenous homeland,” clearly believes his responsibilities including shilling for hasbara (Israeli public diplomacy aimed at explaining and promoting Israel’s policies and image internationally). It would be nice to see him apply the same argument about ancestral homelands to the Indigenous inhabitants of the United States, but let that pass. Israel’s rights are judged by different standards.

Huckabee also believes that “There is no such thing as a Palestinian” and “no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.” This is of course music to Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Netanyahu’s ears.

UN spokesperson Farhan Haq has cited “a number of interdependent factors” that have stopped UN aid being delivered even when it has reached Gaza, including “bureaucratic, logistical, administrative, and other operational obstacles imposed by Israeli authorities”—something former British Foreign Secretary and one-time Prime Minister David Cameron complained about back in March 2024—and “shooting incidents that have killed and injured people gathering to offload aid supplies along convoy routes.”

One recent shooting incident is related by Cindy McCain, the widow of US Senator John McCain and head of the World Food Program:

Shortly after passing the final checkpoint beyond the Zikim crossing point into Gaza, the convoy encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies… As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire. We are deeply concerned and saddened by this tragic incident resulting in the loss of countless lives.

Today’s violent incident comes despite assurances from Israeli authorities that humanitarian operational conditions would improve; including that armed forces will not be present nor engage at any stage along humanitarian convoy routes. There should never, ever, be armed groups near or on our aid convoys, as reiterated on many occasions to all parties to the conflict.

Without these fundamental conditions in place, we cannot continue providing life-saving support across the Gaza strip.

The politicians react

If key sections of the Western media are now changing their tune on Gaza, disgust with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is even more pronounced among the wider public.

A survey carried out by Pew Research Center published on June 3 found that in 20 of 24 countries surveyed, half of adults or more have a negative view of Israel. Among Western or Western-aligned nations, Israel was viewed “very” or “somewhat unfavourably” by 79 percent of respondents in Japan, 78 percent in the Netherlands, 75 percent in Spain and Sweden, 74 percent in Australia, 72 percent in Greece, 66 percent in Italy, 64 percent in Germany, 63 percent in France, 62 percent in Poland, 61 percent in the UK, 60 percent in Canada and South Korea, and even—remarkably, in view of bipartisan support for Israel among both Republican and Democrat party leaderships—53 percent in the US.

This was before the recent blanket press coverage of the growing famine and almost daily massacres of Palestinians seeking food at the GHF distribution centres.

Wrong-footed by events, and under immense pressure from their respective publics, Western politicians have been falling over themselves to take back the narrative.

On July 21, Canada joined 24 other Western nations and the EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management in a statement that firmly rapped Israel over the knuckles for its most recent transgressions in Gaza:

The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid. The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law.

On July 25 the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany issued another statement reminding Israel that “withholding essential humanitarian assistance” is “unacceptable” and describing the situation in Gaza as a “humanitarian catastrophe.” They added that they “stand ready to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political process that leads to lasting security and peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region,” without saying what that action might comprise.

No doubt Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron would rather we forgot that they had signed a joint statement with Canada’s Mark Carney calling on the Israeli government “to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza,” and threatening “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response,” two months ago, on May 19. Needless to say no actions of any consequence were taken.

The time for covering asses is at hand

Aware, perhaps, of their potential liability under the Geneva Conventions for not doing everything within their power to prevent genocide—or at least war crimes and crimes against humanity—in Gaza, individual Western politicians have meantime been lining up to put their immense sympathy for the Palestinian people on record.

Keir Starmer proclaims “The suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible. While the situation has been grave for some time, it has reached new depths and continues to worsen. We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Starmer’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy says he is he is “appalled, sickened” by the “grotesque” targeting of starving Palestinians. “These are not words that are usually used by a foreign secretary who is attempting to be diplomatic,” he adds, “but when you see innocent children holding out their hand for food, and you see them shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days, of course Britain must call it out.”

Australia’s PM Antony Albanese laments that “The situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world’s worst fears… Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored.”

EU foreign policy supremo Kaja Kallas (who stated on July 15 that “the EU will not move forward with sanctions against Israel”) protests that “The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible.” “The images from Gaza are unbearable,” posts Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, “Israel must deliver on its pledges.”

Canadian government representatives have been more reticent in their condemnations—a good deal more reticent than when they denounce instances of alleged “antisemitism.”

But noting on July 24 that “denial of humanitarian aid is a violation of international law,” Mark Carney stated that “Canada condemns the Israeli government’s failure to prevent the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian disaster in Gaza”

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand echoed her boss, posting on X the same day:

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens by the day. Women and children are starving, without adequate access to food and water, the most basic of needs. It is inexcusable and must end… the Israeli government must allow the uninhibited flow of humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians civilians, who are in urgent need.

New Democrat Party MP (and candidate for NDP leader) Heather McPherson asks, not altogether unreasonably:

For nearly 21 months @NDP has urged action from Canada: recognize Palestinian statehood, impose sanctions, suspend CIFTA, implement arms embargo. In a caucus of 169 MPs only a handful of Liberals have spoken out for Palestine. Why the Liberal silence? Cowardice? Racism?

It’s only words

Several things need to be said about this belated outpouring of sympathy for innocent Palestinians on the part of politicians who have been arming, diplomatically supporting, and repressing domestic criticism of Israel’s genocide for the last two years.

First, however tough their language, they never use the word genocide—or the terms war crimes and crimes against humanity. The reason is pretty clear. To do so would not only acknowledge these governments’ past complicity in the worst crimes known to the law, but legally require them to act immediately to end that complicity in the future.

The preferred term is always “humanitarian catastrophe,” which naturalizes the event—equating it with other things that cause famine, like crop failures, floods or drought—and shifts the focus away from the human actors and actions that have caused it.

Second, there is a systematic attempt to suggest that it is only now that the situation has become catastrophic. The implication is that it was legitimate to support Israel’s assault on Gaza previously. As one puzzled comment on X put it:

I have been wondering why the Zionists’ stepped up use of hunger as a mass murder weapon has suddenly triggered a Western outcry, but two years of pre-announced, and equally vile, mass murder via bombs and bullets did not generate the same outcry.

Third—and most importantly—none of these statements, however strongly worded, have been followed by any action that would put real pressure on Israel to change its behaviour. And knowing this, Israel continues to largely ignore Western protests.

Even Emmanuel Macron’s historic promise to recognize a Palestinian state—a largely symbolic gesture, albeit a significant one—has been attacked by Donald Trump, and Britain and Canada, who at one time looked prepared to join him, are now reportedly getting cold feet for fear of angering the US.

It is not as if the international community doesn’t have plenty of weapons at its disposal to force compliance on rogue states.

Apartheid South Africa was kicked out of the UN and subjected to stringent economic, sporting, and cultural sanctions and boycotts that eventually brought the system to its knees. The first Gulf War against Iraq was fought under UN auspices, and the second by a US-led “coalition of the willing.”

The most obvious contemporary example of such international action—which contrasts sharply with the West’s pusillanimous avoidance of any meaningful action to stop Israel’s carnage in Gaza—was the coordinated response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has been met with wave after wave of sanctions.

For whatever reasons—be they geopolitical, economic, or racist—not to take comparable action against Israel is a choice. Our choice.

Our genocide

Faced with widespread Western condemnation, Netanyahu has now agreed to allow air drops of aid into Gaza and daily 10-hour “humanitarian pauses” in three areas of the Strip to enable UN convoys and other aid organizations to safely distribute food and medicine. As in his earlier pivot in May, he explained that given the international reaction, Israel “needs to continue to allow the entry of a minimum amount of humanitarian aid.”

I see this as a purely tactical retreat, like Netanyahu’s earlier acceptance under US pressure of two ceasefire deals which he subsequently broke. He went on to reassure Israelis that “We will continue to fight, we will continue to act until we achieve all of our war goals—until complete victory.” His fundamental objectives have not changed.

On July 28, the day after Netanyahu’s announcement, Israel’s leading human rights organization B’Tselem announced the publication of a report titled Our Genocide on social media. They did not pull their punches or mince their words:

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

It sounds inconceivable. But it’s the truth.

Israel is taking deliberate, coordinated action to destroy the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Explicit statements by Israeli officials, combined with a consistent policy of destructive attacks and other practices of annihilation, prove beyond a doubt that Israel’s target is the entire population of Gaza.

Entire cities razed to the ground; medical, educational, religious and cultural infrastructure systematically destroyed; 2 million Palestinians forcibly displaced with the aim of expelling them from Gaza; and, of course, mass starvation and killing—all this amounts to an explicit attempt to destroy the population of Gaza and impose living conditions so catastrophic that Palestinian society cannot continue to exist there.

That is the exact definition of genocide.

They continued:

The international community has not only failed in its duty to stop the atrocities, but the leaders of the Western world, particularly the United States and Europe, also share responsibility by providing support that enables Israel’s acts of destruction. It is the duty of the international community to stop the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza…

This is our genocide, and we need to stop it.

Israel’s genocide. And the West’s.

Derek Sayer is professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His most recent book, Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History, won the 2023 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Scholarship and was a finalist for the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in European History.