Last week, in a piece for the Guardian, Nick Maynard, a volunteer surgeon at a hospital in southern Gaza, wrote, “I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her.” The humanitarian situation in Gaza, which was already dire, deteriorated even further in July, with sixty-three people, including twenty-five children, dying from malnutrition-related causes, according to the World Health Organization. This past weekend, Israel announced that it would pause some military activity in the territory and allow more aid in, although it remains unclear how long that pause will last.
As more reports and images of emaciated children emerge from Gaza, close Israeli allies, such as France and the United Kingdom, have issued harsh critiques, calling the current humanitarian situation a “catastrophe.” Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, announced that his country would become the first member of the G-7 to recognize a Palestinian state, and Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, has also promised to do so unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire. On Monday, even President Trump acknowledged that children were going hungry. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has continued to insist that there is “no starvation in Gaza.”) Two Israeli human-rights groups have begun referring to Israel’s actions as “genocide.” The scale of the crisis has also caused a number of American politicians and commentators, including defenders of the war, to argue that more aid needs to be allowed into the territory, or that the war itself has become unjust.
Amit Segal, the chief political correspondent for Israel’s Channel 12, is widely considered one of the country’s most influential journalists. Segal is a prominent defender of the Netanyahu government. He has written on topics such as what he calls “The Settler Violence Scam” and the need to annex parts of Gaza. Last week, he wrote a piece for the Free Press in which he said that “Gaza may well be approaching a real hunger crisis.” He approvingly quoted the Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur, who said, “It’s hard to convince Israelis of that because literally everything said to them for 22 months on this topic has been a fiction.” He also wrote that without Hamas’s “gleeful hoarding of food,” Gaza “would not be facing the current food shortage.” (The following day, Reuters reported that an analysis conducted by U.S.A.I.D. found “no evidence of systematic theft” of U.S. humanitarian supplies by Hamas. Another report, in the Times, said that Israeli officials privately agree that Hamas has not systemically looted United Nations aid, directly contradicting a central talking point of the Israeli war effort.)
I recently spoke by phone with Segal. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his wavering opinion on whether there is hunger in Gaza, his support for Trump’s plan to develop Gaza without Palestinians, and just how much power the extreme right has over the Israeli government.
For Americans who might not know your work, you’re often talked about as someone who’s very familiar with Netanyahu’s thinking. Are you in touch with—
Yeah, that’s correct. I’m not the mouthpiece of Netanyahu. I’m a right-winger, but not more than this. I speak only for myself.
I just meant that people say that you understand his thinking and have good sources in the government.
I wouldn’t deny it. Yes.
So tell me what caused you to write this piece for the Free Press saying that there was grave concern about the food situation in Gaza.
So, first of all, I don’t think there is hunger in Gaza. I want to put that first and foremost.
You do not think there is hunger in Gaza?
I don’t think that the hunger campaign that Hamas runs in the international media is anything remotely connected to the truth. However, I do think there is a situation that can actually deteriorate to something like this. For the past twenty-two months, Hamas has been running a hunger campaign in Gaza. Israelis and maybe some Americans are wary of these accusations because they know it’s propaganda. The fact that there is a developing crisis does not emanate from Israeli decisions, but from a cynical game played by Hamas and the United Nations. However, Israel will be blamed for it. That’s why I want Israel to be wise and not only to be just.
Just to be clear, your article does talk about a “hunger crisis” in Gaza.
Developing. Developing. [The piece is titled “The Price of Flour Shows the Hunger Crisis in Gaza.”]
There are reports of starvation deaths in Gaza. Are you denying those?
I doubt ninety per cent of it. I can’t tell you that it doesn’t exist in specific places or specific people, but I don’t think that the numbers Hamas and the international media quote are the numbers.
One of the things your piece says is that, essentially for the entire duration of the war, there’ve been false warnings about a hunger crisis. Why do you think the warnings were false previously?
Hamas tried to depict a picture that did not exist. There was no hunger in Gaza. For years, Hamas has claimed that Gaza is starving. Hamas always used this weapon of alleged hunger in order to get more humanitarian aid. [A U.N. study from 2022, prior to the war, found that more than three-quarters of Palestinian families reduced the number of meals they consumed because of a lack of food.]
The Times reported that “at least 20 Palestinian children had died from malnutrition and dehydration.” So we’re not denying that people have died, right?
No, we do not deny that people died. We just are not sure that people died from dehydration or starvation.
That report I just quoted was from March of 2024.
I see. I beg to differ with the New York Times because the New York Times bases its reports on Hamas sources. The New York Times relies heavily on stringers in Gaza that have two options: either report what Hamas wants or die, and I blame the New York Times for this. The head of the legal department of the New York Times told me, How can you blame us for writing what Hamas wants? Our journalists died because in the past they reported things that Hamas didn’t like.
This person told you this on the record?
They wanted to sue me when I claimed that they relied on stringers who collaborated with Hamas.
So they told you this privately?
Yeah. You can quote it. [David McCraw, the lead newsroom lawyer at the Times, was identified to me later by Segal as the person who allegedly said this. McCraw told The New Yorker, “I never said any of that. We never threatened to sue him. And our journalists have not been killed by Hamas.” In 2023, McCraw asked Segal to make corrections to some statements he had made on social media, including that the Times employed “ISIS-embedded stringers.”] So even if we take into account the fact that twenty children died of dehydration, which I doubt and which the I.D.F. doubts, there is no way to double-check it. [In the past several days, a number of news organizations have called on Israel to allow international reporters to enter Gaza, something that it has thus far largely restricted them from doing.] What can make hunger in Gaza is the unholy coalition between the U.N. and Hamas. Each and every organization in Gaza has to pay at least fifteen to twenty per cent of the humanitarian aid directly to the pockets of Hamas.
I assume you don’t believe the Times’ recent reporting that, in fact, Hamas has not systematically stolen U.N. aid, despite what Israeli officials have been saying.
I invite you to read my report today. It is on on X. It shows how false this report is.
The U.N. and Hamas are not on a campaign to feed Gaza. They are on a campaign to stop the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (G.H.F.) from the distribution of food to Gaza. Why is that? Because they want a monopoly.
The G.H.F. is the private nonprofit set up with American and Israeli backing to deliver food.
Let’s admit it, it’s an Israeli-American creature that is focussed on feeding Gazans.
Well, the Israelis have said they’re not funding it. Are you saying that they are?
I don’t know if there is direct funding, but Israel is the organizer of the G.H.F.
There has been a lot of time spent denying that.
Israel is behind this foundation, but the idea is noble and it is to keep humanitarian aid from becoming a weapon for the survival of Hamas. Now, here’s the question to you: Why is the U.N. obsessed with the G.H.F.?
The hundreds of people who have been killed at G.H.F. sites?
No. This is what Hamas claims and what the New York Times quotes. By the way, the vast majority of people killed in the G.H.F. were killed by Hamas. Hamas tried to kill and shoot people who came to take food from G.H.F. because the purpose is to save Hamas’s regime. [The vast majority of the deaths at or near G.H.F. sites have been attributed to the I.D.F.; Haaretz reported last month that the Army was deliberately firing at Palestinians seeking aid.] By the way, I’m not the only one to understand this. President Biden, in October of 2023, actually forced Israel to provide humanitarian aid, right? And then he said, and I quote, “If Hamas diverts or steals the assistance, they will have demonstrated once again that they have no concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people, and it will end. As a practical matter, it will—it will stop the international community from being able to provide this aid.”
For a long time, people have been saying that there’s going to be mass starvation in Gaza. Even Netanyahu, a few months ago, warned about reaching “a point of starvation” after there’d been a complete shutoff of aid into the territory. Subsequently, more aid was allowed in. You are saying all these warnings were essentially not correct?
I say that Gaza is not the United States or Israel or Albania, in which the regime takes care of the wellness of its people.
But you’re aware there was a complete cutoff of aid for months, right?
There was a cutoff from March to May. But here’s the question: If the cutoff was between March and May, how come the hunger and starvation began in July? [Multiple aid experts told The New Yorker that the worst starvation would arrive some time after a total aid cutoff. As Arif Husain, of the World Food Programme, told The New Yorker, “It is a delayed effect. Households and markets will have some stocks which then run out if no further supplies arrive.”]
And the answer is because Hamas steals the U.N. humanitarian aid in order to sell it or to store it and to sell it later. [The New York Times reported last week that the “Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter. In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.”] So the problem was fully created by Hamas, not by an Israeli decision to genocide Gaza. Israel is the only country on earth that provides humanitarian aid to the enemy in the middle of a war. It’s the only country on earth. There isn’t a single country that ever did it.
The question is whether Israel will allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. They weren’t paying for the U.N. aid. Many countries allow foreign aid to enter war zones.
The only one interested in feeding Gazans these days is the G.H.F.
There have been some right-wing ministers in the government, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who’ve made comments about how aid should not be allowed into Gaza. I assume you’re going to say that’s not the official policy of the government, correct?
Right, exactly.
O.K., but do Smotrich and Ben-Gvir want the genocide you said wasn’t going on? It’s a little confusing to have people in the government essentially saying out loud what people are accusing Israel of doing.
This is the nature of the parliamentary regime of a multi-party coalition. Just to put things straight: Smotrich didn’t say that humanitarian aid should not enter. He said that it should be done through the G.H.F. [At multiple points during the war, Smotrich has blocked or spoken out against aid entering Gaza, and, in 2024, stated, “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”]
Ben-Gvir actually did say this, along with many other stupid things. In the first months of the war, there was a consensus in Israel. Yair Golan, the center-left politician, said, on the fourth day of the war, that we should not allow humanitarian aid into Gaza until the hostages are back. So it was a consensus. If you look at the indictments in The Hague against Israel, you would see many quotes, and many of them belong to the center-left.
This is what’s confusing. If no aid should be let in, then people are going to starve. And you’re saying that’s a consensus in Israel, but you’re also saying Israel’s not going to starve anyone.
No, no, because it’s two different things. First of all, there is a difference between a war that lasts, I dunno, a few weeks and one that lasts two years. And, second, it’s theoretical because, when President Biden arrived in Israel, in the second week of the war, there was a decision made by the Israeli cabinet that humanitarian aid would enter Gaza.
Israel cut off aid completely, as we talked about, for over two months, between March and May, and after that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was set up, and it was set up in part because Netanyahu didn’t want to be seen as allowing aid into Gaza. That’s why it was given this American imprimatur, because he didn’t want to piss off the far right, which doesn’t want aid to enter.
No, not at all. This was a Smotrich initiative.
So why is Israel denying they are behind it?
I guess because it would not help Gazans if the food had an Israeli flag on it.
O.K., go on, that seems—
There are rumors that Israel is funding the G.H.F. I haven’t seen proof so far. But Israel is behind it. But I have to ask you something. You spoke about twenty children who died a year ago in Gaza from dehydration. If it happened, it’s a tragedy. I don’t think there is anyone who wants to see babies and children die.
Maybe people in the Israeli cabinet, but beyond that.
There isn’t a single Israeli minister that wants to see babies die. You know how I know it? Because Israel has a nuclear weapon. If Israel really wanted to have a genocide, it would’ve done it already. I know it’s a waste of time to speak to a liberal news outlet in the United States about the numbers. You won’t find a single initiative by an Israeli cabinet minister that wants to kill babies on purpose.
You know about Ben-Gvir and the wedding.
Which one?
Where there was dancing.
Which one?
Pretending to stab Palestinians.
It was a disgusting event in which someone stabbed the picture of a baby. And it was disgusting. [In 2015, at a wedding that Ben-Gvir attended, dancing guests held up a photograph of a Palestinian baby who had been burned to death by right-wing Israeli extremists several months earlier, and one guest stabbed the picture with a knife. Ben-Gvir was the lead arsonist’s attorney. He later called the display at the wedding “stupidity.”] And there were indictments because Israel is a law-and-order state. Ben-Gvir didn’t do it. Maybe he participated. I wouldn’t have taken part in an event like this.
That’s good to know.
O.K., there are seven very big reports in The New Yorker about the so-called starvation in Gaza. But there are zero reports about a genocidal event, the massacre of Druze in Syria over the last few weeks, and zero reports about seven million [displaced persons] in Congo. I just want to offer the idea that the West is preoccupied with the state of Israel murdering and genociding Gazans and Palestinians even when there is no proof.
You just said “so-called starvation.” In your own piece, you quote someone saying “mass starvation seems inevitable” without a change of strategy. But it’s a little confusing because, if Hamas decides who eats, then why is Israel changing its policy? If Hamas has all the food, it can do whatever it wants. Why has there been panic in official Israeli circles that things are getting out of hand?
Hamas does it, but the world blames Israel for it.
But why will a policy change by Israel matter if Hamas is controlling everything?
Because once you flood the area with food, you actually prevent this argument from being heard. There is footage today from the markets in Central Gaza in which there is plenty of bread and flour and food and each and every kind of commodity. [When I followed up to ask what footage he was referring to, he sent me a clip that he said was from the Abu Ali Express, which Haaretz has called a “news channel for psyops.” The video appears to show two young men in a room containing some food supplies putting small snack packages in a bag.]
In 2021, Ben-Gvir tweeted a photo of the two of you together and said that you signed a personal dedication for him in the book you had written. What was it?
I don’t really remember. I sold eighty thousand copies of the book. You can take the fact that he bought a book and asked me for a signature in the Knesset as evidence that I’m his best buddy. But, if you want to make a good journalist, no, no, no. I think he’s a clown. I think I defined one of his Knesset members as a terror supporter.
Let’s take a step back. As you see it, what is the long-term goal of the war at this point?
The long-term goal of the war is to dismantle Hamas in Gaza, both militarily and as a regime.
The Times Magazine had a big piece a few weeks ago, basically saying that this war has been continuing for political reasons for well over a year, and that Netanyahu essentially knew that there was nothing left to accomplish militarily a year ago. And one thing that’s strange to me is that so much of the debate, both in America and Israel, includes these impassioned arguments about the purpose of the war. But the article, and much other reporting about Netanyahu, has made me think it’s not even clear he believes he can truly dismantle Hamas. What do you make of that dissonance?
The smartest thing for a politician to do, especially Netanyahu, is to win this war as fast and as decisively as possible. It’s very unpopular to have an ongoing war. When Netanyahu defeated Iran in twelve days, he enjoyed huge support. There is no logic behind the argument that Netanyahu wants to prolong the war. I read the New York Times story, by the way. I talked to one of the reporters who wrote it. He didn’t quote me, in the end.
Now the question is: Is there an alternative for a faster end to the war? And there is one: that Israel withdraw to the original borders, thus leaving Hamas free to re-arm itself. We’d exchange all the hostages for every single terrorist and murderer who is imprisoned in Israel, including those who committed the October 7th massacre. In my opinion, and in Netanyahu’s opinion and in the opinion of many, many Israelis, this would necessarily lead to yet another October 7th. Because, if you let Hamas stay as a power in the Middle East after doing those horrible things, it would pave the way for another event. Even the leaders of the opposition, most of them, when you ask them whether they would end the war and have the same borders, say no.
So this is why you support moving all Gazans from Gaza?
No, I don’t support moving all Gazans from Gaza.
You commented on Trump’s proposal to remove Gazans from Gaza that “there is no way in the world that we could have hoped for something better.”
But Trump did not offer deportation. He offered emigration. The fact now is that Gazans are not allowed to leave Gaza. Egypt blocks the road. All I want to do is to let Gazans be like Isaac or Amit and to live wherever they want. If it’s Gaza, so be it. If it’s another country, so be it.
Trump said they would not be permitted to return to Gaza.
First of all, I’m not a spokesperson for Trump.
You said you could not have hoped for something better.
I support the idea of letting Gazans emigrate. ♦
