Netanyahu US Congress address downplays, misrepresents Gaza’s humanitarian crisis

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a rhetorically forceful but factually dubious defence of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip in a speech in front of the US Congress on 24 July.

Prior to the speech, family members of the estimated 120 Israeli and foreign hostages still held by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza called on Netanyahu to commit to reaching a ceasefire deal that would see their relatives released. Some of the hostages are believed to already be dead.

There was no mention, however, of a ceasefire in Netanyahu’s speech. Instead, he vowed to achieve “total victory” in the fight against Hamas, positioning it as a conflict of “good” versus “evil”. He also decreed people who have protested around the world against the war as choosing to “stand with evil” – including thousands who gathered to protest his visit to Washington DC.

Netanyahu also downplayed – or outright misrepresented – the devastating human and humanitarian toll Israel’s military campaign is taking on the 2.1 million Palestinians who live in Gaza, making claims about efforts to safeguard civilians that were demonstrably false.

In nearly 10 months, nearly 40,000 people have been killed, according to health authorities in Gaza, 1.9 million have been forcibly displaced – many multiple times – and the majority of housing and life-sustaining infrastructure in the enclave has been reduced to rubble.

Israel has faced widespread criticism and allegations that it is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza – including by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) who requested arrest warrants on war crimes charges be issued for Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Galant earlier this year.

In his speech, Netanyahu pushed back against the ICC prosecutor, saying that Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza, apparently citing numbers from COGAT, the Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating humanitarian activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

That number is higher than data from the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA. But humanitarians say focusing on truck numbers can obscure a picture that is otherwise perfectly clear: The entire population of Gaza is facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, according to a monitoring report released by UN-backed food security experts at the end of June. And people in Gaza have been unequivocal about the difficulties they face securing enough food to eat.

Aid workers also say that Israel has done little if anything throughout the war to address the issues preventing them from mounting a meaningful humanitarian response. For more, read: