Hamas Digs In After Manufactured Famine Puts Worldwide Pressure On Israel

Pictures of starving children are horrifying and motivate decent people to do anything to relieve their suffering. That sentiment is driving the current diplomatic offensive against Israel, in which much of Europe is demanding that the Jewish state end the war against Hamas on virtually any terms.

There is a growing consensus within the mainstream media and the foreign-policy establishment that what is going on in the Gaza Strip has become so grievous that the fighting must end immediately. With even some supporters of Israel saying that after nearly two years of inaccurate if not downright false claims of famine and "genocide" in the coastal enclave, there are now the first credible claims that hunger is spreading, the political and diplomatic situation is beginning to turn even more sharply in favor of Hamas.

Rather than this bringing the war that began with the Hamas-led Palestinian-Arab attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, closer to a conclusion, it has, at least in the short term, made it even less likely. The breakdown of the talks for a ceasefire-hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas that has been pushed by the Trump administration is a direct result of the propaganda victory won by the terrorists. 

Their strategy to create a famine in spite of the fact that food and other supplies were available to feed the hungry didn't just create suffering for their own people. It gave them leverage to continue the war they started on the morning of Oct. 7 to not only worsen the plight of Palestinians but also to bludgeon an exhausted and beleaguered Israel into submission.

We don't know whether that will mean a ceasefire deal that will be skewed even more in Hamas's favor and essentially allow them to remain in charge of much or all of the Strip. Nor can we be sure if it is a sign that Hamas intends to continue fighting in Gaza indefinitely, confident that the increased casualties and the pain of Palestinians caught in the crossfire of the conflict will only increase sympathy for their jihad to ultimately destroy the one Jewish state on the planet.

But we do know that those who have--either out of malice for Israel or ignorance of facts on the ground--aided Hamas's efforts to manufacture a famine or have spread misinformation about the crisis to blame the Jewish state for what the terrorists have done are as much to blame for this dismal situation as the terrorists. Those in the United Nations and international community, and those tasked with aiding humanitarian disasters and the so-called human-rights organizations, coupled with media outlets playing along with Hamas's strategy, aren't just wrong. They bear a great deal of the responsibility for any starvation in Gaza and the failure of the negotiations.

Just days earlier, few doubted that an agreement to end the fighting was within reach and would likely be sealed within the week. But those expectations were derailed by the same factor--agony in Gaza--that had seemed to fuel the urgency to conclude a ceasefire.

What happened was that the food crisis that Hamas manufactured through tactics designed to hijack and/or obstruct the delivery of supplies to those Gazans who needed them succeeded not merely in increasing sympathy for the Palestinian cause and criticism of Israel.

It also gave the terrorists a reason to dig in their heels.

On the brink of what most observers assumed was a successful negotiation, Hamas was encouraged by the way their propaganda victory had caused 25 countries and the European Union to demand an immediate end to the war. France, which has been increasingly hostile to Israel since Oct. 7, then declared its recognition of a Palestinian state, rewarding the terrorists, albeit with a meaningless gesture toward a sovereign nation that doesn't actually exist.

And with headlines screaming outrage about starvation in Gaza, Hamas has decided there's no reason to concede anything in the negotiations.

They are clearly determined not merely to hold onto at least some of the hostages who were kidnapped on Oct. 7, but to also insist on paying no price for starting a war by committing unspeakable atrocities against Israel and then waging it by sacrificing Palestinian civilians. If Hamas emerges from any agreement still in control of the Gaza Strip, they not only have reason to declare victory. They will be in a position to rebuild the military forces that Israel shattered in the fighting, as well as the terrorist tunnels that made the fighting so difficult. The end result will be that the independent Palestinian state in all but name that was created by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 will be reconstituted with Hamas in a position to keep its promise to repeat the horrors of Oct. 7 until Israel no longer exists.

It's important to understand what created the food shortage in Gaza.

Contrary to the misleading stories in the corporate media, it's not because Israel is preventing food from getting into Gaza or because of a mythical effort to perpetuate a genocide there.

The main cause of the problem is, as Amit Segal reported this week in The Free Press, the price of food rather than its unavailability. As Hebrew University economics professor Yannay Spitzer has documented, the price of flour--"the most essential consumer good"--has undergone an 80-fold increase since the start of the war.

The cause of that out-of-control inflation of prices was not, however, an Israeli effort to prevent flour from entering Gaza. As has been proven by the comments of Gazans and the numerous photos and videos of the availability of foodstuffs in the Strip, the problem has been that Hamas has been stealing the aid that comes into Gaza and then either hoarding it for their own cadres and/or selling it at exorbitant prices to Palestinian civilians.

U.N. agencies that are driven by their support for the Palestinian war on Israel have been claiming that Israel doesn't let convoys of aid trucks into Gaza. But the plain fact is that, as has repeatedly been the case since conflict began, more than 900 trucks packed with supplies intended for needy Palestinians have already entered Gaza and are in the hands of the United Nations. Yet their contents are not being distributed, something verified by the press. Israel has offered the world body five different routes for the distribution of the food, though none have been accepted or acted upon.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the organization created by the United States and Israel to make up for the failure of U.N. aid agencies to do their job in Gaza, is also seeking to provide more food and to hand it over to the world body's agents. But again, the U.N. groups are doing nothing while working overtime to spread the blood libel that it is Israel that is causing Gazans to starve.

Hamas is also responsible for the problems that the GHF has encountered and the claims that Israel is slaughtering Palestinians who come to it for aid.

Again, as they have sought to do since the conflict began, Hamas terrorists have done their best to prevent anyone but themselves from being in charge of the distribution of products needed for the population's survival. Since the GHF began its efforts to get around the logjam created both by Hamas hijackings of convoys and the stalling of U.N. agencies, the terrorists have deliberately created situations in which the crowds attempting to access the aid have either been attacked or seeded with the Islamist group's operatives. 

That has resulted in repeated instances in which Israeli troops guarding the distribution efforts have come under threat and responded by firing into the air. Inevitably, that means some casualties to the mobs rushing toward them, which have been augmented by Hamas fire. The numbers of those hurt or killed in these unfortunate incidents are then inflated out of all proportion to reality, as has been true of all casualty numbers produced by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

This has further damaged Israel's image abroad, adding more fuel to the fire of a post-Oct. 7 global surge in antisemitism rooted in fraudulent smears about "genocide." More than that, it has now led to something that up until now was largely untrue: a genuine shortage of food in Gaza.

The terrorist group's refusal to lay down their arms and give up the hostages has always been the only hindrance to the cessation of hostilities. Yet by pursuing a policy of obstructing the distribution of aid and stealing as much of it as they can, the Islamists have driven food prices inside Gaza up to ruinous levels.

And there is nothing that Israel can do about it except to redouble its efforts to destroy what's left of Hamas's forces, and thereby prevent them from continuing to harass and intimidate Palestinians, who don't wish to be dependent on the gunmen for food. As long as Hamas can continue to sabotage humanitarian efforts and U.N. groups that are implacably hostile to Israel and essentially in the pockets of Hamas--as they were on Oct. 7 and before that--are complicit in this Hamas plan, no humanitarian efforts or Israeli generosity to their foes can entirely prevent hunger from spreading there.

The question then is whether the international pressure the crisis has generated--combined with the war weariness of Israelis and eagerness of the Trump administration for a deal that it can claim as a diplomatic victory for the president--will be enough to force Israel and the United States to return to the talks, and give Hamas everything it wants.

That might turn down the volume on the propaganda that is branding Israel a pariah state, as well as leading to increased incidents of antisemitism across the globe. It might also lead to the release of some, but almost certainly not all, of the Israeli hostages and some of the corpses of their victims that the terrorists are still holding for ransom.

It would also give the Israel Defense Forces a much-needed respite for an unspecified period. But that period of calm would only last as long as it takes for a rejuvenated and triumphant Hamas to be able--with the international aid that will pour into the Strip--to rebuild its armed forces enough to the point where it will return to a position where it will again be a deadly threat to the Jewish state. No one should doubt that this will happen, regardless of any pledges to the contrary or safeguards built into a ceasefire agreement. Or at least it will unless and until the United States is committed to supporting a resumption of Israel's war against Hamas as soon as that becomes obvious.

But no one should think a U.S.-Israel surrender to Hamas will end the suffering of Gazans, who will remain in thrall to a terrorist group that will not hesitate to continue sacrificing them in the name of a "resistance" that won't cease until the Jewish state is destroyed.

What is happening there ought to be listed along with human-made famines plotted by Communist tyrants Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, which killed many millions of people in the history of self-inflicted catastrophes undertaken for political reasons. Yet this crime committed by Hamas is being blamed on Israel and the Jews because of lies spread by the media and buttressed by antisemitic tropes.

After 22 exhausting months of fighting Hamas, the impulse to give in to this propaganda war is understandable, if regrettable. The dilemma of those in Washington and Jerusalem, who must now consider whether or not they have the moral strength to resist the opprobrium that will be falsely slung at them while Hamas continues to starve its own people, is unenviable. But they should remember that the price of letting the terrorists get away not only with starting a war and committing unspeakable atrocities, but also for manufacturing a famine, will continue to be paid in the blood of countless Jews and Arabs if the terrorists achieve their objective.

Originally published at JNS.org