News Brief: Natural Disaster-izing the Deliberate US-Israeli Starvation Campaign in Gaza
Citations Needed | June 19, 2025 | Transcript
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Nima Shirazi: Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam Johnson: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: You can follow Citations Needed on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of our work through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated, as we are 100% listener funded. We do these News Briefs in between our regularly scheduled full-length episodes of Citations Needed. Today, Adam, we will be joined very soon by Ash Bohrer and Ben Teller, who are both members of Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago, and along with four other members they have joined with to go on a hunger strike to demand an end to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, an end to the unconditional military aid for Israel that the United States provides, as well as diplomatic cover, and, of course, an end to the deliberate blockade of food and medicine to the over two million Palestinians currently caged and being slaughtered in Gaza. So we will be speaking with Ash and Ben very shortly. And, you know, just really wanted to make sure that we heard their voices, because this is a really powerful step that they’ve taken.
Adam: Yeah, it is. And the starvation of Gaza, to be clear, we’re going to give a little bit of exposition here, just to tee up the conversation, was telegraphed and explicitly stated as Israeli policy two days after October 7. On October 9, 2023, former defense minister Yoav Gallant, who’s now wanted by the ICC for war crimes, said, quote,
I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.
We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
Subsequently, Israel did just that. They permitted some token aid here and there. But ultimately, March 2, 2025, a complete blockade of food and aid into Gaza, leading to a mass starvation crisis. Now, from the beginning, this mass starvation policy was framed, as I’ve written about before, in In These Times, The Real News, and other places, and we’ve covered on this show, it is framed by US media as a natural disaster. I’m just going to give you a couple of examples from March of 2024 that I wrote about, just as sort of a sampling of one week.
Nima: And to remember, this is over a year ago, not March of 2025.
Adam: This is over a year ago. This has been going on for a year and a half, right? Malnutrition disease, preventable disease.
So, New York Times, quote, “The 10-Year-Old Boy Who Has Become the Face of Starvation in Gaza,” unquote. New York Times, “Ramadan Begins as Hunger and Fear Stalk Gaza,” unquote. So the active participant is fear, not Israel. New York Times, “The Daily Hunt for Food in Gaza,” unquote. CNN, “‘Catastrophic’ hunger in Gaza.” CNN, ‘We have nothing’: Children face starvation in Gaza as supplies run out.” Politico, “Ramadan begins with hunger worsening in Gaza and no end to war in sight.” NBC News, quote, “Hunger in Jabalia as civilians struggle to survive in the north,” unquote.
So here you have, this is a very par for the course. I’ve done plenty of studies on this. We’ll give you one sort of particularly egregious example in the New York Times from March of 2024, which is the one I listed earlier about the 10-year-old boy who became the face of starvation in Gaza. The article itself doesn’t mention Israeli culpability at all, not even in passing. It doesn’t mention their role in the starvation campaign whatsoever. It is presented as a natural disaster or some feature of bad weather. Now let’s compare and contrast this with how the far less severe starvation in Ukraine, although, you know, people are hungry in Ukraine, and especially early on in the war, was covered in the New York Times. Quote, “How Russia Is Using Ukrainians’ Hunger as a Weapon of War.” And there are several articles that sort of frame Russia as the active party.
Nima: Right. Naming the actual agent of starvation.
Adam: And then, on top of that, they’ll often-times imply, or heavily imply, or even explicitly say, that people in Gaza are starving because Hamas is stealing aid, a talking point that even US officials have denied and debunked. To the extent to which aid is being stolen, it’s being stolen by ISIS-linked groups that are funded and armed by Israel, which Israel, two weeks ago, in early June, openly admitted that they did. Netanyahu was open about arming these ISIS-linked groups that are stealing aid because they demoralize and starve the population and are used to undermine so-called, quote-unquote, “Hamas.”
Nima: And creates the pretext for which those talking points can have some kind of basis.
Adam: Now, realizing that starving a population was creating a slight PR problem, Israel and the US did what they do best, which is create a limited hangout. They created the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Orwellian named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that is setting up these checkpoints where they give .01% of the aid necessary to crowds of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of starving people, typically opening fire and killing them. It is universally condemned as a humiliating and cynical ploy to militarize aid and to provide PR cover for what is very explicitly a starvation campaign. And that’s, now, this is over 600 days later, cut to where we are now, which is people, the starvation in Gaza is widespread. It is acute. It is not on the brink of starvation or famine. It is a famine. And nothing that people have done to try to open up aid or get aid in there.
And we could go on and on about the ways in which the media assisted the incitement campaign against UNRWA, the United Nations Organization tasked with providing aid in Gaza. I’ve written about this a lot. I have a whole thing coming out about it. We won’t get into that, but suffice it to say that the actual aid organizations that were working have been demonized as basically terrorists, as part of a broad conspiracy, what people call the Elders of the Protocols of Rafah, this idea that, like, the UN is secretly a Hamas-aligned, pro-Iran, pro-terrorist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal helped incite that campaign.
So now we have mass, widespread starvation, assisted by the US media, both in terms of natural disaster-izing it and also leading an incitement campaign and a campaign of falsehoods and libel against the United Nations who was actually providing aid, which itself originally wasn’t even enough. And so that’s where we are today. This situation is extremely desperate. It’s extremely dire. Obviously, Israel starting a war with Iran, bombing Iran, trying to do what they did to South Lebanon, to Iran, is justifiably and understandably, in some ways, kind of distracting people in the media, but nevertheless, as our guests will talk about, the starvation hasn’t changed at all, and, in fact, has gotten much, much worse.
Nima: That’s right, and you know, all of that also creates, not only a pretext, but also the kind of circumstances that then enable the Israeli military to open fire on Palestinians in Gaza who are seeking to get aid, even the limited amounts of aid that do get through.
Adam: There was another mass slaughter just Tuesday.
Nima: Exactly. Just in recent days, that then, of course, initially, media dutifully says, you know, We don’t know who opened fire. Maybe it was Hamas.
Adam: So, let me read the New York Times headline. This is the New York Times headline. “As World Turns Focus to Iran, Lethal Violence Flares at Gaza Aid Sites.” “Flares at Gaza Aid Sites.” The subheadline would read, “With the international community distracted by the new Middle East conflict between Israel and Iran, ongoing bloodshed in Gaza is drawing less attention.” And the article puts it in the fog of war, Who’s to say who fired? Everybody knows Israel is shooting these people. There was no one else with guns who would be able to do that. Obviously, it’s either these ISIS-linked anti-Hamas gangs in Gaza that Israel’s arming and funding, or it’s Israel themselves. It’s Israel. We have eyewitness accounts. We have video evidence. And as of Tuesday morning, just one. This is just another, again, there’s a daily flour massacre. 59 people were killed, over 200 injured. Slaughtered by, this is an unarmed, defenseless, starving people. And they’re being slaughtered because, they’re, yeah, it’s a turkey shoot, and they know they can get away with it.
Nima: So, to discuss this more and the acts now being taken by six members of Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago, we are joined now by Ash Bohrer and Ben Teller, joining us now from Chicago, Adam, where you are as well. Ash and Ben, thank you so much for joining us today on Citations Needed.
Ash Bohrer: Thanks for having us.
Ben Teller: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Adam: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about this. The situation is, of course, you all very well know, is extremely desperate. The tactics thus far haven’t really gone anywhere. Obviously, we had it under both President Biden and now President Trump. I want to sort of begin by asking what drew you to this extreme tactic. I don’t know if people are familiar with hunger strikes, but they can very often lead to death. They can very often lead to, certainly, hospitalization, to draw attention to this crisis. And what is the specific demand that y’all are making? Obviously, it’s in line with humanitarian groups, eight groups as well. So it’s not unique to y’all, but what is the demand and what sort of drew y’all to this, what some would see as very harrowing or desperate measure?
Ash Bohrer: Yeah, thanks. I mean, I’ll start by answering part of the question, which is that initially, this idea to really focus on the starvation in Gaza came from some of our Palestinian partner organizations who were watching, in the aftermath of the ceasefire, the bombs come at least at slower intervals, but that they were still waking up daily to reports of their friends and family and community members dying en masse, or facing the imminent reality of a painful and a little bit slower death.
And the ask that came to JVP when we were at our big national member meeting was to really focus on the starvation of Gaza. And our Palestinian partners floated the idea of what would it mean to really demonstrate to the United States what it means to be involved in such harrowing starvation of two million people. And they floated the idea of a hunger strike, and we in Chicago took it back to our community, to our partner organizations, to the rest of our membership. We spent a lot of time thinking about it, and the conclusion that we came to is that, while this may seem like an extreme tactic, what is actually extreme is the brutality of the campaign that the Israeli government is waging.
And they’re doing it, ostensibly, shouting from the rooftops that they’re doing it to protect the safety of people like Ben and me and so it seems incredibly important for us to say first of all that obviously anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing, that the Israeli government does not speak for us, and is in no way interested in actually securing the safety of Jewish people. It is interested in forcibly displacing, ethnically cleansing, and committing a genocide on Palestinians. And so we kind of came to this tactic with the idea that it’s really important for us as Jewish people to put our bodies on the line and to respond to the call from our Palestinian partners. And for me also, it’s really important to stand up to what I see as a moral and political and religious obligation to protect the lives of Gazans.
Nima: Yeah, I think this idea of conflating Judaism with Zionism is obviously something we’ve discussed on the show a lot, something we both have written about a lot, and is really, you know, hovers over not only the political discourse, but, of course, the media discourse around Israel, around Palestine, and around the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The idea that the Israeli government speaks for all Jewish people, that it is the only safe place for Jews in the world. That’s why Israel exists. That’s why, because of European antisemitism in the late 19th century, and before, of course, long before, and then culminating in the Holocaust, that then, basically Israel is the safety net for Jews in the world. And therefore anything it does is in defense of Jewish people.
And so I think it’s so important, of course, the work that Jewish Voice for Peace has been doing for years, and now that you are doing, to really de-conflate, right, separate those ideas, which I think is just obviously not done enough, because there is so much conflation between Zionism and Judaism. And so what do you see as the kind of focus of this hunger strike, beyond raising awareness, which you know, yes, of course. But are you also connecting what you’re doing to certain politicians, whether they’re in Illinois and beyond, and kind of trying to shift this really destructive, and frankly bigoted, narrative that conflates Judaism with Zionism?
Ben Teller: Yeah, certainly. I mean, the fact of the matter is, our government is directly arming and funding this genocide. This is, in fact, we’ve known it’s made possible because of the largest weapons transfer from the United States to another country in history. And that means that our representatives and our senators and our leaders have direct responsibility for the atrocities that are happening and the power to stop them. We had one of our Chicagoan representatives, Delia Ramirez, at our launch, who has just introduced a bill in the House called the Block the Bombs Act, which would demand that the United States complies with its own laws, as well as international law, and cease selling weapons to a country committing mass human-rights abuses, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. There is no companion bill yet in the Senate. There are not yet enough co-sponsors on that bill to get it through the House. And so, essentially, every American and every person of conscience in this country has a role to play in demanding immediate action to stop the genocide in Gaza, which is made possible because of the blank check that the United States gives Israel. It is a maximalist demand, but the urgency of the moment requires urgent action.
And as to the use of allegations of antisemitism as a smokescreen for Israeli atrocities, we know that these allegations are weaponized in bad faith, often. From a personal standpoint, the idea of anti-Zionism is not new. Opposition to Zionism as a colonial project has been around as long as the idea of Zionism has been around, My great grandfather, for whom I’m partly named, was really of the Bundist school of thinking, which, for those who don’t know, is the Jewish workers’ party in Eastern Europe, that was really sharply anti-Zionist and emphasized that Jews, like all people, deserve to be safe and live with dignity where they are. And that idea in Yiddish is the idea of doikayt, or hereness. And so for me, personally, when people conflate Zionism with Judaism, I think they obliterate a beautiful and diverse history of Judaism and Jewish people as a diasporic people, where what we need to be safe is actually the same human rights that everybody needs, which is to be safe and live with dignity in their own communities. And that’s what we’re fighting for for Palestinians as well.
Adam: Yeah. And I think disentangling this conflation isn’t just about the preciousness of Jewish Americans’ feelings, right? It’s not like, it’s sort of not about identity. It’s about, well, I mean, I would say more urgently, the sectarian framing is playing in the ADL-AIPAC sandbox, and I think that’s why rejecting this kind of sectarian framing is so important. It’s not just about, like, you know, again, I think it’s not just about necessarily, people’s perceptions of their identity. It is a material impact in that every single time this becomes a sectarian issue, the ADL wins. Because that’s what they want. They want to promote this idea that Jewish people are axiomatically Zionist, and the ones that aren’t are either fake Jews, or sort of fringe, or don’t really count. And then that framing carries over, and it’s something I wrote about recently.
You see this pathologically, especially at the New York Times. I wrote a piece about how the New York Times kept taking pot shots at New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani not doing well with Jewish constituents. And then you actually look at the polls and he’s polling, he’s polling a very strong second, proportionally, he’s polling better than Andrew Cuomo with Jewish voters. And in fact, of course, was just co-endorsed by the leading Jewish candidate in the mayor’s race. But the New York Times has this perception in their head, pathologically and editorially, that all Jews care about is fucking Israel. [Laughs] Especially Jewish New Yorkers. Now, obviously there are many that do, but it’s not so simple. Again, there was a poll done by the Economist in January 2024 that found 35% of Jewish Americans think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Almost half of Jews under the age of 30 agreed with that statement.
So it’s all very kind of muddled and messy, and obviously depends on how you kind of word it, but this institutional conflation of the two is so central to this argument because, I mean, for the obvious reason of it indemnifies US and Israeli policy, because you’re exploiting kind of liberal, anti-racism frameworks to sort of, you know, what’s worse than being accused of being a racist? Pretty much, you know, very few things, right? So if you say, well, Israel’s doing X, Y and Z, singled out racist. Israel’s committing genocide, That’s a hyperbolic term. That’s a form of racism. And then people go, [stuttering sound] they just don’t say anything. And so I want to talk about this kind of need for this sectarian framing, and why this sort of divorcing the two is important, not just because of the sort of principled anti-Zionist, or post-Zionist, or whatever you want to call it, within the Jewish community, but also it sort of serves the interest of indemnifying Israel by making it an ethnic conflict. It’s sort of reducing it to this, you know, thousands of years of conflict bullshit they always try to spew.
Ash Bohrer: Totally. I mean, we know that the state of Israel has existed since 1948. Real Zionist migration started in the late 19th century. This is barely a century old as a project, and as an idea, has its roots in Christian Zionism, rather than in Jewish thought or theology. What the sort of manufacturing of settler colonization in Palestine as ethnic conflict allows to happen is, as you say, the indemnification of all of the interests and powers that are interested in exploiting this geopolitical conflict. So that’s Israel. That’s the US. It’s many places in Europe who are quite interested in, I would say, using and mobilizing a certain discourse of antisemitism in order to pursue their own interests, which are largely geopolitical and colonial, neocolonial. What the harnessing of a certain kind of sectarian idea allows to happen is it allows for Jews to be used as pawns in this colonial dynamic.
And so untangling or distancing Judaism from Zionism allows us to kind of break through that very craven attempt to mobilize discourses of identity or of antisemitism for ends that have nothing to do with what keeps Jewish people safe or secure. Because the thing that keeps me and Ben and all Jews safe and secure is the same thing that keeps everyone else secure, which is having vibrant, cross-identity communities that are willing to stand up and defend each other when the state and ICE and cops and fascists come knocking. That is what keeps people safe, is vibrant communities of people who are willing to defend each other. And that’s part of what we are trying to do in JVP in general and with this hunger strike, is to show that we are willing to stand up for our Palestinian comrades. We’re willing to stand up for Gazans we have never met. Because we believe in modeling the future that we want to live in, where all people are able to live where they are, and be able to do so in a world full of justice and freedom, and what that requires is solidarity, and sometimes solidarity requires sacrifice.
Nima: Yeah, I actually want to talk about this idea of sacrifice and solidarity and the trajectory, or the kind of legacy, of protests, and this kind of protest, and, you know, deciding to take this step, as you both, and four others, have so courageously taken. How do you see this in the legacy of, not only anticolonial protest, but in the current ideas of solidarity? And also, where are you seeing avenues for hope? Where are you seeing optimism? I know that’s a very tough thing to maybe consider right now. I feel that as well, as my family is currently under Israeli bombing in Tehran and elsewhere around Iran. But where do you see the kind of state of solidarity and struggle, and you know, where do you see the optimism here?
Ben Teller: I mean, I think that it’s a fact that every struggle, every successful struggle, and ongoing struggle for liberation and justice, at one point, seemed implausible, even impossible, right? And it was only through people taking courageous action, making morally urgent demands, that it began to seem less so. From our tradition, there’s some Talmudic wisdom from Rabbi Tarfon that really speaks to me, which says, “It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” Essentially, you may not finish, but you must start. So sometimes you have to find hope through acting, I think, and the urgency of the moment really demands urgent action.
Adam: Let me ask you this question, because I know y’all are, the point of a hunger strike is obviously, to some extent, to try to get media attention around the issue. Obviously, Israel’s constant escalations with Iran and other sort of mired war crimes make it kind of hard to keep up. There was some sense there was momentum to alleviate the starvation of Gaza, at least a little bit, from certain European kind of talking-out-of-both-sides-of-their-mouths parties. Obviously, that’s all just rhetoric. It’s all fucking rhetoric. And then, of course, this latest escalation has moved attention away from that. Can you sort of talk about what the plan is with respect to getting people to care about this? Obviously, you have your bill in Congress that you’re sort of marshaling to get traction on it. Is there an effort to get more media attention? I mean, obviously y’all are working with partner organizations. What is the kind of strategy over the next few weeks to get people to give a shit about this?
Ash Bohrer: Yeah. I mean, I’ll say a few things about this. The first is that as Israel hurtles the entire region toward massive and devastating regional war, it is important to remember that it is not only Gazans and not only Palestinians who have been on the receiving end of Israeli weapons these last, you know, 20 months. It’s also Syrians. It’s also Lebanese people. It’s also Yemenis, and now, obviously, Iranians as well. Part of our demand to all levels of government is that we do everything in our power to stop arming Israel. It’s the same bombs, right? And it’s the same blank check of weapons and bombs and military tech and political clout and cover that allows Israel to starve two million Palestinians as it does to bomb Iran.
And so as the situation unfolds and accelerates and gets worse, I think part of, the sort of topline demand here is to stop arming the power that is doing all of these things, and is able to do so only because the US gives its political backing in the media, in the UN, on the international stage, and literally supports it materially with money and weapons in order to carry it out. So that’s the sort of overarching strategy piece, and why, as things accelerate and get worse and worse regionally, why the starvation of Gaza has to remain a central point in our overall vision of what’s unfolding.
Locally, we’re doing events every day drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is manufactured by Israel and the United States, and the groundswell of Americans, and specifically Chicagoans, who are standing up in order to resist it. So over the course of the next few weeks, we’re having daily events. At this point, I think we’re up to 33 co-sponsoring organizations, though I request to co-sponsor talks and teach-ins and protests and Shabbat services, and all kinds of things are ongoing, and so that list is growing. I’ll say, if people want to follow what we’re doing and want to come out to our events, the best place to follow us is on our Instagram. We’re also on Tiktok and Bluesky. We’re @JVPChicago on all social media platforms, except for Twitter, because we don’t fuck with Elon Musk.
Nima: Before we let you go, in addition to folks paying attention to what events are coming up, making sure that they spread the word, are there any other maybe partner organizations that you really want to kind of focus on, have people pay attention to follow, support, just, you know, shouting out, not only the incredible work that JVP and JVP Chicago are doing, but anyone else you want to kind of give voice to so people can really follow this and get involved?
Ash Bohrer: Yeah. So I’d say the first two things we’re going to ask people to do is call your reps, right? And get them to start working on an actual arms embargo on the Israeli government. The second thing that we’re doing is we are doing a massive fundraising campaign for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, which is an organization run and operated by Gazans that could not be more different from the sham of an aid organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that you talked about earlier. If and when we do succeed in lifting the inhuman blockade of Gaza, they’re going to need money in order to get supplies in and actually alleviate the starvation, in order to provide medical care and medicine to the women, children, and men of Gaza. So if people are as incensed as we are, that is the first two things that they should do. It’s MECA, the Middle East Children’s Alliance.
Nima: That’s right, and you can visit them at MecaForPeace.org.
Ash Bohrer: And then if people are in Chicago, they should come and support. There’s so many organizations that we’re partnering with. I’ll name just a few. We’re working with Educators for Palestine, Cultural Workers for Palestine. Later in the week, we’ll be working with the US Palestinian Community Network, USPCN. We are working with If Not Now. We’re working with Tzedek Chicago. We’re working with the Illinois Divest Coalition, Palestinian Youth Movement, and many, many, many other organizations over the course of the next few weeks. Wherever you are, plug into the community organizations that are standing up to defend Palestine in this moment. It doesn’t have to be JVP, but as long as it’s something.
Nima: Well, it has been so incredible to talk with you both. We’ve been speaking with Ash Bohrer and Ben Teller of Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago. Just really cannot thank you both enough for joining us today. Of course, as we’ve been discussing, Ash and Ben, along with four others, are currently on a hunger strike to demand an end to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, unconditional military aid for Israel, and an end to the deliberate blockade of food and medicine to over two million Palestinians in Gaza right now. Ash and Ben, thank you so much for joining us today on Citations Needed.
Ash Bohrer: Thanks for having us.
Ben Teller: Thank you.
Nima: And that will do it for this Citations Needed News Brief. Of course, you can follow the show on all the social things. You can become a supporter of our work through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated. We are 100% listener funded. But before you do any of that, definitely go to JVP. Go to MecaForPeace.org. That is far more important. We will be back very soon with more News Briefs and more full-length episodes of Citations Needed. So stay tuned for that, but until then, thank you all for listening. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: Citations Needed’s senior producer is Florence Barrau-Adams. Our producer is Julianne Tveten. Production assistant is Trendel Lightburn. The newsletter is by Marco Cartolano. The music is by Grandaddy. Thank you again for listening, everyone. We’ll catch you next time.
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This Citations Needed News Brief was released on Thursday, June 19, 2025.
