Israelis rebuff Trump, insisting images of starvation in Gaza are ‘fake’
Washington – The Israeli government defends a senior military official who rejected the images of hungry Palestinians as “false” over the weekend, despite President Trump declaring on Monday that he thought that the images are real.
The rupture comes in the midst of increasing international pressure on Israel in disastrous circumstances in the Palestinian enclave, and as two Israeli human rights groups, in a first, characterized the Israeli operation in Gaza as a genocide.
In recent days, photographs and videos of desperate Palestinians overpapped rescue positions and emaciated children have spread around the world. Despite this, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that “there is no famine in Gaza”.
And Sunday, during a press tour of a small area of the Gaza Strip, Effie Defrin, commander and spokesperson for the defense forces of Israel, told journalists that the emerging visuals of Gaza “break our hearts”.
“But the major part is false, false distributed by Hamas,” said Defrin. “It is a campaign. Unfortunately, some of the Israeli media, including some of the international media, distribute this information and these false images, and creates an image of famine that does not exist.”
The Palestinians find it difficult to access food because a charity distributes meals in Gaza City, in the middle of the blockade of Israel and the ongoing attacks on Monday.
(Khames Alrefi / Anadolu / Getty Images)
Trump rejected this explanation on Monday, telling journalists during a visit to Scotland that the United States would increase his efforts to introduce food in the territory. “It’s a real famine,” he said. “I see it, and you cannot simulate this.”
“Israel can do a lot,” he added, answering a question to find out if the state could help end the hunger crisis.
An Israeli official told Times that the Israeli government is submitted to the remarks of Defrin.
Israel opened additional corridors for humanitarian aid and started its own aerial food drops on Sunday. The Israeli official said that, while aid between Gaza, the United Nations and its affiliation organizations do not distribute it correctly. The humanitarian workers argued that the conditions on the ground, with the current fight, prevented them from operating.
Netanyahu’s office has argued that Hamas diverts food and helps far from civilians as war tactics. But the evaluations of the USAID and the Israeli army found no evidence that Hamas does on a large scale.
At the end of May, Israel interrupted the rescue work of the United Nations and other humanitarian aid groups and gave these efforts to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Critics say that the Foundation’s efforts have been insufficient and random.
The Palestinians wear humanitarian aid which they received in Rafah’s corridor as they walk in the Mawasi region in Rafah in the Southern Gaza Strip.
(AFP / Getty Images)
Last week, the World Health Organization said that it had documented 21 children under the age of 5 who died of causes linked to malnutrition since the start of the year, and the United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, said that at least 13 children for children had been reported this month.
The crisis comes as two critical Israeli rights groups with regard to the current Israeli government – B’tselem and doctors for human rights -Israel – have issued assessments that the Israeli campaign is equivalent to genocide against the Palestinians.
“An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrible results, as well as declarations of Israeli politicians and military commanders on the objectives of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel takes coordinated measures to intentionally destroy the palissant society in the Gaza Strip”, the B’tselem report was intentional. “In other words: Israel commits a genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel began hitting Hamas in Gaza after the organization launched a devastating attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 Israeli civilians and security forces and taking 251 other hostages.
The Israeli response has leveled entire Palestinian cities and moved nearly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants in the territory, killing nearly 60,000 civilians and Palestinian activists. Another series of strikes on Monday killed at least 78 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The genocide – A word that weighs heavily in Israel, a state founded as a Jewish homeland after the Nazi Holocaust – is an international legal term with a specific definition: “acts committed to the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.” The debate on the question of whether the functioning of Israel is equivalent to a genocide has been raging since its first days.
The Israeli government said that the war has continued because Hamas refused to release around 50 hostages that remain under its custody in Gaza.
Negotiations at the end of the war, which would see Israel would end up hostilities in exchange for the release of the hostages of Hamas, have seen adjustments and departures from the Biden administration.
Humanitarian aid is broadcast to Palestinians from Gaza City on Monday.
(Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press)
Trump alternately attempted to negotiate a peace between Hamas and Israel, and at other times, said that Hamas will face greater punishment unless it is capitulated.
In Scotland, Trump moved away from the most aggressive approach. The president said that he had told Netanyahu that Israel may have to find a “different way” to end the war, given the extent of devastation on the ground.
“I speak to Bibi Netanyahu, and we offer various plans,” said Trump, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “We will see. It is a very difficult situation. ”
Trump added: “If they did not have the hostages, things would go very quickly. But they do it, and we know where they have them, in some cases, and you do not want to hide this area, because it means that these hostages will be killed.”
“Now there are people who would say, this is the price you pay,” he said. “But we don’t like to say that. We don’t mean that.”
