In 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, asserted: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country … expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
On August 22, 2025, the U.N.’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) issued a report on Israel’s ongoing famine campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza, noting, “Famine is not about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival.”
Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, issued a warning that said, in part:
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.
Netanyahu insists that says no one in Gaza is starving: “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza. We enable humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza – otherwise, there would be no Gazans.”
However, in July, Pres. Donald Trump disagreed with Netanyahu’s claim of no starvation in Gaza, noting the images emerging of emaciated people: “Those children look very hungry.
Two of Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
As reported by The New York Times, “Amichay Eliyahu, a far-right lawmaker who leads Israel’s Heritage Ministry, said in a radio interview that ‘there is no nation that feeds its enemies,” adding that “the British didn’t feed the Nazis, nor did the Americans feed the Japanese, nor do the Russians feed the Ukrainians now.’”
Israel’s famine campaign is part of a gruesome strategy of exterminate and/or removal promoted by ultra-rightwing Zionists and implemented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; it is supported by Pres. Donald Trump who has called for Israel to take over Gaza and move the Palestinians out to neighboring countries, including Jordan and Egypt.
Leading Israeli politicians have promoted the extermination campaign. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza; he argued, “President Trump has made it clear: Israel can set a firm deadline – either all hostages return by Saturday, or we open the gates of hell,” Smotrich said. He urged Israel to “literally unleash hell” on Gaza. In addition, Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi called for of the Palestinian displacement and cutting electricity and water supplies; and Transportation Minister Miri Regev said that Israel should rebuild settlements in Gaza that it evacuated in 2005.
Most troubling, according to The Guardian, “classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians …”. It adds, this is “an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare.”
The Guardian also notes that Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has found that 53,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks. Going further, it states: “Fighters named in the Israeli military intelligence database accounted for just 17% of the total, which indicates that 83% of the dead were civilians.”
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Often forgotten when considering the Gaza extermination campaign is Israel’s role in fostering Hamas. Col. David Hacham, an expert in Arab Affairs in the Israeli military, dates Israel’s role in the fostering of Hamas to 1979 when Israel officials approved the establishment of The Islamic Center (aka Mujama al-Islamiya) in Gaza; it was a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. As Hacham told The Jerusalem Post in 2017, “Israel did not establish Hamas, but what was done in 1979 eventually led to what we know today as the terror organizations.” He added, “That was the original sin.”
In 1981, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who served as an Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told The New York Times that the Israeli government had provided him money to finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO.
In 2009, Avner Cohen, a retired Israeli official, told The Wall Street Journal, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” He confessed, further explaining that “Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas.”
Even more succinctly, former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) declared:
“… you look back at the history, Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel, because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat … So then, we as Americans, we say, ‘We have such a good system. We’re gonna impose this on the world. … So we encouraged the Palestinians to have a free election; they do, and they elect Hamas.”
In 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud party: “Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy.” The Times reports that Netanyahu long supported providing financial support to Hamas as a means to keep it “quiet.”
The website, The Holocaust Explained, notes: “The Nazi extermination camps aimed to murder and annihilate all races deemed ‘degenerate’: primarily Jews but also Roma.”
Sadly, one can only wonder: Have ultra-rightwing Zionist become 21st century Nazis?
Link : https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/10/the-politics-of-extermination/
