Hamza Yusuf – Middle East Eye March 12, 2025
A ceasefire does not mean that Israel has dropped its goal to annihilate Gaza.
The mission remains the same, and the war crimes endure, including killings – the method just shifts. Now, the textbook starvation of the enclave is the weapon of choice.
But the British public will not be privy to such details – not if they rely on the mainstream media to report them accurately.
In early March, as the first phase of the ceasefire was ending and the full withdrawal of Israel’s forces from Gaza was supposed to take place, Israel decided to block all aid from entering the territory.
The media reported it but, characteristically, thinned out the details.
Israel is “stopping all aid into Gaza”, reported Sky News. Israel “blocks entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza”, read the online BBC headline. LBC’s article stated, “Israel halts all aid and supplies coming into Gaza”.
Missing from every outlet was the crucial added context: as concluded by Human Rights Watch (HRW), this was a flagrant violation of international law. Legal experts confirmed it constituted a genocidal act.
But the tried-and-tested strategy of propaganda by omission reigned supreme. Why provide the intricate details and allow readers to connect the dots about Israel’s cruelty when key information can simply be suppressed?
Propaganda by omission
Within days, Israeli officials were threatening to cut off electricity and water completely, imposing a total siege on Gaza, while continuing to displace more Palestinians from northern Gaza.
The Telegraph reported this proposal as a “hell plan”. Yet it apparently did not occur to journalists, researchers, or editors at the outlet to mention that Israel was threatening another complete siege of Gaza and further Palestinian ethnic cleansing.
The best the right-wing broadsheet could muster was to call Israel’s intended crime “provocative” – not because of the humanitarian catastrophe it would cause, but because it would take place during Ramadan.
Even at the supposedly progressive Independent and Guardian, the same skewed rules of engagement applied.
They could have noted that the International Criminal Court already has arrest warrants for starvation crimes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Or they could have mentioned that deliberately starving Gaza would violate the International Court of Justice’s orders to prevent genocide. Even a simple acknowledgment that Israel was committing repeat war crimes would have sufficed.
Instead, both newspapers framed Israel’s latest violation of international law with a softened touch.
The Guardian’s subheading presented it as a negotiation tactic to pressure Hamas into releasing more captives, as though that somehow justified or legitimised the looming atrocity.
On 9 March, Israel cut off electricity to Gaza, as planned.
In a social media post, Israel’s energy minister confirmed he had signed an order to “cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip immediately”. “Enough with the talk, it’s time for action!” he declared.
“Israel cuts off electricity supply to Gaza”, wrote the BBC. LBC’s online article provided the most depth: “Israel cuts off electricity supply to Gaza, affecting drinking water, one week after blocking humanitarian aid”. Yet even this article stopped short of clarifying the crime it constituted.
In both broadcast and print media, some outlets opted for headlines that framed Israel’s cutting of power as a pressure tactic and amplified its justification.
“Israel cuts power to Gaza after Hamas refuses to extend first phase of ceasefire,” declared Sky News.
The article included UN criticism of Israel for collective punishment – immediately followed by Israel’s denial. Both were given equal weight, as if this were merely a matter of conflicting opinions rather than a documented crime.
It was to “force Hamas to return hostages”, claimed The Telegraph. The Guardian described Israel’s systematic starvation campaign as an “apparent effort to force the hand of Hamas”.
When The Independent and The Times cited concerns from the British government about Israel’s actions, the violation of international law was framed only as a possibility – as though there were still room for debate.
Obscuring war crimes
In its broadcast output, the BBC’s correspondent described in vivid detail the cruelty of Israel’s actions before stating that “it will add to the accusations that Israel is committing war crimes again”.
By framing it as a mere accusation or allegation, the BBC introduced an element of deniability – subtly deflecting from an incontestable reality.
—
There is nothing to speculate about or second-guess: Israel’s strategy has been clear and consistent throughout.
In December 2023, HRW concluded that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war and committing the crime against humanity of extermination.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem declared that Israel was deliberately manufacturing famine, while the United Nations confirmed that Israel was knowingly imposing life-threatening conditions on Gaza’s population.
The illegality of these actions – collective punishment and starvation as a method of warfare – is not up for debate.
Yet the media continued to shroud them in vague, detached language.
At first glance, this reporting may seem harmless – some might even call it neutral and impartial, the very essence of journalism.
But the meticulous, consistent whitewashing of Israel’s crimes is as deliberate as it is dangerous. The public is steered towards conclusions that reflect only fragments of reality, leaving them misinformed.
When Israel imposes a crippling siege and starves an entire territory, the severity of the crime must be emphasised – not the perpetrator’s narrative.
It must be made clear that Israel’s ability to impose such policies stems from its status as an illegal occupying force.
These details matter – when they are obscured and artificial balance is prioritised, Israel’s barbarity is subtly sanitised.
Media complicity
The linguistic tools employed by the mainstream media – amounting to propaganda by omission – shape whether the public sees Gaza as enduring genocide under Israel’s colonial conquest or as merely part of a “conflict” between two warring sides.
And therein lies the fundamental goal.
After all, this is the same media ecosystem in which the national broadcaster described the murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab – killed when Israeli tanks fired 335 bullets into her car as she waited for an ambulance – as her having been “found dead“.
It was Sky News that framed Israel’s illegal detention, torture, and abuse of Dr Husam Abu Safiya as merely “holding” him. It was The Guardian that referred to Israeli settlers preparing to seize land in Gaza for ethnic cleansing as merely “preparing to move” there.
Now, two million Palestinians in Gaza – already starving, endlessly displaced, and without adequate shelter – are being suffocated further, denied life-saving supplies and medication by Israel’s illegal blockade.
Israeli officials vowed to make Gaza “a place where no human can exist”, and state policy is working as intended – all in the knowledge that the mainstream media will ensure the public remains insulated.
The iconic British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta poignantly remarked: “When we have a museum for the genocide, we will have a special place for the journalists who were the enablers.”
Those words have never rung truer, highlighting the undeniable reality that the mainstream media is not just complicit but an active participant in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
Hamza Yusuf is a British-Palestinian writer and journalist based in London. He specialises in reporting on and covering Palestine, with his work featured in publications such as Declassified UK, +972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, New Internationalist, and others.
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90% of Palestinians in Gaza lack access to clean water: Gaza in limbo Day 11
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food on Wednesday warned that Israel is carrying out an unprecedentedly rapid campaign of starvation in Gaza, calling it “the fastest in modern history.”
“How is Israel able to starve 2.3 million people so quickly and so completely?” Michael Fakhri asked in a joint press briefing alongside other UN special rapporteurs in Geneva. “This is the fastest starvation campaign in modern history,” Fakhri said.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/in-gaza-israel-carrying-out-fastest-starvation-campaign-in-modern-history-gaza-in-limbo-day-12/
UN experts accuse Israel of genocidal acts and sexual violence in Gaza
Israel carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during the conflict in Gaza, and used sexual violence as a war strategy, United Nations experts said in a report on Thursday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report’s findings, saying they were biased and antisemitic.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/90-of-palestinians-in-gaza-lack-access-to-clean-water-gaza-in-limbo-day-11/
UK mainstream media in general is obviously 100% controlled by the Intelligence Services which has a stranglehold on what gets passed as false ‘disinformation’ in the public arena. The law is an ass and a U turn via in legislation to prosecute is the only way forward if there is any chance of positive change. As the saying goes ‘they’ are few and we are the majority!
“B..b…b.. BUT surely if Israel was doing anything bad in the M.E. the BBC would be FIRST on the scence.. and we’d all know about it! Shame on Hamza Zusuf for suggesting otherwise!!”
– THICK Brit, “Outtaged on Orpington 😡”
“Outraged in Orpington 😡”
There’s an article over at the Unz review in which little Ron tallies up the the ‘jewes’ 20th century body count and places it in the hundreds of millions…he asserts that they were the biggest killers of the twentieth century..and he’d be correct..
Of course they were helped along by their lackeys, but it seems murder inc is a family affair for nearly all ‘jewes’… who get very hands on in the slaughters and in very imaginative and gruesome ways..
Of course the national character of the ‘jewe’ is the character of the psychopath, think Ted Bundy the serial killer, playing victim behind his van, nursing his supposedly broken arm. wincing in faux pain as he implores you for help putting a box in the back..tears in his eyes..he even makes you laugh with his little jokes..
but..as soon as your back’s turned to pick up the box..down comes the ballpeen hammer on your skull, and in the back you go, trussed and gagged…off to be dissected with victorian surgical instruments,whilst dangling on a meathook in a basement he stole from the neighbors he murdered earlier…
best watch your back Europe..
@Outraged in Orpington
“Hear, hear! But the Aunty Semitism goes even deeper… like down in the pub the other day, some scallywag proposing that ‘Anne Frank’s Diaries’ were plagiarised from” Enid Blyton’s ‘Perlis Of Pauline’.. and – get this! -written in ballpoint – even though that device wasn’t in circulation until AFTER the war!”
– THICK Brit, Basingstoke
there is no ‘genocide’. the so called dead ‘palestinians’ are being covertly transported to the West. its similar to how 6 million jews migrated to the UK/US during WWII & then claimed they were ‘exterminated’.
btw I’m thinking of putting together a ‘THICK Brit’ comic-strip….
stay toon’ed.
8 billion of us, but weep for me
If Netanyahu and the hardcore Zionists do not represent the majority of Israelis, then how do they remain in power?
There is only one reason why these Zionist Jews remain in power: They are supported by Zionist Evangelical Christians.
And these Christians are the ones who put Zionist Donald Trump back into power.
If you don’t want to associate with this cult and the judgment of God that is most certainly coming, please educate yourself on the Christian Zionism Cult, and fact check everything by what is actually written in the Bible
As I have frequently reported the past year and a half, Zionism is a cult, although among Jews it is the minority view.
Most Jews are not Zionists.
Here are two very censored Orthodox Rabbis who are NOT Zionists and who oppose Zionism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, chairman of the Otzma Yehudit Party, welcomed the decision to stop the flow of supplies to Gaza, tweeting:
“Finally, the decision has been made—better late than never. This should be the policy until the last hostage is returned. Now is the time to open the gates of hell, cut off electricity and water, return to war, and most importantly, not settle for just half of the hostages, but return to President Trump’s ultimatum—all hostages immediately, or hell will open on Gaza,” Ben-Gvir wrote.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and other members of Israel’s ruling coalition welcomed Sunday’s government announcement that aid is being halted to Gaza after Hamas rejected U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff‘s ceasefire extension proposal.
“The decision we made last night to completely halt humanitarian aid to Gaza until Hamas is destroyed or completely surrenders and all our hostages are returned is an important step in the right direction. ‘The threshold of the gates of hell,’” Smotrich tweeted.
“Now we need to open those gates as quickly and lethally as possible on the cruel enemy, until absolute victory. We remained in the government to ensure this, and with God’s help, it will be,” the Religious Zionism Party leader continued.
“The decision we made last night to completely halt humanitarian aid to Gaza until Hamas is destroyed or completely surrenders and all our hostages are returned is an important step in the right direction. ‘The threshold of the gates of hell,’”
https://healthimpactnews.com/2025/israel-blocks-all-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza-threatens-to-open-the-gates-of-hell-cut-off-electricity-and-water-return-to-war-at-trumps-bidding/
i look forward to the comic strip
we need some light re;lef from the genocide
BTW the jews who controlled churchill starved the german people in ww 2
the genocide there was just as real as palestine
rothschild introduced starmer to his jewish wife