🟠 News Club - The politics of hunger

Reports of civilians starving in Gaza have cracked open the most serious diplomatic rift between the US and Israel since the war began. What started as competing humanitarian reports is now reshaping public opinion on the conflict on both sides of the Atlantic.

The politics of hunger…

In the last 2 weeks, the aid crisis in Gaza has moved from the humanitarian agencies to the highest levels of global politics, creating the most significant rift between allies since the war began. 

When US President Donald Trump publicly contradicted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that there's no issue in Gaza when he said the images from the Palestinian territory indicated "real starvation stuff", it signalled that growing public concern had landed.

The underlying dispute isn't just about competing narratives. For months, aid agencies have reported malnutrition affecting hundreds of thousands of Gazans, while Israeli officials point to thousands of aid trucks entering the territory. The gap between these accounts reveals how modern conflicts increasingly turn on competing versions of a measurable reality… 

So to this week's Club Picks to come to terms with the grim controversy:

1. From AP comes this account of what it's like trying to source food in Gaza right now. Gangs and merchants are selling aid at sky-high prices - flour costs US$60/kg, lentils US$35. Much of this food bears UN logos and has been diverted from free distribution. The piece also covers how trying to receive aid has turned into a dangerous scramble.

2. The Guardian's investigation into how Israel has calculated starvation reveals the bureaucratic machinery behind hunger. Court documents show Israel has previously calculated that Palestinians need 2,279 calories/person daily. Today, aid groups say Gazans are getting far less.

3. This latest chapter in the war is shifting Western opinion... This NBC analysis shows how graphic footage of malnourished children in Gaza could reshape US policy. Same goes for the UK, where support for ‘the Palestinian side’ has surged amongst Brits in the last 2 months. 

4. What Israelis think is more complicated... The NYT’s The Daily podcast last week spoke to Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps, an independent Israeli journalist, who talks about why her recent comments on Israeli TV that the situation for Gazans is unbearable were so controversial. 

There’s so much about this war that’s confronting. What’s made it trickier is that numbers that should be straightforward - calories, truckloads, death tolls - become weapons themselves, deployed by all sides to justify their positions.

Let’s see what this week brings.