Last April, I wrote Forgive Me, Gaza—a personal reflection of anguish and helplessness. Today, there is no room for introspection. It is no longer about personal guilt. We are witnessing an Israeli campaign of mass starvation, mass destruction, and mass slaughter made possible only by global indifference.

There is no hunger in Gaza. There is an American-enabled Israeli starvation.

The genocide in Gaza is not the consequence of war. It’s pretextual. This is not an opinion, but documented facts, with intent, and expressed openly by Israeli officials, from the president down to ordinary citizens.

This intent is not the fringe views of a few extremists, as the Zionist-managed media would have you believe. It is the mainstream. An overwhelming 82% of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, with a significant portion openly endorsing the mass killing of civilians. This is the grim reality. This is the Israeli culture, nurtured and sustained by Western powers desperate to atone for their own historical crimes against Jews by imposing a settler-colonial Zionist project in the heart of the Arab world.

A diabolical culture manifests in starving millions by a regime intoxicated by its own impunity. In October 2023, Israeli President Isaac Herzog erased the line between civilians and combatants, announcing, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” With that one sentence, he demonized all civilians and handed down the collective death sentence we witness today against 2.3 million people. Last week, he doubled down claiming that the Israeli siege is “in keeping with … Israeli and Jewish values.”

The then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant resonated the same Zionist ideological hate, “We are putting a complete siege … No electricity, no food, no water, no gas.” His successor, Defense Minister Israel Katz, was no less brazen in his recent declaration: “No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further, openly stating that mass starvation was morally justified. With terrifying openness, he advocated ethnic cleansing, describing Israeli “victory” as one in which “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” forcing Palestinians to “leave in great numbers to third countries.” His words provide a window into the genocidal mindset guiding Israel’s racist leadership and the vast majority of its public.

These are not radical outliers but widely held beliefs. They are the impetus driving Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli state. Policies codified into practice by a government steeped in racism and koshered by religion, where using food as a weapon to starve an entire population is “justified and moral.”

Such policies represent an entrenched, immoral Zionist cult. It is the same moral rot that allows senior Israeli figures to rationalize mass killing in religious and racial terms. Speaking on the genocide in Gaza, Israeli Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of a religious school in Yaffa, addressed the students—many of whom serve in the army— stating: “In our mitzvah … (Jewish Law) not every soul shall live,” and urging soldiers to kill “the future generation (children) and those who produce the future generation (mothers), because there is really no difference.”

Years earlier, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then Chief Sephardic Rabbi, once preached that God created “Goyim … only to serve the People of Israel,” comparing the loss of their life to that of a “donkey.” These words are not an aberration. They’re authoritative and reflect a toxic ideology embedded in Israeli culture and religious discourse. They are religious pontifications used to kosher starvation, and slaughtering Palestinian goyim.

According to the World Food Program, close to one third of people “not eating for days.” When Israeli leaders juxtapose this reality with claims of morality, they are invoking a religious doctrine that frames such cruelty as a form of divine mitzvot.

This brings us to the shameful enablers of this twisted religious view. Israel cannot starve 2.3 million people without external support. Not without the complicity of the Egyptian regime, which allowed Israel to violate its supplementary Camp David agreement that prohibits Israeli military presence at Gaza’s border with Egypt.

Certainly, not without the U.S. funding of the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” (GHF) which was dismissed by every credible human rights organization as an Israeli public relations farce. A project designed in Tel Aviv, financed in Washington and meant to maintain starvation while shielding Israel from mounting global outrage. Like Biden, President Donald Trump bent the knee to Tel Aviv, feeding the machinery of disinformation and underwriting tools of starvation with American tax dollars and an Iron Dome of political cover.

The latest breakdown of talks to end the Israeli genocide exposed just how far the American administration was willing to bow to Netanyahu’s demonic agenda. The talks failed because the US enabled Israel to use starvation as a leverage in political bargaining.

What about Europe? Britain and the EU continue to issue hollow statements of “concern,” repeatedly warning Israel of so-called consequences, but none of which ever materialize. This is while they continue to supply Israel with the military tools and share intelligence that make this genocide possible.

The Arab world? A complete and utter shame. Regimes have stood by as Gaza plunged into famine, like passive spectators of a dramatic fiction movie, detached, and unmoved. With the exception of Yemen, Arabs, leaders and people, have either remained disgracefully silent or carried on with business as usual with Israel, even as Gaza starves.

I alluded in last week’s op-ed to a plan to revive the resumption of food aid airdrops which started on Sunday, July 27. The airdrops, much like the floating pier and GHF, were little more than distractions: painkillers for the Israeli-inflicted cancer of starvation. As with GHF’s limited distribution, airdrops are constrained, each C-130 flight can deliver 12,650 meals per trip. To provide just one meal a day for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, 170 flights would be needed daily.

Jordan and the UAE, the feel-good collaborators who are leading the airdrops, have a combined fleet of 18 C-130s. Assuming an extremely generous eight-hour turnaround for loading, flight, and drop—and considering that a round-trip flight between the UAE and Palestine alone takes about seven hours—each aircraft could, at best, complete two trips per day. That amounts in no more than 36 total flights daily, delivering the equivalent of just one-fifth of a meal per person per day.

At the same time, there is growing concern that the current, limited easing of starvation is part of a broader strategy—Netanyahu permitting restricted aid in return for Trump’s future support in a joint military operation in Gaza to attempt to free the Israeli captives. With the worst images of starvation temporarily subdued, it would be easier for Trump to send American troops in yet another made-for-Israel war.

This could also explain the silence of Israel’s racist ministers, Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who had previously threatened to resign if food aid entered Gaza. Their lack of protest raises questions about what political deal may be in the making behind closed doors.

Israel’s “Minimum Amount of Aid” will not stop the growling stomachs or hydrate the parched lips of Gaza’s children. It may, however, just extend the suffering of their emaciated bodies before murdering them in the next American war on behalf of Israel.

American officials must end parroting the Israeli talking points and recognize that access to food is a fundamental human right, not a tool of political leverage. As long as Israel dictates the American messaging and controls the minimal flow of food, fuel and medicine, starvation will persist. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable of the population, one million children, are slowly wasting away. Those who survive will bear the burden of shattered health and deep psychological wounds that never heal. Robbed of their childhood, they will carry their physical and emotional trauma forever. They will not forget. And they will not forgive.

Forgive them not, Gaza
Not Europe that denies your children food
Not the Arabs who look away
Not the Trump administration that funds your starvation
Not the world that watches you suffer in vain

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