A global hunger monitor, backed by the United Nations, has declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas.
The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.
Neither the White House nor the US State Department has uttered a word in response.
While Israel says it’s ‘an outright lie’, how much longer can the US remain silent?
Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military’s large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?
Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom
Guests:
Jeremy Konyndyk - President of Refugees International
Mustafa Barghouti -- Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative
Matt Duss -- Executive Vice President of the Center for International Policy
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#UnitedStates #DonaldTrump #Israel #BenjaminNetanyahu #Gaza #GazaWar #IsraelGazaWar #GazaGenocide #GazaSiege #GazaStarvation #GazaFamine #GazaHumanitarianCrisis #GHF #AIPAC
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The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.
Neither the White House nor the US State Department has uttered a word in response.
While Israel says it’s ‘an outright lie’, how much longer can the US remain silent?
Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military’s large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?
Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom
Guests:
Jeremy Konyndyk - President of Refugees International
Mustafa Barghouti -- Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative
Matt Duss -- Executive Vice President of the Center for International Policy
Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe
Follow us on X: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish
Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera
Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/
Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/
Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.io/AJEMobile
#UnitedStates #DonaldTrump #Israel #BenjaminNetanyahu #Gaza #GazaWar #IsraelGazaWar #GazaGenocide #GazaSiege #GazaStarvation #GazaFamine #GazaHumanitarianCrisis #GHF #AIPAC
# news #breaking #24x7
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NewsTranscript
00:00Why has Donald Trump not spoken out about famine in Gaza?
00:05He publicly acknowledged last month that children looked very hungry there.
00:09What's behind his silence now?
00:11And is it a green light for Israel to continue its genocide by starvation?
00:15This is Inside Story.
00:30Hello and welcome to the program.
00:34I'm Mohamed Jamjoum.
00:35A global hunger monitor, backed by the United Nations, has declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas.
00:42The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.
00:49Neither the White House nor the U.S. State Department has uttered a word in response.
00:53While Israel says it's an outright lie, how much longer can the U.S. remain silent?
00:58Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military's large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?
01:06Are cracks forming within President Trump's MAGA base after decades of Washington's unwavering military and financial support for Israel?
01:13We'll deal with those questions in a moment, but first, this report by Michael Appel.
01:17The U.S. president considers himself a peacemaker.
01:20I stopped five wars in the last five months.
01:24But Israel's war on Gaza isn't one of them.
01:27And Donald Trump seems to be doing his utmost, not to say the F-word, famine.
01:34Instead, he wants the world to know the U.S. has given $60 million to the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
01:42To supply food and a lot of food, frankly, for the people of Gaza that are obviously not doing too well with the food.
01:50That was at the beginning of August.
01:53And not doing too well with food is what a U.N.-backed monitor has declared is a famine.
02:00The U.S. president has commented on some of the images of malnourished children.
02:05We can save a lot of people.
02:07I mean, some of those kids are, that's real starvation stuff.
02:10I see it.
02:12Yet he appears unwilling to recognize Israel's responsibility.
02:16There's some momentum growing, but it's falling on deaf ears in the Oval Office because Trump has decided he's going to take bad advice from the people who are guiding him on policy towards Israel.
02:29One of those people is Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador to Israel.
02:34Here he is explaining why the U.S. won't intervene to stop Israel's large-scale assault on Gaza City.
02:42There's never been the role of the U.S. to dictate Israel's policy any more than it would be the policy of Israel to dictate our policy.
02:50But many people, including Trump supporters, are questioning the $53 million the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee says it spent last year.
03:00U.S. media outlet Politico reported that AIPAC, in fact, spent a far higher amount.
03:08As a matter of fact, AIPAC needs to register as a foreign lobbyist because they're breaking U.S. laws by donating to members of Congress and by taking them on a fully funded trip to Israel.
03:20At the beginning of August, a group of 600 retired Israeli military officials wrote a letter appealing to President Trump to end the war.
03:29And even the families of Israeli captives know...
03:34Only you can instruct Netanyahu to end the war and bring an end to the loss of life.
03:40When they met in July, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, said he'd nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
03:53But Washington's support for and failure to act against Israel could be interpreted differently.
03:59They have to face the fact that they, too, may be held responsible as accomplices before an international court or tribunal.
04:08A far cry from the prestige of a peace prize.
04:12Mike Lappel, Al Jazeera, for Inside Story.
04:15All right, let's go ahead and bring in our guests.
04:22From Washington, D.C., we're joined by Jeremy Koneindyke, the president of Refugees International and a former USAID official.
04:31In the Ramallah, in the Occupied West Bank, is Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician and secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative.
04:38And in Alexandria, Virginia, is Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
04:48A warm welcome to you all, and thanks so much for joining us today on Inside Story.
04:51Mustafa Barghouti, let me start with you today.
04:53We saw there in Michael Appel's report that we just played that Donald Trump publicly acknowledged last month that children looked very hungry in Gaza.
05:02My question to you is, from your perspective, why won't Trump recognize Israel's responsibility in this famine?
05:10And do you expect that the U.S. is just going to continue to stay silent?
05:15Because I think the simple answer is that Trump, because Trump supports what Israel is doing.
05:23And he's providing cover to Netanyahu.
05:26And it is so silly, really, what Mr. Huckabee, the American ambassador, said, that the United States does not dictate the Israeli policy.
05:37It actually does.
05:39It dictates the Israeli policy with all the weapons it is giving to Israel that are used to commit genocide in Gaza.
05:48It dictates the Israeli policy by allowing Israel to be totally impunitive to international law and international humanitarian law.
05:55So practically, it becomes not only complicit, but actually participant in the Israeli crimes.
06:03And here there are three indications of what's happening.
06:06First of all, the silence about the famine that is happening in Gaza, which is now recognized and confirmed by several UN agencies and by several independent bodies.
06:18Second, by being silent about Israeli rejection of what Palestinians accepted, which was not a Qatari proposal or an Egyptian proposal.
06:29It was an American proposal by Witkoff to have a ceasefire.
06:33Yet, even when Palestinians accepted unconditionally Witkoff's proposal, Netanyahu rejected it and the United States continued to support him.
06:42And third, by punishing, instead of punishing Israel for violating international law, the United States administration is punishing the International Criminal Court for holding Israel responsible and for holding Israel accountable for the crimes it is committing.
07:01The problem here is that we are witnessing silence, not only about famine in Gaza, we're witnessing silence about the war crimes that are happening there, the war crime of genocide, the war crime of collective punishment, including starvation, and the war crime of ethnic cleansing.
07:20This term, which means there was a complicit support to the idea of total ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza.
07:35I believe what this American administration is doing is not only contradictive to international law, but actually it is contradictive to the beliefs of the majority of the American people,
07:48who now realize that Israel is committing crimes.
07:53Matt Duss, you wrote a piece recently in which you stated,
07:57by failing to impose any genuine consequences for blatant and systemic human rights abuses and international humanitarian lawbreaking,
08:04Europe and the United States have created an unmistakable permission structure for Israeli apartheid and now genocide.
08:10Tell us more about what you mean by that and where do things go from here?
08:14Yeah, thank you.
08:16I mean, what I mean by that is that while the Trump administration has responsibility, I mean, the Israeli government has primary responsibility here right now for their policy of starvation and genocide.
08:27But the Trump administration, they could not do it without the support of the United States and the Trump administration.
08:33But this problem goes back many years and, in fact, decades.
08:37There has been a pattern of U.S. support, often unconditional support for Israeli policies that clearly violate human rights, that violate international humanitarian law.
08:48We saw this, of course, from the previous administration, the Biden administration, even though they would occasionally apply what they saw as pressure,
08:56but I don't think really qualified as much pressure to the Israelis to change policy.
09:02They were able from time to time to get more aid into the Gaza Strip, but they were never willing to take what I think was the necessary step of withholding arms supplies to really force the Israelis to change policy.
09:15This comes after decades of a similar approach where we've seen Israel expanding settlements in the West Bank, deepening its occupation and control of occupied territories, maintaining what even before October 7 was a pretty severe blockade and set of restrictions on the Gaza Strip.
09:34So what we are seeing now, the famine and the ongoing genocide is, unfortunately, the culmination of years of pretty much unquestioning U.S. support for Israeli policy and U.S. protection in international fora for any consequences that other countries might seek to impose for those policies.
09:55Jeremy Canindyke, you posted a thread on X about the famine in which you mentioned Trump.
10:01You also mentioned EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
10:04UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Martz.
10:07You wrote, when I was in government, we would often say, no famines on our watch.
10:12This is a famine on Trump's watch, a famine on von der Leyen's watch and Starmer's and Martz's.
10:17That shame will follow them forever.
10:20My question to you is, is this something that could be reversible?
10:26Will there be any political will to change this going forward?
10:31It could be reversible and contained.
10:35It would take time at this point because the famine has a lot of momentum.
10:38But the reality is the humanitarian system is very good at preventing and containing famine when it is allowed to do so.
10:46We have amazing tools and techniques now that didn't exist in the 80s or 90s during the early famines in Somalia and Ethiopia back then.
10:56Specialized food products, new techniques for treating malnutrition.
11:00There is no reason in this day and age for a famine to occur.
11:04There's no natural reason, I should say.
11:07So when a famine occurs, it is a question of political will.
11:10And I think that is what we're seeing now from European countries and the United States and others that have leverage towards the Israeli government.
11:19Some of them are condemning the famine, but they are not exhibiting the political will necessary to actually address the political problem that underpins the famine.
11:30Mosav Barouti, I believe in your last answer, I think you started referring to the fact that there is a political shift going on in the U.S.
11:37when it comes to a lot of voters and a lot of much higher disapproval ratings these days when it comes to the polling that's been done when asked about Israel's actions in Gaza.
11:47I want to ask you about the fact that there has been this weakening of American public support and approval for Israel.
11:53This isn't something that's happened overnight.
11:55It's been it's been building over a period of years after all of these decades of Washington's unwavering military and financial support for Israel.
12:04Do you think that this is ever going to translate into a shift in policy?
12:09Yes, I believe so.
12:12When the opinion of the American public translates into results of elections.
12:19And I believe that's what worries many Israeli politicians like Neftali Bennett, who is not less radical or less extreme, to be precise, than Netanyahu,
12:30who recently said that Israel has already lost the Democratic Party and is on its way to losing big parts, even of the Republican Party.
12:40The change is mainly happening among the younger generation, especially those who are below the age of 35.
12:47And that hopefully will have an impact.
12:51The problem here is that we cannot wait.
12:54We cannot wait.
12:55People are dying around the clock.
12:57Today, Israel bombarded media and journalist people again in Gaza.
13:03They killed four more journalists.
13:06And that brings up the number of journalists, Palestinian journalists, killed in Gaza to 244.
13:12They've already killed more than 1,600 health professionals, including 200 medical doctors.
13:19And they've killed more than 20,000 children.
13:22And the total number of Palestinians killed may be exceed 70,000 now, if you count those who are under the rubble.
13:31And there are 10 percent of the population have already died or became terribly injured.
13:37So, we cannot wait.
13:40And by the way, the problem is not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank.
13:45Today, I visited Al-Maghir, a Palestinian community which was horribly attacked by the Israeli illegal settlers.
13:53They uprooted 10,000 olive trees in three days.
13:58They destroyed houses.
13:59They attacked people.
14:01They are now building eight different settlement outposts around the village.
14:08And they're telling the people, you will be and you should be ethnically cleansed.
14:12And we will do to you what we have done in Gaza.
14:15So, this is an act of annihilation of the whole Palestinian nation.
14:20Not just attacks on Gaza here and there.
14:23Not just the genocide in Gaza.
14:26It's actually a planned genocide against the whole Palestinian people.
14:29And that is all happening in front of the American administration.
14:33In front of all these leaders that you've mentioned, like Starmer and von der Leyen and others.
14:39And in my opinion, what is being slaughtered, that's the risk here for every human being in the world.
14:45What is being slaughtered in Gaza and also in the West Bank is not just the Palestinian people.
14:51It's the international law itself and the international humanitarian law.
14:55By the way, the famine, all you need to stop the famine is to allow trucks that are standing on the borders a few hundred meters away from the people who are starving.
15:06It takes only allowing the trucks to get to the people.
15:10That would solve the problem.
15:12But that's not happening because Israel is preventing it and the United States of America and its administration support that.
15:21Jeremy Koneindyik, I saw you nodding your head to a lot of what Mustafa was saying there.
15:26I wanted to give you a chance to jump in.
15:28I would I want to just emphasize what he was saying about losing international law in places like Ukraine, the United States and other countries have have pointed to international law as a basis for condemning much of what Russia is doing in Syria as well.
15:50There were, you know, round common nations of the Assad regime when they would do things like double tap airstrikes to kill to kill emergency rescue personnel.
16:01Israel just committed a double tap airstrike on the grounds of a hospital, killing rescuers and killing journalists and then a double tap to kill rescuers.
16:10You know, this is the sort of thing that used to be considered pariah behavior.
16:14And, you know, when when Israel does it, we do not hear anywhere near the same sort of condemnation.
16:19And I think it just looks hypocritical to the wider world and undermines the force and the credibility of whatever is left of international humanitarian law.
16:28Matt, a few moments ago, Mustafa Barghouti was talking about shifting perceptions of Israel amongst Republicans and Democrats in the United States.
16:37I want to drill down on that a little bit with you.
16:40First, when it comes to the Republicans, what does it say to you that some key members of Trump's MAGA base are vocally questioning now how much the U.S. supports Israel?
16:50I mean, one example, of course, is Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
16:54She said that AIPAC should register as foreign lobbyists.
16:57How significant is is something like that?
17:00What does it indicate?
17:01I think it is significant.
17:03We don't want to overstate it right now.
17:04I think Donald Trump clearly retains pretty overwhelming control over the Republican Party.
17:10And over his base.
17:12And the Republican Party is still made up of many conservative Christians, evangelicals who are very supportive of Israel.
17:20But I do think the comments from Marjorie Taylor Greene, from others like former Congressman Matt Gaetz and by TV host Tucker Carlson,
17:27who have become increasingly critical of U.S. policy and what they see as the undue influence that the Israeli government has over U.S. policy.
17:35No one can can agree or disagree with with their take on it.
17:39But I do think that the dissent we are starting to see within the Republican Party is significant.
17:45And it really does get to a larger shift among the American electorate.
17:49Now, turning to the Democratic Party, I think we've seen for years now the Democrat Democratic voters are trending to be more supportive of Palestinian rights,
17:59much more critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship as it has existed.
18:03Recent polls showing not only majority American opposition to Israeli policy, but a supermajority of Democrats and independents who oppose Israel's policy in Gaza and who support the withholding of U.S. arms to Israel.
18:19We saw just a few weeks ago a resolution, actually two resolutions by Senator Bernie Sanders that would have blocked continuing U.S. arms sales or arms arms sales to Israel.
18:31One of those resolutions received 27 Democratic votes.
18:35That's the highest number of Democrats in the Senate who have ever voted for such a resolution.
18:39Now, in my view, it should have been all of the Democrats and probably most of the Republicans if they actually followed the polls.
18:45But I do think it is worth noting that number because it does, you know, it's a lagging indicator.
18:51I think that members of Congress are are taking far, far too long to get the memo of what Americans really want.
18:58But I do think this shift is very well underway.
19:01Mustafa Barghouti, you've said that starvation will not stop without ending the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza and the collective punishment of the Palestinian population, including starvation.
19:11From your perspective, are we any closer at this stage of actually seeing an end to the war in Gaza or seeing more serious negotiations for a ceasefire?
19:22Where does this all go at this stage?
19:25No, unfortunately, I cannot give you good news here because Netanyahu still runs the show in Israel, regardless of all the opposition to him.
19:35Again, the problem is that even opposition parties in Israel are not against much of the crimes that are happening in Gaza.
19:46And I don't see any indication or sign that Netanyahu would go into a ceasefire agreement up till now simply because there isn't enough pressure on him.
19:56So if the United States changes its position, they can stop him in one hour.
20:02In one hour, they can enforce a ceasefire agreement on him immediately.
20:07But they're not doing that.
20:09And that's why my biggest worry is that this war will continue and the genocide is going to continue.
20:15And it is clear to me that Netanyahu did not change.
20:20He and, by the way, his military staff and his cabinet, his fascist ministers, they haven't changed their plans since 8th of October.
20:31From the very beginning, and they said it openly and clearly, if you want to find information of that, you can easily.
20:39They said it very clearly, their goal is not just genocide.
20:43Their goal is to totally ethnic cleanse Gaza.
20:47They haven't been able to do so so far because of the resilience, the steadfastness of the heroic people of Gaza,
20:54but also because some countries like Egypt understand that allowing ethnic cleansing to take place will immediately threaten their own national security.
21:03So that's the problem they are facing.
21:05But in reality, they haven't changed their plans.
21:08And that's why we are calling on the whole world to interfere immediately.
21:13Now, not only to stop the terrible genocide in Gaza and the terrible famine in Gaza that is taking people's lives around the clock,
21:21but also to stop the ruthless behavior also in the West Bank.
21:26You know, all the communities are now threatened by these settler terrorist groups who behave exactly as terrorists.
21:34They're stealing lands, destroying houses, killing people, stealing everything from Palestinians.
21:42It's unbelievable.
21:43Total impunity.
21:45Total regardless, total regardlessness to any kind of law or any kind of rule.
21:52It's unbelievable.
21:53What is happening is absolutely terrible in all Palestinian territories.
21:58And that's why I think what we need is really stronger intervention.
22:02And I know that the intervention will not come straight from the American administration now,
22:08but I think all the other Western governments are responsible because all they do is condemnations.
22:15In the best case scenario, a statement that condemns Israeli behavior.
22:20We need more.
22:21We need sanctions on Israel.
22:23What we need is immediate military embargo by all countries, by Britain, which still flies planes to help Israel over Gaza,
22:31by Germany, by France, by every country that claims that they respect international law.
22:38So sanctions immediately is the only thing that can stop Israel from proceeding with this terrible genocide.
22:45Jeremy Caneindyke, in order to change the situation, the horrific situation on the ground in Gaza,
22:52I mean, there needs to be both a humanitarian aid flowing in and there needs to be political pressure being applied, correct?
22:59From your perspective, what are the components that need to go into some kind of mechanism being actually able to reverse what is going on right now?
23:09You heard Mustafa Barghouti there talk about there needs to be intervention from lots of countries,
23:13you know, whether it be sanctions or more pressure being applied.
23:16From your perspective, what are the steps, the concrete steps that need to take place right now?
23:22Well, I think the first step is political.
23:24There has to be serious political and diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government.
23:30What we have seen over and over for close to two years now is that the Israeli government, if they are not facing pressure,
23:37they will clamp down on humanitarian assistance and they will greatly restrict, if not entirely block,
23:44humanitarian assistance and commercial food from going in.
23:48And they only relax that when they are facing international scrutiny and international pressure.
23:53And you can see another round of that playing out right now that after the, you know, with the famine report coming out,
23:59they are now beginning to allow a little bit more aid in, but still nowhere near enough.
24:05One third of Israel's global trade is with the European Union.
24:09Only one percent, less than one percent of the EU's trade is with Israel.
24:13And so there is huge leverage there if the EU chooses to use it.
24:17But if humanitarian access is granted, what we would want to see would look somewhat like the level of access and facilitation that humanitarian groups had earlier this spring during the ceasefire.
24:29When Israel withdrew from the ceasefire, they didn't just impose new safety and security restrictions.
24:39They reimposed a bunch of bureaucratic restrictions that are not necessary for anyone's security that they had waived during the ceasefire.
24:47So, you know, we know they can, we know that they can do this.
24:50They're just choosing not to.
24:51If access is there, then what you need in a famine situation is, yes, a lot of food aid, but you need a lot more beyond that.
24:59You need cooking fuel and clean water so that people can actually cook and prepare the food.
25:03You need specialized nutrition treatment for the many, many children now who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
25:10And you need medical treatment for the people who are facing diseases that should normally be survivable but can be fatal when someone is severely malnourished.
25:19Matt Duss, what does it say about the American political system as it is right now, that it appears to most of the world that there are simply no red lines imposed on Benjamin Netanyahu by either the Trump or the Biden administrations?
25:36I think it's a massive indictment of the American political system.
25:40And every American citizen should be deeply, deeply ashamed of the behavior of our government since October 7.
25:48And I would say even before that, when it comes to policy toward Israel and Palestine, you know, Jeremy made reference to Russia's war on Ukraine.
25:57And I have used that example myself many times.
26:00The United States and its European allies, quite rightly, have condemned Russia's war on Ukraine and the methods used, attacks on civilians, double-tap strikes, denial of food and aid and water and electricity.
26:13Those are the same policies that have been used by Israel on Gaza since the very beginning of this war.
26:19And, of course, you see a complete night and day difference in the unwillingness not only to really criticize and call out, but certainly the unwillingness to impose any consequence or any sanction on Israel for the use of those policies.
26:34I mean, let's be clear, Israel has a policy of civilian harm in Gaza that is undeniable at this point.
26:41And the failure, not just to impose consequences, but the continuing failure to really state that clearly and forthrightly, I think, will be an enduring source of shame for the U.S. and its Western allies.
26:55And we really need to think about, going forward, how we get better people in government, we get people who are really committed to the values that our governments have professed.
27:06All right.
27:07We have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave the conversation there.
27:10Thanks so much to our guests, Jeremy Keneindyke, Mustafa Barghouti, and Matt Duss.
27:15And thank you, too, for watching.
27:17You can see the program again anytime by visiting our website, aljazeera.com.
27:20And for further discussion, go to our Facebook page.
27:23That's facebook.com forward slash AJ Inside Story.
27:26You can also join the conversation on X.
27:29Our handle is at AJ Inside Story.
27:31From me, Mohamed Jamjoum, the whole team here.
27:33Bye for now.
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