14 more dead of starvation in Gaza as Trump vows food aid
Describing starvation in Gaza as real, Mr Trump's assessment put him at odds with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Sunday 'there is no starvation in Gaza' and vowed to fight on against the Palestinian militant group Hamas – a statement he reposted on X yesterday.
Mr Trump, speaking during a visit to Scotland, said Israel has a lot of responsibility for aid flows, and that a lot of people could be saved.
'You have a lot of starving people. We're going to set up food centres,' with no fences or boundaries, to ease access, Mr Trump said.
The US would work with other countries to provide more humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, including food and sanitation, he said.
A White House spokesperson said additional details on the food centres would be 'forthcoming'.
Yesterday, the Gaza health ministry said at least 14 people had died in the past 24 hours of starvation and malnutrition, bringing the war's death toll from hunger to 147, including 88 children, most in just the last few weeks.
Israel announced several measures over the weekend, including daily humanitarian pauses to fighting in three areas of Gaza, new safe corridors for aid convoys, and airdrops.
The decision followed the collapse of ceasefire talks on Friday.
Two Israeli defence officials said the international pressure prompted the new Israeli measures, as did the worsening conditions on the ground.
UN agencies said a long-term and steady supply of aid was needed. The World Food Programme said 60 trucks of aid had been dispatched.
Almost 470,000 people in Gaza are enduring famine-like conditions, with 90,000 women and children in need of specialist nutrition treatments, it said.
'Our target at the moment, every day is to get 100 trucks into Gaza,' WFP regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, Samer AbdelJaber, said.
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said the situation is catastrophic.
'At this time, children are dying every single day from starvation, from preventable disease. So time has run out.'
Mr Netanyahu has denied any policy of starvation towards Gaza, saying aid supplies would be kept up whether Israel was negotiating a ceasefire or fighting.
A spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, said that Israel had not placed a time limit on the humanitarian pauses in its military operation, a day after UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said that Israel had decided 'to support a one-week scale-up of aid'.
'We hope this pause will last much longer than a week, ultimately turning into a permanent ceasefire,' Mr Fletcher's spokesperson, Eri Kaneko, said.
Mr Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Compared to last week, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said, there had only been a 'small uptick' in the amount of aid being transported into Gaza since Israel started the humanitarian pauses.
Wessal Nabil, from Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, described the struggle of trying to feed her three children.
'When you go to bed hungry, you wake up hungry. We distract them with anything... to make them calm down,' she told Reuters.
'I call on the world, on those with merciful hearts, the compassionate, to look at us with compassion, to be kind to us, to stand with us until aid comes in and ensure it reaches us.'
In his statement on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would continue to fight until it achieved the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas and the destruction of its military and governing capabilities.
Mr Trump said Hamas had become difficult to deal with in recent days, but he was talking with Mr Netanyahu about 'various plans' to free hostages still held in the enclave.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked communities across the border in southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
The Gaza health ministry said that 98 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the past 24 hours.
Some of the trucks that made it into Gaza were seized by desperate Palestinians, and some by armed looters, witnesses said.
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Colin Sheridan: Obama's silence on Gaza makes Freedom of Dublin award deeply problematic
There's a long and noble Irish tradition of giving medals to people who don't need them. Mimicking our one-time oppressors, we're good at the pomp and pageantry, terrible at timing. And in this grand tradition of ceremonial sycophancy, we've now decided to give the Freedom of Dublin to Barack Obama — the same Barack Obama whose presidential legacy includes a kill list, expanded drone warfare, and now, more recently, a silence on Gaza so deafening it practically registers on the Richter scale. Now, before someone starts waving a Hope poster in my face and singing 'Is Feider Linn', let's be clear: this isn't a character assassination. Barack Obama is, by many accounts, charming, intelligent, a skilled orator, and less overtly monstrous than some who followed him. But if the bar for receiving Dublin's highest civic honour is simply 'better than Trump,' then let's all take turns. This isn't about left or right. It's about right and wrong. And giving Obama the keys to a city that prides itself on solidarity, social justice and neutrality — a city only a century since it's own liberation from colonisers, a city that once shut down its port in protest of apartheid — is a moral absurdity that would be funny if it weren't so grotesque. Let's talk about Gaza. Right now, we're witnessing an unquestionable genocide, one that even conservative estimates rank among the worst atrocities in recent memory. Tens of thousands dead. Children buried under rubble. Journalists and doctors targeted with impunity. And what's Obama's response? A few muted bromides about 'the complexity of the situation' and the usual plea for restraint — the kind of lukewarm platitude you'd expect from someone looking to protect a Netflix deal, not someone once hailed as the conscience of the free world. Remember, this is the same man who, while president, gave Israel the largest military aid package in US history — $38bn over ten years. The same man who watched as Gaza was pummelled in 2014, and then blocked efforts at the UN for accountability. In Obama's world, apparently, some lives matter more than others — and it's not the ones buried under the debris in Khan Younis So let's ask: What, exactly, are we honouring? Is it the weekly 'Terror Tuesday' meetings where he personally signed off on drone strikes — many of which killed civilians, including children, with such frequency that his administration had to redefine the word 'combatant' to keep the numbers palatable? Is it the Nobel Peace Prize he received before bombing seven countries? Or is it the charming eloquence with which he explained away extrajudicial assassinations and mass surveillance? Maybe it's the warm pint he had in Moneygall. Maybe that's enough. Maybe our foreign policy is so thin it can be blown over by a puff of Guinness foam. Obama's defenders, and there are many, will say: "He tried." They'll point to the Iran deal. They'll mention the thaw with Cuba. And fair enough — no presidency is black and white (though drone strikes absolutely are). But a Freedom of the City is not a footnote in a CV. It's a declaration of values. And at a time when Dublin has become a symbol — however small — of international moral conscience on Gaza, this award feels not just tone-deaf, but actively insulting It's worth asking how we'd feel if another country handed such an honour to, say, Tony Blair, citing his contribution to the peace process while politely ignoring Iraq. We'd scoff. We'd march. We'd write strongly-worded op-eds, the kind I'm doing now. And yet, because Obama quotes Seamus Heaney and has a smile that makes white liberals feel good about themselves, we're expected to ignore the trail of bodies left in his geopolitical wake. It's also galling because the Freedom of Dublin isn't just symbolic fluff — at least, it wasn't meant to be. It should be given to people like Nelson Mandela and John Hume — people whose lives were defined by their resistance to violence, not their management of it. To toss Obama into that company is like inviting Monsanto to an organic farming festival. Let's not pretend this is just a harmless bit of civic theatre. In a world as interconnected and morally muddled as ours, gestures matter. They signal what we stand for And giving Obama this award now — as children in Gaza die in silence, too exhausted to even scream — sends a very clear message: that brand is more important than behaviour, that the image of progress is more valuable than the practice of it. And to those in Dublin City Council who greenlit this award: shame on you. Not because Obama is uniquely evil — he's not — but because you should know better. You should know that real solidarity isn't measured in photo ops, but in principles. You should know that timing matters. Context matters. And right now, there's blood on the sand in Gaza, and silence in the White House archives. We don't need empty ceremonies. We need moral courage. And giving the Freedom of Dublin to Barack Obama is not an act of courage. It's an act of cowardice wrapped in a velvet sash.
Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Colin Sheridan: ICC justice for Netanyahu? Maybe not — but the arrest warrant still changes everything
In school, most of us learned about The Hague the way one learns about algebra or Shakespeare — with begrudging reverence. A solemn Dutch city, home to two of the most formidable-sounding institutions ever cooked up by the sober minds of the post-Second World War West — the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). One for disputes between states. The other for the monsters among us — war criminals, genocidaires, and heads of state with more skeletons than mistresses. But lately, those halls of justice have grown quiet. The problem isn't just that people have stopped listening to the verdicts. It's as if they've stopped pretending to care at all. If all the courts can do is issue warrants nobody will enforce, then what is the point? Last year, the ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant. Charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, tied to Israel's genocide in Gaza. We know by now who said what, but it's instructive to go back in time a little, and learn that none of what we heard came as a surprise. In March 2021, the ICC formally launched an investigation into alleged violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, covering actions by Israel and Hamas dating back to 2014. The investigation focused on alleged war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The announcement triggered strong, sharply divided reactions from governments, human rights organisations, and legal observers. Israel, unsurprisingly, strongly condemned the ICC's decision. Netanyahu called it 'the essence of anti-Semitism and hypocrisy', further citing that the ICC had no jurisdiction, as Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute (the founding treaty of the ICC), and that Palestine, in Israel's view, is not a sovereign state capable of delegating jurisdiction. The Israeli government doubled down, vowing to protect its military personnel and refuse co-operation. The Palestinian Authority (the much-maligned Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank) welcomed the decision as a long-awaited step toward justice, calling it 'a historic day for the principle of accountability'. It viewed it as international recognition of its right to seek legal redress for Israeli actions. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Two decades on, the court has handed down just five convictions for core crimes. Most of those were against African warlords. Picture: AP The US, under the Biden administration at that point, strongly opposed the ICC investigation. Then US secretary of state Antony Blinken said: 'We firmly oppose and are deeply disappointed by the ICC prosecutor's announcement.' Washington took the opportunity to reaffirm its support for Israel's right to 'self-defence' and echoed concerns over jurisdiction. So, although president Biden had lifted Trump-era sanctions on the ICC, the administration remained hostile to this investigation. In Europe, reactions ranged from the technical (Germany and Hungary opposed on jurisdictional grounds) to tentative support (France and Belgium respected the court's independence, even if they had concerns). It is important to note that the 2021 investigation pre-dated October 2023 by over two years, and while no arrest warrants were issued at that point, it marked a turning point in international law regarding how Israel would be treated in its ongoing occupation of Palestine, and its military operations therin. In essence, the reactions in 2021were just an appetiser for those that followed the May 2024 decision that 'there were reasonable grounds' to believe Netanyahu, Gallant, and several Hamas officials had committed international crimes since October 7. On that basis, the court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif (later withdrawn after reports of his death). Israel, if it were so inclined to take heed, had been warned by the ICC in 2021. It ploughed on regardless. Today, in August 2025, Netanyahu isn't in a holding cell. Neither is Vladimir Putin, who had his own ICC warrant slapped on his name last year. Sudan's Omar al-Bashir evaded capture for over a decade despite indictments and a passport that read like a serial offender's travel diary. The ICC shouts into the void, and the void responds with billions of dollars of military aid and state dinners. So what went wrong? Or perhaps more honestly, was it ever really right? The roots of these courts are noble, born from the most ignoble chapters of human history. After the unthinkable horrors of the Holocaust, the international community collectively said 'never again'. The Nuremberg Trials in 1945 introduced the novel idea that even heads of state could be held accountable. The precedent gave rise to the ICJ in 1945, the UN's 'principal judicial organ', meant to settle disputes between countries. Think of it as marriage counselling for nations with nuclear weapons. Then, in 2002, came the ICC — a separate body entirely. Born of the Rome Statute, it was designed to prosecute individuals for four core crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the elusive crime of aggression, which sounds like something out of a philosophy exam paper. The ICC was supposed to be the last line of defence for victims when national courts were unwilling or unable to act. A legal lighthouse amid stormy seas. But there were always caveats. Big ones. The US, China, and Russia never ratified the Rome Statute. Israel signed it but later 'unsigned' it — an act that should be impossible, but like many things in geopolitics, defies logic. Without these major players on board, the ICC became a court with jurisdiction over everyone except the people most likely to ignore it. So, how is the ICC doing two decades on? It has handed down just five convictions for core crimes. Most of those were against African warlords. Critics have long accused the court of selective justice, a phrase that sounds like something from a dystopian menu: 'Would you like your international law with or without hypocrisy?' Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Picture: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP Meanwhile, the ICJ, for its part, has presided over more than 180 disputes, many of them relating to maritime boundaries. It has done admirable work in the dry, academic realm of state-to-state conflict resolution. But unlike the ICC, the ICJ can't issue arrest warrants or hold individuals responsible. It depends on voluntary compliance. That's a bit like having a referee at a boxing match who can only politely ask you to stop punching. Despite their apparent impotence, there is an argument that if neither court existed, you'd invent them both tomorrow. 'Both the ICJ and ICC have major political impact, that perhaps supersedes any ability it lacks to follow through on arrest warrants,' argues Maryam Jamshidi, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School. 'The legal arguments the ICJ and ICC are making remain the most effective way to shut down any discussion that what Israel is doing is anything other than war crimes.' There is huge symbolism, too, in those who are bringing the cases to the courts, and those who are rejecting them. 'The construct of contemporary international law is, in and of itself, very much a product of the West and Western interests. But over time, especially since decolonisation after the Second World War, the Global South has asserted its role and place in holding actors accountable. 'This moment — with Israel's crimes in Palestine front and centre — is a moment that the Global South is shaping. It is holding a mirror to the West. How we think about genocide, how we think about occupation and colonisation. That is incredibly important. If international law is to have a future, the Global South needs to continue to lead the way, because the Global South understands better than anyone.' Last year, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant. Picture: AP So here we are. Two international courts, plenty of legal muscle on paper, but little in the way of teeth when it comes to the powerful. They can indict. They can admonish. But increasingly, they cannot compel. 'Yes,' Jamshidi agrees, 'but the courts are a critical weapon in a wider ideological war. They use sound legal arguments to shape the narrative and apply political pressure. The most significant aspect of the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant was that they were the first issued for 'Western' leaders. That's not nothing.' Power has shifted. The UN Security Council, still stuck in 1945 with its five permanent members, can't agree on lunch, never mind accountability. Multipolarity has returned, and with it, a jostling of narratives. Everyone's got a skeleton to show, and no one wants to open the closet. And yet, the need for justice hasn't disappeared. If anything, it's more acute. In Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine, in Myanmar, real people continue to pay the price for the hubris and avarice of their leaders. The legal frameworks exist. The moral arguments are clear. But the enforcement mechanisms are laughably absent. What's next? So what comes next? Some argue for regional courts — African, Asian, or European criminal tribunals, more culturally and politically embedded, less burdened by the Global North-South mistrust. Others speak of truth and reconciliation commissions, like those pioneered in South Africa, which trade prosecution for collective healing. There's also the tech-utopian fantasy: AI-driven evidence collection, blockchain-protected war crime registries, crowdsourced justice via global citizen tribunals. But these ideas, while shiny, are fraught with their own dangers and easily co-opted. Realistically, what we may see is a shift toward informal legitimacy over formal legality. Sanctions, visa bans, public shaming, asset freezes — none of these are justice in the Nuremberg sense, but they may be the closest we get in a world where power trumps process. Perhaps, too, we must rethink what justice looks like. Less about punishment, more about prevention. Less about dragging leaders to The Hague, more about making it politically impossible for them to commit atrocities in the first place. That's a long road. It involves education, diplomacy, and strengthening domestic institutions. But then, so did the building of these courts. What, then, will we teach our children? There's a bench in The Hague. It sits silently beneath a row of flags and beside the empty dock where tyrants are supposed to face their reckoning. Today, it feels like theatre — well-meaning theatre, perhaps, but theatre all the same. A performance of justice rather than its practice. And yet, something nags at the conscience. That small, stubborn belief that laws matter. That truth has weight. That even in an age of polarisation and propaganda, the idea of accountability shouldn't die so easily. Maybe the ICC is failing. Maybe the ICJ is ignored. But the alternative isn't attractive, and perhaps, as Jamshidi argues, the symbolism of its rulings and the discomfort those rulings impart outweigh the futility of its warrants.
Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Trump's global tariff agenda puts Ireland's pharmaceutical industry at serious risk
The whole world is in thrall to the whims of Donald Trump's tariff agenda, as it has been since the 47th president of the United States' swearing-in last January. We've learned a few uncomfortable truths along the way. Much of the early outcry from America's allies and trading partners surrounded the lack of economic logic to the imposition of tariffs – which are effectively a tax for Americans on foreign products, in theory making them less attractive to US consumers and heightening the allure of their own domestic suppliers. Critics said that the new regime would disrupt the world economy needlessly and perhaps bring about a global recession. That may well come to pass. The problem is that in this stand-off America has the greater wherewithal in terms of raw economic power. It holds the cards as Trump himself might say. And nations worldwide are beginning to fall into line, the EU just the latest after agreeing to a blanket 15% tariff on goods and services going forward. After President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump agreed the trade deal, the spin is that the pain of those tariffs is worth it in order to avoid a global trade war. Also, 15% is better than 30% or worse, is the thinking. Photo:The spin is that the pain of those tariffs is worth it in order to avoid a global trade war. Also, 15% is better than 30% or worse, is the thinking. Whether that represents capitulation in the face of bullyboy tactics, given that little or nothing has been asked of the US in return, is a separate conversation. Ireland's pharmaceutical industry Here in Ireland we have a bigger problem though, and that problem is the pharmaceutical industry. That industry contributes massively to the economy here via billions of euro in corporation tax contributions, with about 90 companies employing 50,000 people in highly-paid roles. A total 30,000 of those jobs are with American firms. Should foreign pharmaceutical concerns exit Ireland the impact on the country would be catastrophic. The industry globally had pleaded with Trump for it to be exempted from any tariff regime, ostensibly for altruistic reasons – that lifesaving medicines shouldn't be subject to capricious taxation. At an EU level, the industry asked that the bloc not apply reciprocal tariffs, one wish that has at least been granted. Pfizer is one of the massive American pharmaceutical companies holding bases in Ireland, in this case Cork. File picture: Dan Linehan Oddly enough, in Trump's world of permanent grievance where everyone has been making a sucker of the United States for decades, the outsize presence the US pharmaceutical industry holds in Ireland is one situation on which he indisputably has a legitimate point. Drug prices in the US can retail for as much as five times what an EU citizen would pay. Meanwhile, American pharma firms make a pretty penny avoiding American tax by basing themselves here. Trump's protectionist agenda demands that those jobs and companies should return home. The Government has been worrying about and planning for a worst-case scenario in terms of tariffs on pharmaceuticals for months. Reaction from the pharma companies But what of the pharma industry itself? The official line from the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), the industry's lobby group here, is that it is reviewing the announcements coming out of Washington as and when they happen 'as key implications for the pharmaceutical sector remain uncertain'. A stance it's hard to argue with given the whole world has grown used to the haphazard nature of the Trump administration's demands. The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) notes that tariffs are 'a blunt instrument that will disrupt supply chains, impact on investment in research and development, and ultimately harm patient access to medicines on both sides of the Atlantic'. It added that if the goal is to rebalance trade and ensure a 'fairer distribution' of how pharmaceutical innovation is financed, then 'there are more effective means than tariffs that would help'. Impact on pharma in Ireland The IDA, the body with prime responsibility for attracting foreign investment to Irish shores, says of the pharma implications that it 'welcomes' the deal made between Europe and the US, arguing it provides 'much-needed certainty for Irish, European and American businesses who together represent the most integrated trading relationship in the world'. 'We are very much reliant (on the US market), there's no arguing with that,' says one industry insider. Last year a massive €44bn in pharmaceutical products were exported directly from Ireland to the US. 'But when you stand back €100bn was exported globally. So half went to America, but it's not like all business went there, though it is certainly the biggest partner,' says the source. That doesn't mean that those massive American companies holding bases here – MSD, Pfizer, ELI Lilly, Johnson and Johnson etc – are about to up sticks on the back of the new tariff regime. 'They are not going to leave today or tomorrow, no. But it could definitely impact future investment decisions,' the source says. One of the problems is that a great deal of uncertainty still surrounds the 15% tariff agreement, particularly with regard to pharma. One of the Eli Lilly production buildings at its state-of-the-art facility in Dunderrow, Kinsale, Co Cork. For starters, most people concerned thought that the pharmaceutical industry wasn't to be included in the deal. Then about two hours after the deal was agreed European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said it would be included, a point Trump appeared to back up. The following day the White House produced a 'fact sheet' describing how the new regime would work, and affirming the 15% rate for pharma. Except that the same sheet stated that the European Union would pay the tariff – which isn't how tariffs work. Then there is the Section 232 investigation which the US Department of Commerce initiated into the pharma industry in April – aiming to establish if how the pharmaceutical system worldwide currently functions impacts negatively on the US from a national security standpoint. Should the answer arrived at be a 'yes', then additional tariffs on pharma may well follow (such investigations typically take a minimum of six months to conclude, so we'll probably get an answer sometime towards the end of the year). 'Pharma plans in the long-term,' says Aidan Meagher, tax partner specialising in life sciences with consultants EY, noting that most pharma manufacturers will have been planning for this scenario for months and will have frontloaded stock into the American market, thus negating immediate impacts in the near term. He says that companies will be likely looking at 'dual sourcing' initiatives, supplying the American market from within the US itself and using Irish operations for its trade around the rest of the globe. 'Ireland needs to up its game' But Meagher says that it would be 'remiss' of Ireland, and the pharma industry here, to take a 'wait and see' approach, perhaps with the supposition that Trump's policies will last for the remaining three-and-a-half years of his term, and no longer. 'It is all about the next investment. A lot of these drugs only have patent protection for a certain life or longevity. Ireland needs to maintain investment and to incentivise the right kind of activity in terms of attracting that innovation,' he says. That means thinking outside the box in terms of tax credits for research and development, and improvements to infrastructure, particularly housing, Meagher says, areas in which we are notably lagging behind in terms of international competition. But he argues that the situation is far from a doomsday scenario. 'It's not as simple as that, it's a whole range of business factors that need to be considered – it's all about impacts for specific companies,' he says. 'It's not all necessarily doom and gloom. Companies have had plenty of time to consider this. And pharma companies are long-term thinkers. Ireland has had just two issues with the FDA (the US food and drug administration, responsible for approving new drugs) in its history. "The country has a strong reputation. These countries have invested significantly and Ireland is the owner of a lot of valuable intellectual property.' But it's certainly not a time to be complacent, Meagher argues. 'We have dropped down the competitiveness radar, and our competitors now aren't in the EU – they're in Switzerland, Singapore and the US itself. We need to be a top competitor for inward investment, and R&D and infrastructure will be critical. That is where Ireland needs to up its game.'
