RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/21/israel-is-still-the-worlds-scapegoat/

Is Israel really orchestrating a mass famine in Gaza? That is one of the charges currently being investigated by both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Ever since South Africa accused Israel of committing a genocide against Gazans in December 2023, Israel and its leaders have come under intense scrutiny from these international bodies, particularly in regards to the blockade of food and aid.

It is telling that Israel is the first and only country to have been charged with the war crime of starvation. Naturally, blockades of food and other forms of aid are and have been common throughout the history of warfare. This raises two obvious questions. First, do the accusations stand up? And second, why is Israel being singled out for punishment?

These are certainly serious claims. Earlier this week, Tom Fletcher, who is in charge of the United Nations’ relief operation in Gaza, claimed that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in the next 48 hours if aid did not reach them. The week before that, Fletcher made a speech excoriating Israel at the UN Security Council. ‘Every single one of the 2.1million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face the risk of famine’, he said. ‘One in five faces starvation.’ Throughout Israel’s war on Hamas since 7 October 2023, humanitarian agencies have warned of the risk of famine. In recent weeks this aspect of Israel’s supposed ‘genocide’ has particularly come to the fore. The reality is that, so far at least, it remains a ‘risk’ only.

There is no doubt that the war has, as wars do, brought hardship, danger and bloodshed to the people of Gaza. But Israel has made sure that, despite various periods of blockade, enough aid has gone into the region to prevent starvation. There is even a current plan for Israel to deliver aid directly to Gaza. Ironically, this plan is being blocked by the UN itself, which likely resents being left out of the aid-distribution process. The UN’s controversial United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) had previously been administering aid there, but was banned by Israel after it emerged that some of its staff members had taken part in the 7 October massacre.

It is also worth noting that the world seems to have forgotten about the countless other famines that have been occurring elsewhere. Last week, US president Donald Trump announced the end of 13 years of sanctions against Syria. These sanctions – which were backed by the EU, UK, Canada and Australia among others – have had a devastating impact on the Syrian people. By 2024, according to the World Food Programme: ‘A total of 9.1million people are food insecure. Both maternal malnutrition and acute malnutrition in children under five are at global emergency thresholds.’

It is generally accepted that Western economic sanctions, alongside the impact of civil war, worsened living conditions for Syrian civilians to the point of starvation. Yet where were the calls to put the US, the EU, the UK or anybody else in the dock for the consequences of their actions? Instead, the international community has congratulated itself on its role in bringing down the Assad regime.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/05/israels-new-reality-proving-its-worth-in-trumps-mercantilist-middle-east/?_gl=1*uu4df6*_ga*MTAxNTM5OTI0NC4xNzQ3NzQzMzk3*_up*MQ..

Israeli leaders must be suffering whiplash as they watch the dizzying events of recent days across the Middle East, with President Donald Trump sidelining the Jewish state and cozying up to some of its bitter rivals.

The president traveled the region without stopping in Israel, surprised Jerusalem by unilaterally cutting deals to free a U.S. hostage in Gaza and to stop the Houthis from bombing U.S. vessels, lifted sanctions on Syria and met with the former al-Qaeda fighter who now presides in Damascus, struck a huge arms deal with Riyadh while letting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) pursue Israeli-Saudi normalization “in your own time,” re-launched nuclear talks with Iran while sending mixed signals on his bottom line for a deal, and gushed over the gift of a new Air Force One from a nation that supports Hamas.

As a result, Israel will have to fight the Houthis alone while MBS got his coveted arms deal without normalizing relations with Israel, Iran got a chance to stretch out nuclear talks long enough to free itself from expiring global sanctions, and Hamas got to help widen the rift between Washington and Jerusalem.

The larger challenge for Israel, however, is less about how to prevent any future U.S. slight than it is about how best to respond to Trump’s revolutionary new approach to the region and the world.

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/stop-listening-to-fake-experts-and-pretend-historians-on-the-middle-east/

The propaganda campaigns against Israel rely on an industry of manufactured “expertise.” Without the ability to appeal to the authority of such “experts,” the campaigns collapse. For anyone who’s been paying attention in the past few days, the collapse is everywhere you look.

First there was the Sky News anchor hectoring Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon over Israel’s strike on a tunnel system beneath a Gaza hospital to eliminate senior Hamas officials, notably its de facto leader Muhammad Sinwar, brother of Oct. 7 architect Yahya Sinwar. The anchor insisted Israel was wrong to say there were tunnels underneath the hospital and surrounding area because “our experts”—a phrase she repeated in the vain hopes it would sound convincing—said so.

You’ll never guess what happened next. That’s right—Hamas confirmed that the targeted area was indeed the site of a tunnel system, and added more context. It was, Hamas said, destroyed by the IDF in the 2014 Gaza war and since rebuilt. It was there that Israel attempted to take out Sinwar.

Then yesterday, along with reports of another Sinwar’s elimination (Mohammad’s brother Zakaria) came reports that Muhammad Sinwar’s body was indeed found in the tunnel system targeted by the IDF.

Who are Sky News’s “experts”? One of them is Corey Scher, who was a key “expert” behind a 2023 Associated Press story that claimed “The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history.”

Experts say! As I noted at the time, that claim is obviously false. But Scher’s research depended on radar readings that were mostly mysterious to Scher as well. As a separate article on that study noted, “the researchers said they were able to detect the number of buildings damaged, but were not able to determine how badly the buildings had been affected.”

The research also based its findings on the assumption that any change in the echoes of radar waves was from Israeli bombing.

And so by reading the actual article, one learned that this study was childish nonsense. Now its leading researcher is back to say that the IDF lied about tunnels, only to be immediately contradicted by Hamas itself.

Sky News, the Associated Press, ABC News—where else will these “experts” show up? The answer is: wherever they’re needed to lend an academic gloss to rank speculation and conspiracy theories.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/greta-thunberg-if-you-can-stand-her/

Greta Thunberg has received all sorts of acclaim for her work as an environmental warrior that began when she was scarcely out of grade school. But now that she’s 22, and has saved the planet, she’s gone on to other things. Would you be surprised to find out that she’s now going to make the world safe for Hamas? British journalist Brendan O’Neill takes her to task for her latest cause, and the malignancy of her attack on the tiny, embattled Jewish state that is now fighting a seven-front war for its survival. More on O’Neill’s dismemberment of Thunberg can be found here: “Greta Thunberg’s moral siege of Israel,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, May 7, 2025:

Why isn’t Greta Thunberg sailing an aid ship to Sudan? Things are dire there. Two years of war have given rise to ‘catastrophic hunger levels’. The horrors dwarf ‘those in Ukraine, Gaza and Somalia combined’, reports Deutsche Welle. And yet the benighted Sudanese have failed to win the favour of the world’s best known eco-brat. Her boat is destined not for Africa but for the only strip of land that matters to the virtuous of the West: Gaza.

Sweden’s prophetess of doom is back in the news. She’s making waves with her plan to sail to Gaza. She and others from the turbo-smug keffiyeh classes had planned to sail on a boat called – wait for it – Conscience. Rumour has it they called it that because ‘Aren’t We F**king Wonderful?’ was too long for the hull. But their moral expedition has been put on hold after a drone fired on their boat in waters off Malta, causing damage but no casualties.

Actually, Greta missed the boat, literally. She wasn’t on the good ship “Conscience,” part of the Freedom Flotilla that was going to “break the Israeli siege” of Gaza by bringing humanitarian aid. Something else kept her from going, but if physically she was not present, in spirit she was definitely there. She’s been a hater of Israel much of her short life.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/the-uns-pride-goes-before-delivering-humanitarian-relief-in-gaza/

United Nations senior officials from Secretary General Antonio Guterres on down have blamed only Israel for the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They claim that Israel, as the supposed “occupying power” in Gaza, is responsible for ensuring that the basic needs of the Palestinian civilians are met and has failed to do so. They continue to ignore Hamas’s refusal to end the war by immediately releasing all the remaining hostages and laying down its arms, as even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked Hamas to do. And they ignore Hamas’s theft of food and other critical supplies, which the terrorist organization has diverted for its own use or sold in the black market at outrageous prices.

The UN and its non-government organization (NGO) partners have shown that they cannot deliver food and other necessities directly to needy Palestinian civilians in Gaza in a safe and secure manner. Yet, the UN bureaucracy has rejected a new humanitarian plan that Israel and the United States have proposed which would do just that.

Under this plan, distribution sites would be set up within Gaza where Palestinian civilians can receive vital supplies from aid workers under the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israeli soldiers would be stationed beyond the sites’ perimeters to help prevent diversion by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and criminal organizations while also ensuring that Israel can remain secure. But the Israeli Defense Forces would not play any direct role in the distribution of aid.

GHF’s Board of Directors includes Nate Mook, the former CEO of World Central Kitchen and Special Advisor on Ukraine to the Howard G Buffett Foundation. Its Executive Director is Jake Wood, the founder and former CEO of Team Rubicon and a veteran of over 1500 disaster and humanitarian operations. The appointment of David Beasely, the former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, to GHF’s Advisory Board is still being finalized.

According to GHF’s description of its operating model, it would “initially stand up four Secure Distribution Sites, each built to continuously serve 300,000 people—1.2 million Gazans in the initial phase, with capacity to expand past 2 million. Pre-packaged rations, hygiene kits, and medical supplies move through tightly controlled corridors, monitored in real time to prevent diversion.”