[Salon] As Israel starves and destroys Gaza, it’s turning into a global pariah

By Ishaan Tharoor

with Rachel Pannett

As Israel starves and destroys Gaza, it’s turning into a global pariah

Demonstrators gather Sunday in The Hague in the Netherlands, calling for action from policymakers on Israel. (Phil Nijhuis/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

After more than 19 months of brutal war, the patience of some of Israel’s Western allies appears to be running out. The renewed offensive on the Gaza Strip launched by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has provoked widespread anger and revulsion, as governments and humanitarian organizations point to the desperate conditions in the embattled territory. Dozens of Gazans have been killed by Israeli bombardments in recent days, while tens of thousands have been yet again forced to flee within a besieged enclave bereft of shelter and basic infrastructure.

Since the collapse of a brief ceasefire, Israel has impeded the passage of food and humanitarian goods into the territory. The unrelenting blockade has put more than 2 million people at critical risk of famine, my colleagues report.

In Brussels, the European Union announced it would begin a formal review of its trade accord with Israel, a move backed by what Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s top diplomat, said was a “huge majority” of the 27-member bloc’s foreign ministers. Britain, too, suspended ongoing free trade talks with Israel and levied sanctions on a number of figures associated with Israel’s pro-settler far right.

On Monday, a joint statement from the leaders of Britain, France and Canada said “the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable” and threatened Israel with punitive measures if it didn’t relent from its campaign against the remnants of militant group Hamas. Israel’s war — triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel — has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the local Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions,” the joint statement said. “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy makes a statement on Israel and the war in Gaza in the House of Commons in London on Tuesday. (House of Commons/AFP/Getty Images)

Facing pressure, Netanyahu’s government signaled that it would allow “minimal” aid into Gaza, though U.N. officials on Tuesday stressed that the urgent need was exponentially greater than what Israel seemed willing to permit. Netanyahu, meanwhile, appears compelled to placate his allies in the Israeli far right, who openly call for the destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and oppose allowing humanitarian relief to enter the territory.

In a video uploaded to social media Monday, Netanyahu explained his decision to let a paltry amount of aid into Gaza was one of optics, saying the Israeli campaign in Gaza “cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons.” The prime minister faces an ongoing investigation for war crimes at the International Criminal Court due in part to Israel’s record of denying vital food aid to Gaza. (Netanyahu has rejected the charges.)

Israeli officials insist that the current calls for restraint play into Hamas’s hands. A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, said Kallas’s remarks reflected “a total misunderstanding of the complex reality Israel is facing.”

“Ignoring these realities and criticising Israel only hardens Hamas’s position and encourages Hamas to stick to its guns,” he wrote on X.

Demonstrators hold a banner that reads “Refusing their war,” depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, during a protest Sunday demanding to end the war in Gaza, in Sderot, Israel. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

But Israelis, too, are finding their voice in opposition to Netanyahu’s conduct of the war. In an interview with the BBC, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said what Israel “is currently doing in Gaza is very close to a war crime. Thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed, as well as many Israeli soldiers.”

Yair Golan, leader of the left-leaning Democrats party and a former top general in the Israel Defense Forces, was scathing in his denunciation of the war. “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state among the nations, the South Africa of yore, if it does not return to behaving like a sane country,” said Golan, speaking to a public broadcaster on Tuesday. “A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal,” he said.

Golan was repudiated by Netanyahu and many of his political allies, including far-right leaders and cabinet ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — both of whom have called for Gaza’s conquest and depopulation. But Golan rebuffed their criticism.

“The intention of my statements was clear. This war is the enactment of Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s fantasies,” he said. “And if we let them enact them, we will become a pariah state.”

With reports suggesting that President Donald Trump, an inveterate ally of Netanyahu, is also growing frustrated with the pace of the war, a fear of isolation is shaking Israel’s establishment.

“There is nothing good about this state of affairs for either the hostages or the well-being of our soldiers who are fighting in the Gaza Strip,” wrote Nadav Eyal, a prominent Israeli commentator, in the mass market daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “It is sad and painful that this government … has led us into this corner.”

In Europe and the United States, politicians are also reacting to mounting public anger over the suffering in Gaza. In one of the biggest single protests in years in the Netherlands, tens of thousands marched through the Dutch capital of The Hague in opposition to Israel over the weekend.

Britain’s foreign secretary David Lammy, who has been criticized by colleagues further to the left for not taking a tougher line on Israel, offered a stark warning Tuesday for the Israeli government. “History will judge them,” Lammy said. “Blocking aid. Expanding the war. Dismissing the concerns of your friends and partners. This is indefensible. And it must stop.”

On the same day, Tanja Fajon, Slovenia’s foreign minister, said not confronting Israel would cause harm to the European Union as a political project. “The EU’s failure to clearly and forcefully condemn Israel’s killing of civilians … is causing irreparable damage to the reputation of the E.U. globally and at home. People, children are starving, aid workers are being killed, and the E.U. is still silent?”

And there are glimmers of a reckoning in Washington, too. At a Monday panel event I moderated on prospects for peace in Ukraine, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado) said that the United States has “lost a lot of our ability” to talk about international humanitarian law and human rights on the world stage because of its inconsistency in applying these principles to all conflicts.

When it came to Israel, neither the Trump administration nor its Democratic predecessor chose to enforce existing U.S. laws that condition the provision of military aid to foreign countries on matters of human rights. “It really undermined our legitimacy and our standing, to this day,” Crow said.