Is the White House ready to demand an end to Netanyahu's campaign of starvation in Gaza?

Irish Times

4 days ago

Throughout June, CNN offered previews of its deep-dive documentary of the 40th anniversary of Live Aid. The first part was broadcast on July 13th and in the weeks since, the retrospective has been accompanied with disturbing contemporary reportage and footage of the
horrific scenes of starvation and mass hunger
afflicting people in bombed-out
Gaza
.
This was the first week that the humanitarian crisis, and the shocking realisation that thousands of children are starving and dying while food and aid languishes nearby, has become a dominant news story in the United States.
Since
Donald Trump
took office, Israel's prime minister
Binyamin Netanyahu
has been welcomed and feted in the White House three times. The change in policy, ideology and energy between the Biden and Trump administrations is day and night. Yet both administrations share, to this point, a willingness to bend to Netanyahu's every whim and to ignore his state-sponsored atrocities.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently presented US president Donald Trump with a copy of a letter he sent to the Nobel committee recommending Trump for the peace prize. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Just weeks ago, in a theatrical gesture much of the world found stomach-churning, Netanyahu, sitting across from president Trump ahead of dinner, presented his host with a copy of a letter he sent to the Nobel committee recommending Trump for the peace prize.
READ MORE
But this week,
Trump broke with Netanyahu's conviction that there is no starvation in Gaza
and that Hamas are issuing misleading reports.
'Based on television. . . those children look very hungry,' Trump said. 'But we're giving a lot of money and a lot of food, and other nations are now stepping up. Some of those kids are – that's real starvation stuff. I see it and you can't fake that.'
It is tempting to believe that Trump, an avid consumer of television news shows, was exposed to much stronger and disturbing reports on Gaza during his five-day visit to Scotland than he had previously absorbed while flicking through the news networks in the White House.
Belatedly, Trump seems to have realised, like Biden before him, that he has been played by Israel's prime minister, who has repeatedly demonstrated little interest in ending the conflict. If Russian president
Vladimir Putin
has proven hostile towards Trump's wish – and election campaign vow – of a swift resolution to the war with Ukraine, Netanyahu has been in turns ingratiating and contemptuous, taking unflagging US support for granted.
On Wednesday,
Trump dispatched Steve Witkoff
, his diplomatic envoy, to Israel to pressurise Netanyahu on what is now being described as a famine. Trump returned to Washington from Scotland to find political representatives on the hard right and left are speaking in chorus.
A demonstrator participates in a solidarity rally for Gaza in Paris on Thursday. Photograph: Mohammed Badra/EPA
The Independent senator
Bernie Sanders
forced a set of resolutions to block the $675 million sale of bombs and guidance kits and automatic rifles to the Israeli government.
'Course he's lying,' Sanders said of Netanyahu's denials on CNN during the week.
'He's a disgusting liar. Israel had a right to defend itself from
the terrible Hamas attack
, but I think everyone understands that in the last two and a half years they have been waging a brutal, horrific, almost unprecedented type of war not just against Hamas but against the Palestinian people,' he said, citing the Gaza health ministry figures of 60,000 dead and 140,00 injured, most of whom he said, are 'women, children and the elderly'.
'We cannot continue providing military aid to the extremist racist Netanyahu government that is starving the children of Gaza.'
But Sanders stopped short of agreeing that the word 'genocide' is applicable to the failure to deliver the emergency food and aid to Gazans. Instead, it was Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the Maga Republicans' most strident, conservative voices, who used that phrase. She was responding to Randy Fine, the recently elected Florida Republican congressman who last year labelled Ireland as an
'anti-Semitic country'
over its support of the Palestinian people.
Samah Matar holds her six-year-old son Yousef, who is suffering from severe malnutrition due to Israel's blockade of food into Gaza. Photograph: Saher Alghorra/The New York Times
'I can only imagine how Florida's 6th district feels now that their Representative, that they were told to vote for, openly calls for starving innocent people and children,' Taylor-Greene wrote.
'It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza. But a Jewish US Representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful. His awful statement will actually cause more antisemitism.'
Taylor-Greene's sharp criticism has been echoed elsewhere within the Maga movement, not least through the podcast megaphones of Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon.
Their perspective has not gone unnoticed in Israel, with an opinion piece written in June by Dr Judah Isseroff in the Israeli daily publication, Haaretz, noting that 'while Carlson's stances on immigration, vaccines and Russia are core elements of an emergent right-wing coalition, the criticism of Israel that he amplifies on his podcast has a level of cross-over potential that far outstrips the appeal of mass deportations or Covid revisionism.
'That is because Carlson's views coincide with those of increasingly large numbers of American Jews. According to two surveys last year, nearly a third of American Jews – and more than 40 per cent of American Jewish teens – agreed that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. In light of Israel's escalating activity in the Strip, those numbers are likely higher today than they were in 2024.
It is clear that Binyamin Netanyahu takes the support of Donald Trump and the US completely for granted. Photograph:'As I see it, Carlson's real significance is actually more theological than political. I don't think we're likely to soon find Carlson marching arm-in-arm with Gaza campus activists at Columbia University. Instead, Carlson's platforming of Israel-critical Jews actually augurs a serious scrambling of relations between Jews and Christians in the United States.'
Perhaps, but at congressional level, there is little to suggest that Netanyahu has any immediate cause for alarm about a suspension of arms and support or a sea-change in baseline support. A significant minority may be experiencing nausea at the sudden proliferation of images of starving Gazans. Still, the vote on Sanders's resolution- the third such motion he has brought – failed in the Senate by 27-70. It was significant increase on support among Democratic senators without ever threatening the status quo.
Over a year has passed since Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senate minority leader and highest ranking Jewish political leader in US history,
gave a speech warning that Israel was at the risk of becoming a 'pariah'
under Netanyahu's leadership, and he called for an election of new officials there. But this week, Schumer voted to continue to supply artillery to Israel: the protection of the state cannot, for Schumer, be compromised by objections to Netanyahu. Nor can the
atrocities inflicted by Hamas
militants on innocent Israelis on October 7th, 2023, be forgotten.
When Netanyahu gave his address after a bipartisan invitation from Congress last week, at least 38 elected Democratic representatives announced they would boycott it. A few empty seats, then, but Netanyahu, basking in the afterglow of the successful joint Israel-US strikes on Iran nuclear facilities, still enjoyed a prolonged standing ovation before House speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the 'distinct honour' of introducing the guest.
'For the forces of civilisation to triumph,' Netanyahu told them, 'America and Israel must stand together', provoking another standing ovation. He knew he was among friends – from both sides of the House – and had every reason to believe, in that moment, that the historical alliance will withstand whatever moral queasiness US politicians may feel about the images of dying Palestinian children.
And while president Trump has voiced his unease at the images of malnourished and starving children, on Thursday morning he posted on Truth Social his stated position that the 'fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages'.
A man carries the body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike, ahead of a funeral procession in Gaza City. Photograph: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Asked during his meeting with Britain's prime minister, Keir Starmer, if he supported Britain's pledge to recognise Palestinian statehood unless a ceasefire is in place by September, Trump said that he saw the plan as 'rewarding Hamas'.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Witkoff's meeting with Netanyahu as 'very productive' and she confirmed that he would spend Friday inspecting the food distribution sites and speaking with Gazans living through what has become a ceaseless nightmare. He will then brief president Trump on advised next steps.
'President Trump is a humanitarian with a big heart and that's why he sent special envoy Witkoff to the region, in an effort to save lives and end this crisis,' Leavitt said.
With Hamas refusing to negotiate a path towards a ceasefire until the unfolding food shortage stand-off is resolved, and Israel's leader remaining unrepentant, many lives may hinge of the persuasive power of Witkoff's report to Trump.
It remains to be seen whether the sudden prominence of the Gaza plight in US news coverage is just a temporary conscience salver which will, in a week or a fortnight, become obscured by domestic and economic issues again. Or whether the White House, and Trump, is at last ready to demand an end to Binyamin Netanyahu's clear-eyed campaign of death by one means or another.