Media Report 2025.05.11
The tiny Gazans bearing the brunt of Israel’s aid blockade
ABC | Matthew Doran, Hamish Harty & ABC staff | 11 May 2025
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-11/tiny-gazans-bearing-brunt-of-israeli-aid-blockade/105273014
WARNING: This story contains details that may distress some readers.
The intensive care ward of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was quiet.
The patients barely filled their beds, and struggled to muster the energy to cry out.
Doctors and nurses moved from patient to patient, huddled over their tiny, emaciated bodies.
They are the innocent victims of the war in Gaza, born into the conflict and now fighting for their survival.
Among them is Suwa Al Ashour — five and a half months old, sucking on a bottle held by her grandmother.
“I’m terrified of losing my granddaughter, something as simple as milk could save her life,” Reema Al Khalil Al Ashour told the ABC.
“She went from 2.4 kilograms to 4 kilograms, but soon after she became weak and started vomiting.
“As her condition worsened and she began losing weight again, we rushed her to the hospital.”
This is the result of Israel’s total humanitarian blockade of Gaza, now stretching into its third month.
It is a decision authorities said was designed to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining 59 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, but which humanitarians and doctors said was disproportionately affecting the war-ravaged strip’s most vulnerable.
Doctors have told Reema and her family that baby Suwa is losing up to 200 grams in weight each day.
New mothers in Gaza struggle to breastfeed, without enough food of their own.
Their babies do not have access to enough milk and formula to fill the gap, and are starving.
“Children are dying because of the ongoing siege,” Reema said.
“This little girl, like so many others, is at risk of dying simply because the essentials for survival are out of reach.”
The hospital’s staff fear the situation is getting worse.
“Lately, there is a huge increase in the admission to the hospital, especially in the intensive care unit due to malnutrition,” paediatrician and Nasser’s deputy director Dr Ahed Jaber Khalaf told the ABC.
“We admit to the hospital only the most severe cases, such as those involving inflammatory conditions, blood poisoning, or organ dysfunction, particularly kidney failure.
“We are short on medical supplies due to the siege, we suffer drug shortages, we can hardly help those children.”
Blockade enters a third month
Aid agencies said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been plain to see for months — long before the blockade came into force, making a devastating situation even worse.
Humanitarian agencies have warned the strip is now teetering on the brink of famine, with food kitchens forced to close and warehouses lying empty.
Earlier in the week, French President Emmanuel Macron criticised Israel.
“We’re not going to have double standards when it comes to Gaza,” he said.
“And so fighting a terrorist group like Hamas, yes — but not to respect any humanitarian rule and maintain the situation in Gaza, no.
“This situation is unacceptable.”
As the population suffers from a lack of access to food and aid, the Netanyahu government has given a green light to a new plan for Gaza.
Under that, there would be an expansion of the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) military campaign — something being viewed as the first step towards total and indefinite occupation of the strip.
Part of the plan is a new way to deliver aid to the population, using private contractors to distribute supplies to desperate Palestinians.
“There was enough supply inside Gaza, in storage, enough for several weeks, probably two months — we knew that, everybody knew that,” Tamir Hayman, the executive director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said.
“But it’s run out, so we are reaching the point that it’s enough, that we need to restart.”
Mr Hayman, who is a retired major general and former chief of the IDF’s intelligence directorate, has argued Israel had “no alternative” but to try to find a new way to deliver aid, bypassing Hamas.
“If you don’t have a credible mechanism and you just pour, just send logistics across the lines of the battlefield, it reaches the hands of Hamas and Hamas uses that to re-arm, to regroup, to sell it at enormous prices in order to get money that uses them as a salary,” he said.
“So you need, on the one hand, to return back the humanitarian aid and the other hand to ensure that it won’t get to the hands of Hamas.
“This is why the very complicated plan was designed, was planned. What’s the potential of success? I don’t know. It seems too complicated for Gaza.”
Humanitarian agencies have roundly criticised the idea.
“It appears to be a deliberate attempt to weaponise the aid,” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke said on Monday.
“We have warned against that for a very long time, that aid should be provided based on humanitarian need to whomever needs it.”
Conquering Gaza, or not
The broader Israeli plan, for an expanded military mission in Gaza, has fuelled grave fears of total and indefinite occupation of the strip.
“To Hamas, I say one thing — the rules are going to change very soon,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told soldiers at a training base in southern Israel on Thursday.
“We are determined to achieve two goals: one — to defeat Hamas, to eliminate Hamas.
“The second thing, of course, at the same time — to free our hostages.”
Among the loudest and most controversial voices in the Netanyahu coalition cabinet, far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich gave a controversial assessment of the approach.
“We are finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip, we are no longer afraid of the word ‘occupation’,” he said.
“We are conquering Gaza, clearing it out, and taking control of every area we enter.”
Tamir Hayman is not convinced the plan goes that far.
At least not yet.
“The current expansion of the manoeuvre … is not a full-scale reconquering of Gaza, it is not that — it’s more of the same, it’s not a transformation, a dramatic transformation,” he said.
“It may end up by us expanding, over weeks and months, and ending up reoccupying Gaza.
“But it creates some span, some time before that conduct, for the political and diplomatic effort [to continue].”
The Trump card in negotiations
Those efforts may, however, prove fruitless — as they have done to now.
Israel and Hamas have accused each other of frustrating negotiations for another ceasefire and hostage deal.
Hamas had offered to release all of the Israeli captives, in exchange for an end to the war.
Israel had demanded the militant group lay down their weapons, something Hamas viewed as a red line.
Since the Netanyahu government’s blockade was imposed, and plans for an expanded military offensive were announced, Hamas has said there appears little point in continuing negotiations.
Mr Hayman said US President Donald Trump still had considerable power to alter the course of the war, and of the negotiations.
Israel would not be putting its expanded mission into action until after Mr Trump visited the Middle East next week.
“He recently surprised Israel by unilaterally stopping the war in Yemen, even though the Houthis are continuing firing towards Israel, totally surprising the Israeli security establishment,” he said.
“It’s the number one deterrence element of the Middle East right now — his unpredictability, everybody is deterred.
“Allies are more deterred than enemies.”
Earlier this week, Mr Trump revealed another three of the 24 hostages believed to be alive had been killed in recent weeks.
The reservists say enough is enough
Israel’s military efforts relies on reserve members across the country answering the call up when the nation is at war.
But the direction the war has taken has caused thousands to reconsider their positions.
Among them is Max Kresch, a combat medic turned campaigner.
“Refusal is legitimate,” he told the ABC.
“And it’s not refusing army service, it’s not refusing military service, period.
“It’s refusing to take part in this, in specifically what’s happening here.”
Mr Kresch served on the frontline in Israel’s north for more than two months after October 7, facing the threat of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
After that, he made the decision not to return, sensing the Netanyahu government was twisting anger over the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas into an excuse to pursue its broader territorial and military ambitions in Gaza.
As a result, Mr Kresch’s relationship with his then-girlfriend ended, and he felt ostracised from the broader Israeli community.
Since then, the number of reservists refusing the call up have grown considerably.
About 300 are signatories to Mr Kresch’s organisation, which he said was about giving a platform to soldiers to speak out.
“[It’s] the support network behind them of people who are able to say, ‘good for you for speaking out’, because they’re going to get a lot of shit, they’re gonna get a lot of toxicity from the poison machine, Netanyahu’s poison machine,” he said.
Thousands of others have signed public declarations against the war.
Some polling suggests at least 60 per cent of the population are against the war continuing.
“As a soldier, like, as somebody who wore the uniform proudly in the past, now is the time that I need to speak up,” Mr Kresch said.
“This is how I fight for what’s right.”
The consequences of refusing to answer being called up for duty differ, depending on the individual and the process.
The repercussions for Mr Kresch were reputational.
He said others have faced court martials, or fines of 2000 shekels ($870).
The IDF recently fired hundreds of reservists who had signed an open letter published in the nation’s newspapers, critical of the war and saying a ceasefire should be prioritised if it meant getting the remaining hostages back.
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Two powerful Israeli men aren’t hiding their true Gaza plan. Biden shunned them, but they’re back in Trump’s circles
ABC | Brad Ryan | 11 May 2025
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-10/donald-trump-gaza-smotrich-ben-gvir/105277242
A parade of leaders from foreign governments has made its way through Washington since Donald Trump resumed the presidency.
Some — such as Canada’s Mark Carney, who told Trump his country wasn’t for sale — probably left feeling like they’d achieved something important.
Others — such as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who told Trump his country wasn’t for giving away — may have regretted coming to DC.
But not all the visits have made big news, particularly those taking place away from the Oval Office.
One early visitor who got relatively little attention was the controversial figure of far-right Israeli politics, Bezalel Smotrich, whose ultranationalist bloc is helping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retain power.
Smotrich lives in one of the West Bank settlements that are widely deemed illegal under international law. He’s previously sparked outrage by calling for a Palestinian town to be erased and saying “there’s no such thing” as Palestinian people, and he once told Arabic members of Israel’s Parliament: “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that [Israel’s first Prime Minister] Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw you out in 1948.”
Joe Biden considered Smotrich so extreme, his administration wouldn’t deal with him. Smotrich accused Biden of pushing an “antisemitic lie” when he put sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of killing Palestinians and torching their homes and farms.
But in March, the US welcomed Smotrich.
He and his American counterpart, Scott Bessent, had a “highly impactful” meeting and promised “a significant step-up” in ties.
It’s representative of how the US, under Trump, is now embracing the more extreme elements of the Israeli government — elements that even Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist who was criticised for unconditionally providing bombs to Israel, couldn’t stomach.
A guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
Alongside Smotrich, another Israeli ultranationalist with influence in Netanyahu’s government is Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, is a proponent of the siege that’s been stopping food and medicine from entering Gaza for more than two months.
He’s also called for food warehouses in Gaza to be bombed to put more pressure on Hamas.
Like Smotrich, Ben-Gvir was boycotted by Biden.
But things have changed for him too.
Last month, he was a guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Again, the visit attracted relatively little attention.
Trump wasn’t there, but Ben-Gvir said in a tweet that he met other senior Republican Party officials, and that they supported his proposal to bomb Gaza’s food stores.
(The US State Department later said such an idea would contradict its policy to provide aid in Gaza.)
When Smotrich was asked about Ben-Gvir’s proposal this week, he said: “I do not argue with Minister Ben-Gvir morally, but practically, the world will not let us starve or thirst 2 million people in Gaza.”
But food supplies are already running out.
In April, the World Food Program said its food stocks were all gone.
And this week, World Central Kitchen — the aid group run by Washington celebrity chef José Andrés — said it was shutting its depleted soup kitchens and Gaza’s last working bakery, which had run out of flour.
he group said it had been serving 133,000 meals a day, but its food and cooking fuel had now been stuck at the border for weeks and there was none left.
‘Despairing’ by design
As Trump prepares to travel to the Middle East next week — though probably not to Israel — there’s talk of allowing some food into Gaza.
“People are starving,” Donald Trump said when asked about the situation this week. “And we’re going to help them get some food.”
It’s been reported that private contractors could be used to distribute future aid to prevent theft by Hamas, which Israel blames for food shortages in Gaza.
“Hamas is the one starving them,” Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said in a televised address this week.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Thursday, local time: “We are steps away from that solution, from being able to deliver the aid and the food.”
The solution, though, appears to be wrapped up in Israel’s newly announced plan to intensify the bombardment of Gaza — possibly completely flattening it — and occupy it indefinitely.
That plan, called “Gideon’s Chariots”, is due to go ahead if no hostage-release and ceasefire deal is reached before Trump concludes his Middle East tour on May 15.
Israel’s military says it would involve “the movement of the majority of the Gaza Strip’s population — in order to protect them in a Hamas-free zone”.
But Smotrich, a member of the cabinet that approved the plan, laid out the horror of it.
He said Palestinians would be “concentrated” into a small strip of land near the Egyptian border, and: “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
The UN, aid groups and some Western allies are appalled. “We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s operations,” the UK’s Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, said.
There’s outrage in the US, too, including from officials in previous administrations. “What we are looking at is the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” said podcaster Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama. “It’s just an absolute calamity in that there’s just nothing stopping it.”
But it’s not inconsistent with the ideas Trump has floated for the region, such as the “clean out” of Gaza he suggested earlier this year, and his proposal to take it over and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
War crime charges pending
The international community roundly rejected Trump’s plan, illegal under international law, and Trump has said little about it since he first mentioned it.
Now it appears similar ideas — and the wishes of Israel’s far-right — are manifesting in formalised Israeli policy.
The question of whether Israel’s actions constitute the international crime of genocide is still before the World Court.
Israel is fighting the allegation, arguing it’s been acting in legitimate self-defence after the October 7 attacks that left more than 1,200 dead.
Netanyahu is also still wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a method of warfare.
The Israeli PM has called the allegations absurd and false, and labelled the warrant antisemitic. Biden, as president, criticised the court. Trump then sanctioned it.
But the prolonged blockage of food and aid is lending more weight to the charges.
And so are the statements of the powerful ultranationalists in Netanyahu’s government — men who were once shunned by the US but are now welcome guests under Trump.
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Why I voted Green
The Age | Letters | 11 May 2025
Why I voted Green
David Crowe says the Greens “bet on Gaza” and lost (“The Greens bet on Gaza and may have lost the House”, 7/5). Here’s another take: some of us voted Greens because of Gaza.
Every time I saw another hospital bombed or a child pulled from the rubble, I waited for Labor to show moral clarity. Instead, we got hollow statements and diplomatic hand wringing while the slaughter rolled on.
Then came the killing of Zomi Frankcom – an Australian, delivering food with World Central Kitchen by the Israeli military. And still, Labor did nothing. Not even then. I’ve voted Labor my whole life. But this time, I couldn’t. Not for a party that hides behind diplomatic platitudes while war crimes play out on their watch.
Australia may not be able to stop the killing, but we can do We can recognise Palestine. Sanction Israel. Cut defence ties. We can show the world which side we’re on. Labor had every opportunity. It chose silence.
Now back to Greens. If calling for basic human decency is what costs votes in this country, then we need to take a hard look at the politics we’re rewarding.
Natasa Jovic, Hadfield
When will killing stop?
Thank you, Georgia Tacey, (“We can’t give up on Gaza’s children”, 9/5) for bringing your account of the barbarity that is happening in Gaza for far too long to people’s attention. What will it take to stop the atrocities, brutality and sense lessness of the Israeli armed forces?
Helena Kilingerova, Vermont
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Pro-Palestinian student freed
Herald-Sun | 11 May 2025
Washington: A US judge has ordered the release of a Turkish student detained as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.
Judge William Sessions said Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, should be released “immediately” from custody while her removal proceedings continue.
Ms Ozturk’s student visa was revoked by the State Department after she co-authored an article in the university newspaper criticising the college’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Video of Ms Ozturk’s March 25 arrest by masked agents on a sidewalk sparked outrage online, and added to concerns about freedom of speech and respect for due process under Mr Trump.
Mr Sessions echoed the concerns during the live-streamed custody hearing, at which Ms Ozturk appeared remotely from a detention centre in Louisiana.
“Continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens,” the judge said. “The court orders the government to release Ms Ozturk from custody immediately.”
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Protest calls for end to Gaza war
Herald-Sun | 11 May 2025
Jerusalem: Thousands have gathered for a rare peace event in Jerusalem, with the Gaza war in its 20th month, the UN warning of humanitarian catastrophe and Palestinian militants still holding dozens of Israelis captive.
Israel recently announced plans for an expanded military campaign in Gaza entailing the “conquest” of the Palestinian territory. Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said this meant that the Gaza Strip would be “entirely destroyed”.
“We cannot let the extremists on both sides that thrive over revenge, fear and hate also control our future,” said Maoz Inon, 50, an Israeli entrepreneur and peace activist who was one of the main organisers of the “People’s Peace Summit”. “Even though they are controlling our present and reality, we must choose an alternative and create and shape an alternative future.”
The event was organised by a grouping of some 60 grassroots peace-building organisations working to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At the event, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and ex-Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa presented their proposal for peace, originally unveiled last year. Kidwa, the nephew of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, joined via livestream from the occupied West Bank.
“Only a two-state solution is a prescription for a dramatic change in the direction of our country and of the entire region,” said Olmert, a centrist predecessor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We have to end the war and pull out of Gaza, Gaza is Palestinian … and it has to be part of a Palestinian state.”
He advocated for the establishment of an “internal security force” linked to the Palestinian Authority that would have “objective powers … to try and rebuild Gaza without any participation” of the militant group Hamas.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1218 people on the Israeli side.
Israel’s campaign has killed at least 52,787 people in Gaza.
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UK Lawyers for Israel condemned over claim war may reduce obesity in Gaza
Palestinian rights group says remarks criticising a Lancet analysis on impact of the conflict are ‘sickening’
The Guardian | Haroon Siddique | 10 May 2025
A UK-based advocacy group for Israel has been criticised for suggesting a reduction in obesity resulting from the war in Gaza may increase life expectancy there.
The comments by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which came amid warnings of impending famine in Gaza, were condemned as “sickening” by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
UKLFI’s patrons include the former supreme court judge John Dyson, the former Conservative leader Michael Howard and David Pannick KC, who has represented Boris Johnson and the late queen.
The remarks were made by Jonathan Turner, the chief executive of UKLFI, in response to a motion due to be debated at the Co-operative Group’s annual general meeting calling for the retailer to stop selling Israeli produce.
Urging the Co-operative council to withdraw the motion, Turner criticised the fact that it refers to an estimated death toll of 186,000. In a letter to the Co-operative Group secretary, Turner wrote that it was “totally false and misleading” to cite the figure from a letter published by the Lancet last year, which was a projected figure including indirect casualties.
He adds: “The [Lancet] letter also ignored factors that may increase average life expectancy in Gaza, bearing in mind that one of the biggest health issues in Gaza prior to the current war was obesity.”
The death toll since Israel began its assault on Gaza after the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on southern Israel stands at more than 52,000, according to the territory’s health authority. A separate study in the Lancet found life expectancy in Gaza decreased by 34.9 years during the first 12 months of the war, about half (-46.3%) the prewar level of 75.5 years.
Ben Jamal, the director of the PSC, said: “As children in the Gaza Strip face the growing risk of starvation, illness and death, the suggestion by the head of UK Lawyers for Israel that they might benefit from weight loss is utterly sickening. These repulsive comments illustrate exactly what it means to be ‘for Israel’ and how low its apologists are prepared to sink in their attempts to justify genocide in Gaza.”
Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), wrote on X that the comments represented “atrocious views”. He said: “How very kind of Israel to put 2.3 million Palestinians on an enforced diet to improve their obesity levels.”
A complaint by UKLFI led Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London to remove a display of artwork by Palestinian children in 2023 after the group claimed that it made Jewish patients feel “vulnerable, harassed and victimised”.
It has also threatened the UK government with legal action over its decision to suspend about 30 licences for the export of arms to Israel.
Turner said: “We first pointed out that the letter published in the Lancet on 20 July 2024, to which the motion evidently referred, did not claim that 186,000 Gazans had died in the current war. It did, however, claim – without foundation – that 186,000 Gaza would be likely to die eventually as a result of the war.
“So we pointed out, secondly, that this claim was based on entirely unfounded speculation, which also ignored factors that might result in lengthening the lives of Gazans, given the public health situation existing in Gaza prior to the war, including the extent of obesity. These factors include the possible reduction in the availability of confectionery and cigarettes.
“In the context in which they were made, our statements were accurate and objective.”
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