Steve Witkoff's sanitised Gaza tour snubbed US doctor who said people being 'shot like rabbits'
Highly anticipated talks and meetings with America, Israel's closest ally and the one country with the power to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course, then nothing changes.
We need to give Steve Witkoff time to report his assessments back to the White House before we can give a complete verdict on this visit but what we've seen and heard so far has offered little hope.
The pressure on Donald Trump to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is mounting after a small but vocal contingent of his base expressed outrage.
Even one of his biggest supporters in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Green, has referred to it as a genocide.
It was little coincidence Mr Witkoff was dispatched to the region for the first time in three months to speak to people on both sides and "learn the truth" to quote US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who accompanied him to an aid site in Gaza.
1:56
The pair spent five hours in Gaza speaking to people at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation centre and it's understood saw nothing of the large crowd of Palestinians gathering a mile away waiting for food.
Their sanitised tour of Gaza did not include a visit to a hospital where medics are receiving casualties by the dozen from deadly incidents at aid sites, and where they're treating children for malnutrition and hunger.
A critical trauma nurse at Nasser hospital told us a 13-year-old boy was among the people shot while Mr Witkoff was in the enclave.
An American paediatrician at the same hospital who had publicly extended an invitation to meet with Mr Witkoff heard nothing from the US delegation.
2:12
Dr Tom Adamkiewicz described people "being shot like rabbits" and "a new level of barbarity that I don't think the world has seen".
The US delegation was defensive of the controversial GHF aid distribution that was launched by America and Israel in May, hailing its delivery of a million meals a day.
But if their new system of feeding Gaza is truly working, why are we seeing images of starved children and hearing deaths every day of people in search of food?
The backdrop of this trip is very different to the last time Mr Witkoff was here.
In May, life was a struggle for Palestinians in Gaza, people were dying in Israeli bombings but, for the most part, people weren't dying due to a lack of food or getting killed trying to reach aid.
Mr Netanyahu's easing of humanitarian conditions a week ago, allowing foreign aid to drop from the sky, was an indirect admission of failure by the GHF.
Yet, for now, the US is standing by this highly criticised way of delivering aid.
A UN source tells me more aid is getting through than it was a week ago - around 30 lorries are due to enter today compared to around five that were getting in each day before.
Still nowhere near enough and it's a complex process of clearances and coordination with the IDF through areas of conflict.
Lorries are regularly refused entry without explanation.
Then there was Mr Witkoff's meeting with hostage families a day later where we began to get a sense of America's new plan for Gaza.
The US issued no public statement but family members shared conversations they'd had with Mr Trump's envoy: bring all the hostages home in one deal, disarm Hamas and end the war. Easier to propose than to put into practice.
Within hours of those comments being reported in the Israeli media, Hamas released a video of hostage Evyatar David looking emaciated in an underground tunnel in Gaza.
0:55
Now 24 years old, he was kidnapped from the Nova festival on 7 October and is one of 20 hostages understood to be still alive. The release of the video was timed for maximum impact.
Hamas also poured water on any hopes of a deal in a statement, refusing to disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established.
Hamas has perhaps become more emboldened in this demand after key Israeli allies, including the UK, announced plans for formal recognition in the last week.
It's hard to see a way forward. The current Israeli government has, in effect, abandoned the idea of a two-state solution.
The Trump administration's recent boycott of international conferences on the matter suggests America is taking a similar line, breaking with its long-standing position.
Arab nations could now be key in what happens next.
In an unprecedented move, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt joined a resolution calling for Hamas to disarm and surrender control of Gaza following a UN conference earlier this week.
This is hugely significant - highly influential powers in its own backyard have not applied this sort of pressure before.
For all the US delegation's good intentions, it's still political deadlock. Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Gaza left to starve and suffer the consequences.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
.jpg%3Ftrim%3D0%2C50%2C0%2C50%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
Morning Joe ridicules GOP for justifying Trump's firing of Labor Stats chief: ‘Put on their Baghdad Bob hat'
The hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe mocked Republicans and White House officials on Monday for spending the weekend attempting to justify Donald Trump's decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a poor jobs report last week. According to anchor Joe Scarborough, it appeared that the president's aides and top loyalists knew the assignment and 'put on their Baghdad Bob hat' in an effort to defend the impetuous move, knowing they didn't have a choice because 'there was no justification for' the termination. On the same day that Trump resumed his global tariffs, which could potentially spark inflation and lead to reduced economic growth, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added only 73,000 jobs in July. Furthermore, there was a massive downward revision in the previous two months, showing that only 33,000 jobs were added rather than the previously reported 291,000. With the president routinely declaring that the U.S. is the 'HOTTEST' country in the world and the economy is booming, the disappointing jobs report prompted Trump to lash out at BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Trump accused her of manipulating and rigging the statistics to make him look bad, because former President Joe Biden nominated her. The president then fired McEntarfer Friday evening. While some GOP lawmakers expressed concern that Trump appeared to terminate McEntarfer just because he didn't like the numbers, noting that she was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate last year, Cabinet members and top White House advisers spent the Sunday shows desperately scrambling to spin their boss' move. 'The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable,' National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said on NBC's Meet the Press. 'You want to be able to have somewhat reliable numbers,' White House trade representative Jamieson Greer declared on CBS News' Face the Nation. 'There are always revisions, but sometimes you see these revisions go in really extreme ways. And it's, you know, the president is the president. He can choose who works in the executive branch.' During Monday's broadcast of Morning Joe, Scarborough brought up the latest op-ed from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which took aim at the president's economic advisers for being the 'bureau of labor denial' following McEntarfer's firing. 'The reality of slowing job growth is clear to anyone paying attention, no matter the official statistics,' the board wrote. 'Mr. Trump's data denial is one more reason fewer Americans will trust the government.' Scarborough claimed that while Beltway insiders like himself are generally able to get White House officials to give them 'straight answers' during off-the-record chats on Trump's decision-making, he considered this an 'exception to that rule' before outright mocking their weekend performance. 'Everybody put on their Baghdad Bob hat this weekend because there was no justification for it,' Scarborough said. 'I was surprised that I didn't even get the sort of quiet eye rolling from inside the White House. I guess they understood they were going to follow the Baghdad Bob line, and they all did it this weekend.' The Morning Joe star was referring to Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Saddam Hussein's former Minister of Information at the outset of the Iraq War, who was given the 'Baghdad Bob' nickname due to the comically false statements her would make in press conferences. Al-Sahhaf once claimed American soldiers were dying by suicide 'by the hundreds', and denied that American tanks were in Baghdad – despite the fact that the tanks could be heard in the distance and were only a few hundred meters from where he was speaking. 'Those in the White House, those close to the president, were in lockstep – asserting, without evidence, that there was bias in these job numbers and that President Trump was simply justified in doing what he did,' Morning Joe co-host Jonathan Lemire said Monday. 'None of that is true. This is a bad one. Historically, this is a bad one.' He added: 'Governments, economies, and businesses can only make decisions based on hard data, on statistics. This calls into question so much of what Washington produces.' Elsewhere on the program, Scarborough said that a 'lot of people are certainly deeply concerned' that this latest move from Trump shows that he's 'playing with the facts' and that it could result in the 'rise of authoritarianism.' Regular contributor Katty Kay, meanwhile, observed that the U.S. could be 'going more in the direction of Latin America' and devolve into a 'feudal oligarchical system.' Over on the other cable news outlets, CNN senior reporter Matt Egan suggested that Trump's firing of McEntarfer would be similar to 'an NFL owner who responds to his team losing big by immediately firing the scoreboard operator.' Moments later, CNN global economic analyst and Financial Times editor Rana Foroohar sounded the alarm over what this termination could mean for the country down the road. 'I mean, you know, this is the same bureau and the same commissioner that he was lauding when good numbers came out. And now the bad numbers are coming out. He's firing them,' she said. 'And I think one thing that really worries me is that this is what you see in autocracies,' Foroohar continued. 'This is what you see in emerging markets that don't have the rule of law, that don't have democratic governments. You see the firing of officials that people don't like. You see leaders closing themselves off to the truth.'
The Guardian
14 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests she may abandon the Republican party
Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most prominent voices in Donald Trump's Maga movement, has declared in an interview that she feels that the Republican party has lost touch with its base, and suggested she may abandon the party entirely. The Georgia congresswoman told the Daily Mail this week she is questioning whether she still belongs in the Republican fold and expressed resounding frustration with GOP leadership. 'I don't know if the Republican party is leaving me, or if I'm kind of not relating to Republican party as much any more,' Greene said. 'I don't know which one it is.' Greene, who boasts 7.5 million followers on X and commands one of the largest social media audiences of any Republican woman, accused party leaders of betraying core conservative principles. She did not criticize Trump himself, instead preferring to express her ire for what she attempted to paint as political elites. 'I think the Republican party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans,' she said, warning that GOP leadership was reverting to its 'neocon' past under the influence of what she termed the 'good ole boys' network. The 51-year-old lawmaker, in the roughly six month mark following Trump's return to the White House, said she's particularly frustrated with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, saying: 'I'm not afraid of Mike Johnson at all.' Her remarks reflect a broader pattern of voter dissatisfaction with traditional party structures. Americans appear to also be holding deeply unfavorable views of both major parties: a July Wall Street Journal poll found 63% view the Democratic party unfavorably, its worst rating in 35 years, while Republicans fare only marginally better in most surveys. Independent or independent-leaning Americans now account for nearly half the electorate, according to July Gallup polling, and public support has increasingly shifted toward Democrats through those leaners in recent months. On Monday, Greene took to social media to criticize the lack of accountability over what she deems key issues to the base, sharing a table showing no arrests for the 'Russian Collusion Hoax', 'Jan 6th', and '2020 Election'. 'Like what happened all those issues? You know that I don't know what the hell happened with the Republican Party. I really don't,' she said in the interview. 'But I'll tell you one thing, the course that it's on, I don't want to have anything to do with it, and I just don't care any more.' Her recent bills have targeted unconventional Republican territory: preventing cloud-seeding, making English the official US language, and cutting capital gains taxes on homes. She's also the first Republican in Congress to label the crisis in Gaza a genocide, and has called for ending foreign aid and using the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) to cut down fraud and waste in the government. Greene acknowledged her isolation within the party, saying: 'I'm going alone right now on the issues that I'm speaking about.'
The Guardian
14 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘No one should act surprised,' says UN expert who warned of starvation in Gaza last year
The UN expert who first warned that Israel was orchestrating a campaign of deliberate mass starvation in Gaza more than 500 days ago, has said that governments and corporations cannot claim to be surprised at the horror now unfolding. 'Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it's always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024,' Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told the Guardian. 'Israel is starving Gaza. It's genocide. It's a crime against humanity. It's a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it, I feel like Cassandra,' said Fakhri, referring to the Greek mythological figure whose warnings and predictions were ignored. On 9 October 2023 – two days after the deadly Hamas attack – Israel's then defense minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a 'complete siege' of Gaza and said he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel. By December 2023, Gazans accounted for 80% of the people in the world experiencing catastrophic hunger, according to UN and international aid agency figures. Now, widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving the sharp rise in hunger-related deaths across Gaza, with more than 20,000 children hospitalized for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative that provides real-time data on hunger and famine for the UN and aid groups. The 'worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out' across the Gaza Strip, the IPC warned in an alert earlier this week. Fakhri was among the first to warn about the impending famine – and the need for urgent action to stop Israel from starving 2 million people in Gaza. In an interview with the Guardian published on 28 February 2024, Fakhri said: 'We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely, that is the consensus among starvation experts … Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian … this is now a situation of genocide.' The following month, the international court of justice recognized the risk of genocide in Gaza and drew attention to the 'spread of famine and starvation'. The ICJ said that Israel must immediately take all necessary and effective measures, in cooperation with the UN, to ensure unfettered access to humanitarian aid including food, water, shelter, fuel and medicines. In May, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Gallant became the first ever individuals to be formally accused by an international court of deliberate starvation, which is a war crime. In July 2024, a group of UN experts including Fakhri declared a famine after the first deaths from starvation were reported in Gaza. Fakhri also published a detailed report for the UN into Israel's decades-long control over food production and supplies to Palestinians, a stranglehold which meant 80% of people in Gaza were dependent on aid when Gallant announced the current siege in October 2023. Yet there has been little or no action to stop Israel starving Palestinians, which it has achieved by systematically destroying local food production (greenhouses, orchards, farmland) and blocking aid – in violation of international law. According to Fakhri, this is why famine has now taken hold in Gaza. 'Famine is always political, always predictable and always preventable. But there is no verb to famine. We don't famine people, we starve them – and that inevitably leads to famine if no political action is taken to avoid it. 'But to frame the mass starvation as a consequence of the most recent blockade, is a misunderstanding of how starvation works and what's going on in Gaza. People don't all of a sudden starve, children don't wither away that quickly. This is because they have been deliberately weakened for so long. The state of Israel itself has used food as a weapon since its creation. It can and does loosen and tighten its starvation machine in response to pressure; it has been fine-tuning this for 25 years.' Despite stark images of skeletal Palestinians, the Israeli government and some of its allies have continued to insist that the hunger is the result of logistical problems, not a state policy. Last week Netanyahu said: 'There is no policy of starvation in Gaza. There is no starvation in Gaza.' Unicef is among multiple aid agencies to confirm that malnutrition and starvation have escalated since early March 2025 – when Israel unilaterally violated a ceasefire agreed after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Israel reinstated a total blockade after allowing some aid trucks in during the ceasefire, though UN agencies and charities on the ground said it was never enough to fully meet the needs of the starved, sick and weakened population. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an opaque logistics group backed by Israel and the Trump administration, began operations in May, with armed security provided by private contractors and the Israeli military. It was authorized to replace 400 UN distribution hubs with just four across Gaza, in response to unproven claims that international aid was being diverted by Hamas. The UN and hundreds of aid groups condemned the move as a weaponization of aid that violated long-established humanitarian norms. On 1 June, Israeli soldiers killed 32 people at GHF sites, and since then more than 1,300 starving Palestinians have been killed trying to access food. Israel has long sought to discredit and weaken the UN and other international mechanisms including the courts, which it sees as hostile to its ongoing de facto annexation of Palestinian territories, accusing them of antisemitism. 'This is using aid not for humanitarian purposes, but to control populations, to move them, to humiliate and weaken people as part of their military tactics. The GHF is so frightening because it might be the new militarized dystopia of aid of the future,' Fakhri said. In a statement, GHF rejected the reports of Palestinian deaths as 'false and exaggerated statistics' and accused the UN of not doing enough. 'If the UN and other groups would collaborate with us, we could end the starvation, desperation and violent incidents almost overnight. We could scale up, add more distribution sites and ramp up direct-to-community delivery which GHF is piloting now,' a spokesperson said. The Israeli government did not respond to request for comment. The deaths from starvation and aid-hub massacres come on top of at least 60,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs and tanks. Studies have concluded that the real death toll is almost certainly much higher, and Israel has continued to deny international researchers and journalists entry into Gaza. Fakhri and other UN experts have repeatedly urged member states and corporations to act to stop the bombs and famine by cutting financial and military aid and trade with Israel, as well as broad-based economic and political sanctions. 'I see stronger political language, more condemnation, more plans proposed, but despite the change in rhetoric, we're still in the phase of inaction. The politicians and corporations have no excuse, they're really shameful. The fact that millions of people are mobilizing in growing numbers shows that everyone in the world understands how many different countries, corporations and individuals are culpable.' Fakhri argues that in light of the US persistent vetoing of ceasefire resolutions at the UN security council, it is incumbent on the UN general assembly to call for peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys into Gaza. 'They have the majority of votes, and most importantly, millions of people are demanding this. Ordinary people are trying to break through an illegal blockade to deliver humanitarian aid, to implement international law their governments are failing to do. Why else do we have peacekeepers if not to end genocide and prevent starvation?'
