Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says more people are starving in the US than in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that only a few dozen people have been officially confirmed to have died of starvation among Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Israel's ongoing war with Hamas. At the same time, Netanyahu has dismissed the ICC's allegations as blatant lies.

The ICC's top prosecutor, Karim Khan, has requested arrest warrants for both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, asserting that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that these top officials have, among other things, committed “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, a war crime” and “extermination and/or murder… in the context of deaths due to starvation, a crime against humanity.”

The prosecutor also accused Israel of carrying out “other attacks on civilians, including those queuing for food” and “obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid.” However, Netanyahu vehemently denied these allegations in an interview with CNN on May 21.

“We have provided 500,000 tons of food and medicine to the population. We have taken in 20,000 trucks. We have opened the roads to bring those trucks in. We have opened the border crossings that Hamas had closed. I have had air drops, sea drops,” Netanyahu argued. “I mean, the whole thing is nonsense. People should know that food prices in Gaza have dropped by 80%. The market does not lie.”

According to RT, Mr. Netanyahu also said: “People talk about 23 or 30 cases of malnutrition in a population of 2 million people... Okay, America in 2022 has 20,000 deaths due to malnutrition. That's three times more than in Gaza.”

The Israeli Prime Minister continued to accuse the ICC of anti-Semitism, saying that “this kind of slander has long been directed against the Jewish people, and now it is renewed against the Jewish state.”

International humanitarian organizations and United Nations officials have long sounded the alarm about aid distribution problems, saying supplies are insufficient to avoid mass starvation in Gaza.

It is still unclear how many people have died of hunger outside hospitals across Gaza, but according to health officials in the area, at least 32 people, including 28 children, have died of malnutrition and dehydration as of April 1.

In March, a UN-backed report warned that more than 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population faced “catastrophic famine”, and two in 10,000 people would die daily from hunger, malnutrition and disease without “immediate” help.

The United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said on May 21 that food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has been halted due to lack of supplies and insecurity amid the Israeli offensive there. International aid deliveries have been significantly reduced since Israel intensified military operations in and around Rafah earlier this month, closing the border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

In the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths from malnutrition have more than doubled since before the Covid-19 pandemic to more than 20,500 by 2022. Malnutrition particularly affects older and low-income Americans, especially those with underlying health conditions or without reliable access to healthy food and health services, and the majority of deaths occur in people 85 and older.