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UN Relief Chief says Gaza famine “must spur the world to urgent action”

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Written by om Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator om Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
Published: 23 August 2025 23 August 2025

Remarks on Gaza at the UN press briefing and Q&A by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

https://www.unocha.org/news/un-relief-chief-says-gaza-famine-must-spur-world-urgent-action

You can watch Tom Fletcher give this report at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDegib9npZI

Geneva, 22 August 2025

As delivered

Please read the IPC report, cover to cover. Read it in sorrow and in anger. Not as words and numbers but as names and lives. Be in no doubt that this is irrefutable testimony.

It is a famine. The Gaza Famine.

It is a famine that we could have prevented, if we had been allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.

It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food, in a fertile land.

It is a famine that hits the most vulnerable first. Each with a name, each with a story. That strips people of dignity before it strips them of life. That forces a parent to choose which child to feed. That forces people to risk their lives to seek food.

It is a famine that we repeatedly warned of. But that the international media has not been allowed in to cover. To bear witness.

It is a famine in 2025. A 21st century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history.

It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.

Read more: UN Relief Chief says Gaza famine “must spur the world to urgent action”

‘Legitimization Cell’: Israeli unit tasked with linking Gaza journalists to Hamas

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Written by Yuval Abraham Yuval Abraham
Published: 15 August 2025 15 August 2025

The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the “Legitimization Cell,” tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence. 

Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave. It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week.

According to the sources, the Legitimization Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.

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Read more at: https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-journalists-hamas-hasbara/

‘If these words reach you … Israel has succeeded in killing me’: the last words of a journalist killed in Gaza

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Written by Anas al-Sharif Anas al-Sharif
Published: 12 August 2025 12 August 2025

Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Sunday night. This is the message he had prepared for his family, and his call for the world not to forget Gaza

I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification – so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

Read Anas al-Sharif's full statement at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/11/anas-al-sharif-al-jazeera-journalist-killed-gaza-israeli-airstrike

Joe Biden is complicit in Gaza’s starvation. Blood is on his hands

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Written by Mohamad Bazzi Mohamad Bazzi
Published: 10 August 2025 10 August 2025

At several points during his presidency, Biden could have stopped starvation from spreading in Gaza, if his administration had listened to warnings from the UN and aid groups and used them as an impetus to limit unconditional US military support for Israel. Biden’s record is not only shocking for the multiple missed opportunities he had to change course, but for his callousness toward the suffering of Palestinians.

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In February 2024, Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, warned of the speed and scale of Israel’s mass starvation campaign. “We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely,” he told the Guardian, echoing reports by UN agencies and humanitarian groups showing that Israel was deliberately blocking foodand other aid from entering Gaza, and using starvation as a weapon – a war crime under international law.

With such detailed warnings, the Biden administration and Israel’s other western supporters could not claim that they didn’t know the severity of hunger in Gaza, and the extent of Israel’s policy of intentionally starvingPalestinians. As the alarms of imminent famine intensified in the spring of 2024, Biden could have acted by pressuring the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to allow more food into Gaza and enforcing US laws which ban weapons shipments to US allies that obstruct humanitarian aid.

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Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/09/biden-complicit-gaza-starvation

‘A deadly scheme’: Palestinians face indiscriminate gunfire at food sites

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Written by Manisha Ganguly | The Guardian Manisha Ganguly | The Guardian
Published: 09 August 2025 09 August 2025

A Guardian investigation analysing visual evidence, bullets, medical data and patterns of injuries from two hospitals, as well as interviews with medical organisations and surgeons, across approximately 50 days of food distribution, appears to show a sustained Israeli pattern of firing on Palestinians seeking food.

According to the UN, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed since 27 May while seeking food, with 859 killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys.

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/09/a-deadly-scheme-palestinians-face-indiscriminate-gunfire-at-food-sites

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