Are Gazans starving so that Netanyahu can survive?

0:00Boom!

0:01The News Agents Hosts:No! Come on! Kids, what should we order for dinner? Pizza! Thai! Tacos! Hey boys, let's not get loco. What kind of restaurant sells pizza, Thai, and tacos? I'll never please all my guys. Why can't we have food without the fight? With Wonder, you can combine 20 restaurants and one delivery, so your family never has to compromise. Download the app today. Wonder. Food without the fight. This is a Global Player original podcast. What's your go-to at McDonald's? No, I'll tell you Burger King. We did the, you know, the double, you know. Whopper? Yeah, the double. I haven't ripped Burger King in a lot.

0:41It's not. Burger King kind of sucks. Yeah. No, you're wrong. The BK Lounge can hit. I disagree completely. You like Burger King over McDonald's? Absolutely. That's your worst take, I think. Absolutely. That's a crazy take. No, that was fine.

0:51The News Agents Hosts:That's Bibi Netanyahu taking time out from his busy schedule to chat to podcasters about his favourite fast food. It's pretty obscene given the number of Gazans now starving to death just the other side of that Israeli border. The calls for change, the condemnation, the fury from the West has intensified with the statement from the Foreign Secretary David Lammy and others. But is any of it, any of it, making a blind bit of difference to the Israeli government? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:32The News Agents Hosts:The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And it's hard not to find it utterly jarring to hear the talk of your preference between a Big Mac and a Whopper, when not that many miles from the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem is the Gaza Strip, where a thousand people, according to the aid agencies, have now died while queuing to get food. Nothing more than the daily battle for survival. There are also reports of malnutrition and starvation and death through starvation. You will know that nine weeks ago, Keir Starmer talked about the situation in Gaza being intolerable. and yet somehow he and other world leaders, to be fair, have found that they could tolerate it.

2:28The News Agents Hosts:Nothing has changed. There has been no extra pressure on the Netanyahu government that seems to have made a blind bit of difference. Today we heard from David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, who has garnered some 26 other signatories of countries that believe this is unsustainable and they want to shout about it and they want to make some noise. Here's what he told our colleagues earlier. We've announced a raft of sanctions over the last few months. There will be more, clearly, and we keep all of those options under consideration if we do not see a change in behaviour and the suffering that we're seeing come to an end.

3:11The News Agents Hosts:Israel, as you will know, has restricted humanitarian aid getting into Gaza to just four distribution hubs. And that is why there is such intense pressure every single night by starving Gazans, by Palestinian people who are coming to these hubs to queue for food. And that is where people are being shot, often at point blank range by Israeli army soldiers who justify this by saying they're coming under attack or they're armed or they feel threatened. A thousand people is the figure that the UN is putting on this, at people who have been killed whilst hunting for the food with which to feed their families.

3:52The News Agents Hosts:And when you hear Lammy, I think you can start to hear a sort of desperation in his voice. When you heard Starmer nine weeks ago, I believe that he genuinely found the situation intolerable. But as we're going to explore today, there's a reason why nothing that international governments are saying or doing is really having any bearing on what's going on internally in the Netanyahu government. He is Teflon to all intents and purposes, because the only thing, frankly, that he cares about right now is holding the government together long enough to keep himself in power away from corruption court cases.

4:34And of course, what you're seeing is an extraordinary disjunction, which needs some explaining, because according to opinion polls, there are over 80 percent of Israelis who want the war in Gaza to end and to end now. How is it possible that the prime minister and leader of a democratic country can be pursuing, forging ahead with a policy where the overwhelmed majority of your population are in disgust about? Yet it continues. And maybe maybe there will be some kind of ceasefire that comes when the Israeli Knesset goes into recess and the pressure on Netanyahu recedes. Certainly that is the hope in Western capitals.

5:23Emily, you were talking about how the aid is now delivered. And this body set up in America, in Delaware, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which sounds very benign and nice, has now taken charge of the delivery of aid because what they're saying is, The argument is that too much of the aid was being siphoned off by Hamas to feed the fighters and starve the population or to make money from the population by increasing the prices of goods. And so instead of 400 distribution points, you've now got four. and you're creating this extraordinary funnel where people are converging on these overcrowded sites because people think this is their daily battle for survival for food for water to be able to get some provisions to feed their family there's a huge mass of people and you know it looks like it's a recipe for disaster and the head of unra has come out and said you know this is a kind of funnel of death that you're creating where there is so much pressure that people are going to be killed just by queuing for food.

6:32The News Agents Hosts:Yeah there's there's 170 aid agencies which have all condemned what this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is doing because they see the consequences it is having. According to the World Food Programme nearly a third of Gaza's population is going several days without food. 470 ,000 people are expected to face the most severe levels of hunger between May and September this year. In other words, they cannot deliver from four different individual sites what the aid agencies used to be able to deliver from 400. And I don't think you need a very vivid imagination to see how badly that is going to hit a population.

7:15The News Agents Hosts:And part of the problem is that because there are only these four sites, people who are queuing for food are coming through the night, often in darkness, to try and be at the front of the queues by the time they open in the morning. But because of the destruction to the roads, because of the bombing, because of the fact that they are badly lit and they're covered in ammunition most of the time, people are going astray. They're not following the roads that get you to the actual food distribution centres. The IDF are seeing people on different roads and say, what are you doing there? And then they're opening fire because they're assuming that they are people who are trying to create trouble.

7:50The News Agents Hosts:And so whether you believe Netanyahu's line that Hamas is taking all the food and stealing it and then trying to sell it back, whether you believe that the IDF feels genuinely threatened by people who are not on the main road and are sort of coming towards them, they say, armed, I don't think that alters what is a fundamental problem, which is there is not enough food and there are too few distribution centres to try and feed a starving population of two million people. Well let me just pick up on that because I heard on the radio at the weekend an Israeli government spokesperson indignantly saying in answer to that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has delivered 28 million meals to Gaza and I thought well that's a lot and then you do the maths yeah that's two million people who've had one meal for 14 days since that's 28 million since may yeah since may the moral outrage that you can say we have delivered 28 million meals over three months to two million people as they say in america do the math it's not great it means that people are undernourished even if that is the official figures 28 million meals being delivered It's nothing.

9:10It's not enough to feed a population. And when Israel controls the access points in, you've got to accept that you are going to be accused of starving a population.

9:20The News Agents Hosts:So we are telling you stuff that you almost certainly know already. You have heard these figures already. You know the extreme suffering that's going on in Gaza. But the thing that you probably don't understand at this point is why if so much of the world population is against what's happening there and so much of the Israeli domestic population is against any continuation of the war, we understand that's 83 percent. then why is the war still going on? What is happening within the Netanyahu administration or government that allows or perpetuates this war in the face of so much opposition? And so we thought today we would try and break down for you the dislocation that is coming if you live, if you are resident in Israel, compared to if you are seeing these horrific images and hearing these interviews and the dislocation that comes from those living in Israel and what they are seeing and what they're hearing and the rest of the world, including what our own politicians are talking about.

10:30The News Agents Hosts:And so much of it comes down to the minutiae of a domestic political crisis that Netanyahu is trying to stave off, which is allowing him, weirdly, against all the odds, to keep this war going. We're going to talk now to Dr. Ayala Penievsky, who has worked on these questions for a long time. She's a research fellow at the Centre for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, and she divides her time between Israel and London. Fair to say that you see and hear very different things between these two countries. I think it's impossible to understand public opinion in Israel right now, specifically with regards to the war.

11:13You cannot understand public opinion in Israel without talking about what the Israeli media is showing and not showing. Because basically, and based on research we've conducted during the war, the big TV channels here are not showing anything coming out of Gaza, almost anything. The horrific footage, the starving children, the babies, everything that is haunting audiences worldwide is hardly, hardly ever shown here in Israel where people live one hour drive from Gaza. So I think it's critical to understand that the Israeli media, which is a Hebrew speaking media, OK, people are often telling me, well, why don't they just watch BBC or CNN?

11:55No, people are watching news in their own language. And the mainstream, the majority of Israelis are not exposed to what's happening in Gaza the way that other audiences are, unfortunately.

12:07The News Agents Hosts:But surely in 2025, people are using social media. People understand what's going on on YouTube, on Insta, all the rest of it. I mean, people don't just watch domestic television channels. Right. So as someone who is coming back and forth from the UK to Israel often, I can say that even the algorithms are pretty different. They are affected by geography and by what other media you are consuming, what are your interests. And to be honest, it's not a totally new phenomenon. All right. We know that during wars, even if you look at, I don't know, the US war in Vietnam, It took a few good years until people started showing and broadcasting the casualties on the other side, because as people here put it to me, nobody wants to see it, which is a very bad excuse for not showing people what's happening out there in the world, especially when it is so detrimental, horrific and consequential.

13:01So tell me this, is it that the editors are taking these sort of godlike decisions and saying, right, we're not going to show the war and the Israeli public are just ignorant? Or do you think the editors kind of think we've shown it, the Israeli audience doesn't want to see this stuff. Therefore, if we show it, we're going to lose audience. So let's just not show it. So definitely this is what the editors are saying. And this excuse of the public doesn't want to know this, which is not necessarily backed by empirical data, although I wouldn't be surprised if it did. They are saying people don't want to see it, so we don't show it.

13:40But this is a very poor excuse for a journalist because we are supposed to be communicating everything that's happening out there, not just everything that we know. it's similar to if I were to go to the GP and they wouldn't tell me that I'm terribly sick because nobody wants to hear it. Yeah, but I'm still sick. That's the reality, right? And I need to know what's happening out there so I can manage the situation. So yes, there is very, very little attention to what's going on in Gaza. It also took a long time for opposition voices to get their hearing in the Israeli media at all. So not just Palestinian voices are totally silenced, but also critical voices within the Israeli society.

14:20Certainly Palestinian citizens of Israel, also known as Israeli Arabs, are totally just diminished from the screens on October 7th, never came back. And you get a very distorted view of reality if your main source of news is Israeli journalism.

14:38The News Agents Hosts:Ayla, it seems interesting right now that the voices coming even from the White House are suggesting they think that Netanyahu has lost it. Bibi acting like a madman is one of them. I guess the more rational way of looking at this is he's not acting like a madman at all. He's acting like a narcissist who wants to stay in power. And this week is pretty critical for him on those terms. Just explain why in terms of the parliamentary sort of maths. Right. Right. So actually Netanyahu's coalition is on the brink of potentially collapse, but not for the reasons you might think. So it actually has nothing to do with the war in Gaza, with the death toll, with the ongoing fronts that keep coming, but actually with an internal feud within Netanyahu's coalition.

15:30So what Netanyahu managed to do over the past few years very effectively is really to establish this alliance with two minority groups inside the Israeli society. One is the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Haredim, and the other is the religious Zionists, the settlers in the West Bank, etc., the Bengfirs, the far-right faction. And this is what allowed Netanyahu to remain in power, this very strong alliance with parties that don't care about what's going on in the war and don't care about Netanyahu's trial, because he's currently standing three corruption trials. He was actually supposed and scheduled to be giving testimony this week, at least twice this week.

16:11But he keeps coming up with very creative excuses for not taking the stand. So this is a very strong alliance. For historical reasons, the Haredi community, the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, gets exemption from military service. There is a mandatory military service in Israel. When you become 18, you have to go to the military. If you refuse to go, you go to the military prison, etc. But the Haredim never had to do that. For historic reasons that make no sense, but that's the way it was for many years. And right now, there is a clash between this Haredi faction in Netanyahu's government who want to keep getting exempted from military service and the settlers, the Ben Bevers, the Bezalel Smutrichs, the others who wouldn't allow it.

16:59And also because of the war, it's very difficult to sell such a law for the Israeli public right now because so many people have been serving in the military, whether they like it or not, whether they agree with the war or not, for almost two years straight. So actually, what makes Netanyahu's coalition particularly fragile right now is not the war, is not the casualties, it's not the even not the Israeli dead soldiers, and not the hostages. It's actually an internal fighting between two different factions, both of which very hawkish, very much on the far right. These are not, sometimes people think, I think outside of Israel, people get this vision of the ultra-Orthodox community as this kind of anti-Zionist lefty group of people who you might see in pro-Palestinian protests in London.

17:49This is not the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel at all. They are very much on the far right. And this might actually make Netanyahu much more scared than anything that has to do with the war right now.

18:00The News Agents Hosts:So he is trying to hold on to this coalition until when? Basically until the Knesset, the parliament, dissolves. Exactly, which is next week. So he has one last week to hold it. The parliament is in deadlock, basically. They can't pass any laws because of this internal feud, which has nothing to do with where the Israeli public is, where the war is. It's their internal feud. He has to hold one more week. And then the parliament basically goes on recess, on summer recess. And then for three months, there is even less parliamentary scrutiny over Netanyahu's government. So the government keeps working as usual, but parliament is on summer recess.

18:43This means that until October, Netanyahu can do more or less whatever he wants. So if he's then free of the constraints of Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, the recess starts on the 28th of July. Do we get a ceasefire on the 29th of July? No. So Ben-Gavir and Smotrich are in the government. They are not just in the parliament. They are the government and they are Netanyahu's government. Now that the Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox parties left the government, they are even more powerful because the government is smaller. So there is no reason to believe that there will be an internal, there will be a will inside Netanyahu's government to end this war until they face significant international external pressure.

19:31But they seem immune from external international pressure. I mean, you know, there have been the howls of outrage from the European countries. And yeah, what is that pressure? And what is that pressure? So I would say there hasn't been enough pressure because they have been also facing internal pressure, right? We've seen for two years. I've been here for like a week now and I've seen more than five demonstrations against this government and against this war. The Israeli people opposed the war strongly for a long time. 80 % of Israelis opposed the war, but it doesn't translate into the political realm right now.

20:09Most Israelis oppose this government for a very long time. It, again, doesn't translate into real politic. And I would say that while international institutions and certain individuals try to put pressure on this government, we actually could have seen much, much more coming this way. And I will just give an example because we started with the Israeli media. I would like to say something about the international media. Today, perhaps you've seen there is a new story about how AFP are kind of they publish this public statement where they are genuinely concerned that their journalists in Gaza might starve to death.

20:46This is insane. And I think that the fact that for two years, all the big media organizations worldwide that have a lot of legitimacy and prestige and money and contacts haven't collaborated. I mean, the BBC, the New York Times, all these big journalistic enterprises haven't collaborated and went to the Israeli government and said, we need to get to see what's happening in Gaza. You cannot just shut down a piece of land for two years and not allow us to report from there. I think this is also a lot to say about how the global media could have handled this situation better and not wait until we see journalists literally dying.

21:24We know more than 200 journalists are reported to have died in Gaza these past two years. So I think there is a lot more to do, both in terms of governments, but even inside the media industry and the journalistic community. There's still one bit of this that I'm struggling to understand from what you're saying. If you are saying that 80 percent of Israelis oppose the war in Gaza, how is it possible that this continues? because whatever people may think of Israel and opinions have declined since the way the war has been prosecuted it is a quarrelsome democracy where there's freedom of speech and freedom of expression and yet 80 percent are opposed to what their government is doing and have been for nearly two years and that's what everyone here has been asking me each other for this past at least year where the gap between public opinion and what this government is doing has been so stark.

22:25And I think what happened to us is, yeah, we thought that if you put public pressure, right, if you have hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets, if you have opinion polls showing that people oppose the war or want a deal, or you would see an impact of this pressure on the government. This is not what we are seeing right now, because Netanyahu has a very specific alliance. with very radical forces, and they are all he cares about. I mean, this is what he needs to remain in power. Basically, the opposition to Netanyahu's coalition is very scattered, and it's very difficult for them to collaborate and work together.

23:06You have parties like Avigdor Lieberman's party, who used to be a very far-right racist figure in Israeli politics. He is now part of the opposition to Netanyahu. You have Arab parties that obviously see the war very differently than him. You have left-wing parties, centrist parties, and they basically have nothing in common apart from the fact that they all oppose to Netanyahu for one reason or the other. Some of them are unwilling to sit with a prime minister who is standing trial. Others think his policies are bonkers. Others think he's not hawkish. There are many different views in the opposition to Netanyahu's coalition.

23:43And this is what makes it so difficult to replace it.

23:46The News Agents Hosts:So one person who has been very outspoken is the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmet, who described Israel Katz's idea of a humanitarian city as a concentration camp. I mean, he's already said that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. And last week, Olmert said that construction of any kind of camp that forced the Palestinians to live there would mark an escalation and be a concentration camp. I mean, this is Israel established in the wake of the Holocaust. Does that kind of language not send shockwaves through the actual administration? Is there not a kind of existential angst right now against what Israel is inflicting on its neighbours?

24:38So unfortunately, there are no signs of angst among this coalition or government. I would say that Ehud Olmert, who is himself a right-wing politician, he was part of the Likud party, of Netanyahu's party at the time. And I think he's one of very few senior figures that have the courage to say what he's saying right now, together with Boghielon and a few others. But I think, first of all, these people get far less attention and coverage here than they do in the international media. And I think that, unfortunately, the way to the hearts of the Ben Gvirs of this government is not the path to go.

25:21There will need to be a very strong opposition that speaks to Israelis' fears and to their lack of confidence, etc., to be able to replace this government and change course. Because when you don't see what's happening in Gaza, and even if you are against the war, which most Israelis are, this is not because of what we're doing to Palestinian civilians over there. They see very little of it. And the people in this society who are shocked and grieving and devastated by this reality are facing also harsher realities over time. So we see just the way the journalists' moves are being restricted over time.

26:04I've been a couple of days ago in this protest, silent protest, where Israelis were standing and holding signs of Palestinian babies and children who were killed in Gaza by the IDF. over the past two years. It was a very long, very strong, very powerful demonstration. But the reaction was very difficult. So yeah, some people in Tel Aviv agree with you, but people are also spitting at you. And if policemen see you, they might perhaps beat you up. So the reality is that even these freedoms that we used to take for granted in a country like Israel are becoming more shaky and more difficult over time.