Israeli officials leave no doubt about why Israel is taking a slow-motion strangulation approach to Gaza — to maintain key Western support and shield themselves from war-crimes tribunals.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on right, with Trump administration officials at the White House on April 7. (White House / Flickr)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
One of the talking points Israel apologists like to regurgitate is that Israel can’t possibly be acting with genocidal intent in Gaza, because if they had wanted to exterminate the Palestinians they could have easily done so in a matter of days.
As luck would have it, leaders from the Israeli government have just helpfully come out and debunked that talking point with a few shockingly frank public admissions.
Explaining the decision to allow a minuscule amount of aid into Gaza after months of deliberate starvation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel is now allowing “minimal humanitarian aid” on the insistence of Western officials so that they will support Israel’s murderous operation to conquer the enclave.
Jeremy Scahill reports the following for Drop Site News:
“’ We’re going to take control of all the Gaza Strip,’ Netanyahu vowed Monday in a video released by his office announcing that Israel would begin delivering ‘minimal humanitarian aid: food and medicine only.’ Netanyahu claimed that international pressure, including from pro-Israel Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of humanitarian intervention.
‘Our best friends in the world — senators I know as strong supporters of Israel — have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,’ he said. ‘They come to me and say, ‘We’ll give you all the help you need to win the war… but we can’t be receiving pictures of famine,’ Netanyahu added. To continue the war of annihilation, he asserted, ‘We need to do it in a way that they won’t stop us.’ ”
As usual, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further in saying the quiet part out loud and giving the whole game away, explaining that Israel is providing just enough aid to maintain western support and avoid war crimes charges while advancing its ethnic cleansing operation in the Gaza Strip, boasting about the government’s skillfulness in “navigating” that line.
Four rice crackers (31 grams) per person is the equivalent of how much aid Israel allowed into Gaza today after 78 days of full starvation
This isn’t aid, it’s a PR stunt to buy time for genocide; to “annihilate everything that is left of Gaza” as Smotrich put it bluntly! pic.twitter.com/zVkVMCFpu6
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) May 19, 2025
Some choice Smotrich quotes, courtesy of the aforementioned Drop Site News write-up:
- Smotrich said the aid scheme would allow “our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.”
- “The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount. A handful of bakeries that will hand out pita bread to people in public kitchens. People in Gaza will get a pita and a food plate, and that’s it. Exactly what we are seeing in the videos: people standing in line and waiting to have someone serve them, with some soup plate.”
- “Truth be told, until the last of the hostages returns, we should also not let water into the Gaza Strip. But the reality is that if we do that, the world will force us to halt the war immediately, and to lose. It would be winning the battle, and losing the war. I’m committed to winning the war.”
- “We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us. There are pressures. There are those who attack [us]; they are trying to [make us] stop; they are not succeeding. You know why they aren’t succeeding? Because we are navigating [the campaign] responsibly and wisely, and that’s how we’ll continue to do [it].”
- Smotrich said that the Israeli forces are initiating a campaign to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza “and from there, God willing, to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan. This is a change of the course of history — nothing less.”
Smotrich also praised the IDF for deliberately targeting civilians and civil infrastructure, saying “The IDF is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of Hamas… eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and figures in the economic and governmental apparatus.”
?Smotrich: Gaza Aid Is Just Enough to Avoid ‘War Crimes’ Charges While We ‘Annihilate’ the Strip
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich gave a speech Monday defending Israel’s strategy of mass devastation in Gaza, saying humanitarian aid is only being allowed in “so the… pic.twitter.com/bhsUCf7Kq4
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 19, 2025
So there you have it, spelled out in plain language. There is no need to wonder why Israel has been dragging out its genocidal atrocities over a year and a half instead of just brazenly annihilating all the Palestinians in one swift scorched-earth campaign. Israel has told us why. They have opted for their slow-motion strangulation approach because that’s what’s necessary to maintain essential Western support and avoid war crimes tribunals.
This comes as the governments of France, Canada and the U.K. publicly issue a warning to Israel saying that they may begin imposing targeted sanctions on Tel Aviv if it does not begin allowing in more aid to Gaza and curbing the abuses in the West Bank.
So Israel is currently acutely aware that it is walking a delicate line between (A) making Gaza an unlivable hellhole for Palestinians and (B) maintaining Western support. So it is making the smallest concessions it thinks it can get away with in order to keep both A and B.
The Western pushback against Israel’s criminality has thus far been feeble, pathetic, and entirely inadequate. Australia’s denunciation of Israel’s starvation warfare is even more toothless than that of France, the U.K. and Canada. But we are seeing some movement, which shows that these Western governments are not entirely unresponsive to internal pressures from their citizenry.
I just saw a tweet from the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi which reads as follows:
“Something is happening. The number of government officials from around the world who I’ve heard in private conversations call Israel’s slaughter in Gaza a genocide — without qualifications and caveats — has increased dramatically in just the past weeks. The dam is breaking.”
Keep pushing.
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Another example of, “The dam is breaking,” i.e., Speaking to reporters, aboard Air Force One, DJTrump, on his way to Pope Francis’s funeral (5.27.25), was asked whether concerns about humanitarian aid for Gaza came up in his phone call with Netanyahu earlier this week.
(When in Rome) *“Gaza came up and I said, ‘Those people are suffering. We’ve got to be good to Gaza. We’re going to take care of them,” he added. “There’s a very big need for… food and medicine. We’re taking care of it,” Trump said. Pressed on whether he’s pushing Israel to allow aid into Gaza, Trump responded. “We are,” adding that he wants “to get food and medicine into. Gaza.” Asked how Netanyahu responded to the request, Trump said, “Well. He felt well about it.” Once, again, the “Gemini,” DJTrump, imo, playing to the moment, “When in Rome.” DJTrump “got” played! “BIGLY.”
Thirty (30) Days later, #47’s “Trumpet” playing, $elfishness, moral failure, “got” “Those people suffering,” killed. Every day! In broad f/daylight. Live Streamed. Right under the nose of AF One!!!
….“Mr. Trump, “Those people” are Palestinians. Living & dying, under Israeli occupation, from the West Bank of Jordan to the Gaza Strip—“two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967.” In the 21st Century (January 1, 2001-December 31, 2100), “Genocide, LIVES!” [Israel is advancing its ethnic cleansing operation in the Gaza Strip].
“Mr. Trump,“from your lips,” into the streets, onto college campuses, into shops, via Social Media, from sea to shining sea, from the river to the sea, in the deserts, here; &, the deserts, far away, “blind men, women, & children heard, what deaf men, women, & children, saw,” DJ “The Big $hot” Trump say, w/conviction, “We’ve got to be good to Gaza. We’re going to take care of them.” Thirty (30) days, later, “Mr. Trump, wtf?” “Conform to the Norm?” Is that the “ask? “ The USG & Israel “got” the Palestinians on a path to perdition. “NOT Good. Buhlieve, me. NOT Good!!!
NEVER, forget,*“The root of all the violence, including the violence of October 7th, is Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its subjugation of the Palestinian people. History did not begin on 7 October 2023.” Arundhati Roy
NEEDED: “A Journey to Success.” IMO, DJ “the Real Estate Developer” Trump needs to fuhgeddabout his “PLAN” “to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza “and from there, God willing, to third countries.” The Real Estate Developer, #47, needs to scout The Divided $tates of Corporate America, for land to build homes on, for 2 Million Palestinians.
…… “If you build it, [they] will come.” “They’ll come to Iowa,” NY, NM, AZ, CO, TX, FL, AL, UT, TN, OR, Oklahoma!!! “for reasons they can’t even fathom.” AND, No Doubt, the “$h*t will hit the fan!” NIMBY will ring BIGLY!”
When in doubt, do as others do, “Keep pushing.” Caitlin Johnstone.
* hxxps://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-says-he-told-netanyahu-weve-got-to-be-good-to-gaza-and-get-more-aid-in/
Trump could end this tomorrow by ending military ordnance supplies to Israel and sanctioning any nation that continues that supply. But that would just mean that Netanyahu has only one shot left in the locker for Gazans- absolute starvation! And he has that underway now by employing the Swiss registered “humanitarian aid” team which means that he will claim plausible deniability for any mis-deeds that these mercenary soldiers of fortune create.
That is like we did with the Native Americans too and with racial rights for 100 years after the end of reconstruction. The western civilization has a long history or mere appearances. After all our religion was recreated by Romans and weaponized as antisemitism too leading onward allowing others to be punished for our history and pretending to call it even..
It is more than a year past time that the whole world condemn Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and seizure of their land, stop any and all support, stop all interaction of every kind, put huge sanctions in place and turn these monsters into the pariahs they deserve to be.
It is important that the ‘whole geopolitical world’ has known these truths from the beginning (pick your beginning: the first decades of the 20th century, the late 1940s, 1967 or the last couple of years). What we must ask ourselves, quickly and thoroughly, is: “What are the underlying motives for the ‘see no evil’ response of those with the power to stop this horror”? There is simply no way that the public arguments of ‘self protection’, ignorance of conditions, situational complexity, etc. are believed by those people making them.
I don’t think Netanyahu gives a shit about anyone’s opinion. He just enjoys the slow starvation that he can watch. After all, He is the most powerful man that there has ever been or ever will be on this earth. Jabba the tRump is a close second. But what do I know?
I’ve been saying it since about Dec of ’23: Tel Aviv must be hit, and hit fairly hard. Absolutely nothing else has worked to stop these genocidal religio-fanatic lunatics. The wonderful Houthis have been doing a yeoman’s job, but unfortunately it’s not enough (I just ordered a Yemen soccer jersey that looks beautiful, only $29). Some other more powerful entity must take action.
Sure, it might not work to stem the Jewish supremacist violent tide, but the key is that absolutely nothing else has been effective in stopping these arrogant and paranoid sadists. The Jewish supremacists are set on 1.) pushing all of Gaza’s Palestinians into Egypt, Libya or what have you, and 2.) bombing Iran’s nuclear power sites in order to provoke a response from Tehran which would then lure Washington into a major attack on Iran. These psycho Zionists could touch off World War 3.
The only possible (possible) thing that could stop all of this madness in its tracks is Tel Aviv being hit quite hard.
..which could also lead to Israel firing its nuclear weapons if it thought its survival was at stake.
Yes, I understand that take. And I know the Zionists are crazy, but are they THAT crazy?
The bottom line is that absolutely nothing has worked to stop these arrogant sadists.
Yes thanks for mentioning the so-called Samson Option.
IMO the larger issue is: The US official nuclear doctrine is First Strike, is even worse. Nuclear weapons are no longer a “deterrent”.
The belief that the nuclear forces of “the enemy” could be wiped out with a nuclear first strike, and thus “win” the nuclear war appears to be mainstream thinking. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and several arms control organizations have warned against this sort of policy. (Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight)
The US ripped up the ABM treaty and the INF treaty, while diplomatic relations between the US, Russia and China have worsened.
Many focus on Israel and ignore the elephant in the room…whatever makes them feel better I guess. Israel is an extension of UK, then later, US, imperial policy, and has been since the Mandate (or even since the Crusades). Israel serves as a proxy and holds the nuclear gun at the heads of the nations of the region. Very convenient for US/UK foreign policy.
I agree. Military action is required. I don’t see any nation with the necessary capacity being willing to break ranks in that way, but nothing short of a devastating attack will bring this horror to an end. A powerful blow will have the desired effect. I know that people believe Israel is so far gone in fanaticism and apocalyptic fervor that its leadership would react with a nuclear Armageddon. But these are cold, calculating criminals who want to live to enjoy the proceeds of their depredations. If worse comes to worst, they’ll move out. There’s always Miami.
Excellent comment Tom. I agree wholeheartedly.
………or Los Angeles. Long live LAX
If Washington DC just cut off all aid, that might work too
This level of brazen cynicism on the part of Zionists in Israel and the West is itself a war crime.
We now have the confessions.
Establish war crimes tribunals now.
Global South countries need to take the lead on this.
The war criminals infesting Israel need to be tried in absentia.
Since they have confessed to the intent to commit genocide and have already committed genocide, they all deserve the death penalty.
Their Western enablers are accessories to the crime of genocide.
We civilians and citizens seem to be powerless to stop this horror.
Who will do so?
Where is the UN? Where are the world’s powerful leaders?
Where is China?
Russia? Is Russia also infested with Zionists?