The Real Antisemitism: Starving Gaza in the Name of a Jewish State – Paul Jay

Paul Jay
Hi, I’m Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast.

The Real Antisemitism: Starving Gaza in the Name of a Jewish State

The so-called humanitarian pause announced by Israel on Sunday, which will open up a few corridors for some relief supplies to get to Gaza, is clearly a propaganda measure taken under the pressure of global condemnation. It changes nothing about the character of the Israeli state and the crimes it has been committing.

Denouncing Israel’s use of mass starvation as a weapon is not anti-Semitism, quite the contrary. To suggest that such tactics are necessary for the survival of a Jewish state is itself a deeply anti-Semitic proposition, one that aligns Jewish identity with atrocity and equates Jewish security with the suffering of others. That narrative is not crafted by critics of Israel. It’s crafted by those defending the indefensible in its name.

Reports emerging from Gaza are grim. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, scores of civilians, the majority of them children, have now died from hunger since October 7, 2023. Aid workers describe infants dying of dehydration, toddlers wasting away, and parents sending their children to beg for bread. 

These deaths aren’t collateral damage. They’re the predictable outcome of a decades-long project, what historian Ilan Pappé called incremental genocide, not through one-time slaughter, but through the systemic denial of water, food, medicine, and hope, through policies that make life unlivable, forcing people to flee or die.

Gaza’s 2.2 million people, around 80% refugees from the 1948 Nakba, live on a strip of land just 25 miles long and 5 miles wide. After Israel’s 2005 quote, “disengagement,” it retained control over Gaza’s airspace, maritime borders, population registry, and nearly all imports and exports. This was not peace, it was remote control occupation.

In 2006, Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, described the policy bluntly: 

“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger.”

Israel meticulously calculated the minimum caloric intake required to avoid famine, and restricted food imports accordingly. This was not a security policy. It was demographic engineering through deprivation.

Since October 7, when Hamas viciously attacked Southern Israel, killing over 1100 people and taking hostages, Israel has responded with overwhelming force, disproportionate overwhelming force. More than 58,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed. But beyond the bombs lies a deeper strategy: engineered famine. 

Gaza’s food system has been systematically dismantled. Bakeries bombed, farmland razed, fishing boats sunk, aid convoys blocked, medical and sanitation infrastructure targeted. The Israeli military maintains a dual-use list prohibiting even water filters, solar panels, and fuel on the claim that these could be used by militants.

This serves three purposes:
1) Punishment: collective retaliation against the entire civilian population.
2) Displacement: rendering Gaza uninhabitable to encourage mass exodus. 
3) Land clearing: preparing territory for future strategic redesign.

Israeli ministers have said the quiet part out loud. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for volunteer emigration of Palestinians. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has proposed full resettlement. This is not a policy drift. It’s policy revealed.

Since October 23rd, the United States has provided over $17.9 billion in emergency military aid to Israel, on top of the regular $3.8 billion in annual funding. These weapons are not theoretical. They fuel the siege. 

The U.S. could stop this tomorrow. One phone call from the president, threatening to halt armed shipments, would force a change. Instead, the Biden administration authorized a continued flow of bombs, tanks, and artillery, while tokenizing humanitarian aid through airdrops and rhetorical concern. The Trump administration has mostly even dropped the rhetorical concern and given a green light to this increasing genocide and mass starvation.

This is not passive complicity. Under international law, knowingly enabling starvation as a weapon of war constitutes participation in war crimes. This is not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about a decades-long consensus. The United States has vetoed dozens of UN Security Council resolutions, critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, shielding it from accountability time and again. 

But U.S. officials have long known the truth. Leaked diplomatic cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, from 2008 to 2010, published by WikiLeaks, quote Israeli officials describing the goal of the Gaza blockade as to keep the economy quote, “on the brink of collapse,” ensuring it functions quote, “at the lowest level possible, consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.” 

These cables circulated during the Obama administration. In public, U.S. officials, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called the blockade unsustainable. In private, they recognized it for what it was, collective punishment, a violation of international law. 

No action followed. The policy was maintained, and the architecture of silence remained intact.

Mainstream U.S. media has been instrumental in shaping public perception. Editorial framing casts the war in abstract terms—“clashes,” “renewed violence,” “aid disruptions”—obscuring the policy of deliberate starvation. Civilian deaths are described as unfortunate, not strategic. Context is erased. Terms like “siege” or “blockade” rarely appear on front pages. Mass starvation is treated as tragic but inevitable—never as designed.

Well, in recent weeks, there has been such global condemnation, American media is starting to have to designate this as deliberate acts. It’s deep in the American culture that this isn’t deliberate, and the Israeli state is only doing this to defend itself. This narrative control is as vital to the war effort as bombs and tanks. It sanitizes the horror. It keeps weapons flowing.

U.S. officials speak solemnly of a rules-based international order while aiding a war that starves children. They call for restraint, then reload the gun. They praise humanitarian aid while blocking the tools necessary for survival. The result is grotesque. A system where American money arms the siege, American media mutes its impact, and American diplomacy shields it from consequence. This is not foreign policy. It’s co-authorship.

The destruction of Gaza serves broader strategic objectives. A de-populated, broken Gaza erases Palestinian claims to sovereignty. It sends a message to the region: resistance will be met with annihilation. It solidifies Israel’s role as a forward, deployed asset of American power in the Middle East, what Pentagon planners have long referred to as the U.S.’s quote, “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” and this has been the plan since the very beginning in 1948, when Israel was established at the height of planning, the Cold War.

Egypt seals the Rafah border. Saudi Arabia inches towards normalization. The Palestinian people are encircled politically and physically. History knows the script. The Warsaw Ghetto, Leningrad, Bengal, Yemen. In each case, famine was not accidental. It was imposed. Starvation became a tool of war. Gaza is the next name on that list.

The International Court of Justice has already ruled that a plausible case of genocide is underway in Gaza. It ordered Israel to ensure humanitarian access and prevent famine. That order has been ignored. Unless the siege ends, starvation will continue, one child at a time. The Gaza Ministry of Health now reports 133 confirmed starvation deaths, including 87 children. And these are only the deaths that have been recorded.

People must demand that the United States stop all weapons transfers to Israel. People must demand that the blockade on Gaza be lifted completely. There needs to be an independent war crimes investigation of the Israeli government, the complicity of the U.S. government in what’s been taking place recently and before. And Israeli Jews and Jews everywhere need to understand that Palestinian liberation and Israeli security are not opposites. Apartheid is what creates insecurity. The children dying today cannot wait for history’s judgment. They need ours now. Not just judgment, but action.