Skeletal babies. Starving families shot down while waiting in line for food. Images and video of the famine in Gaza are now everywhere, and they’ve done in a few weeks what 21 months of war could not: squeeze empathy for Palestinians out of MAGA.
This week, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia became the first House Republican to publicly use the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis now gripping the Palestinian enclave. “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct. 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” Greene said in a social media post on her X account Monday evening.
More than 150 people have died because of malnutrition, including 89 children, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said this week. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 people have been killed, most by Israeli troops, since May while trying to access food and aid at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution centers. On Monday alone, Israeli strikes or gunfire killed at least 78 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip.
Greene’s comments coincide with growing global outrage over reports of mass starvation in Gaza since Israel first cut off supplies to the enclave in March, then reopened aid lines in May but with new restrictions. In recent days, photographs and videos of emaciated children and dying infants have proliferated across news and social media, as have videos of desperate Palestinians killed while waiting in line for food.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday that “there is no starvation in Gaza.” And commanding officer Effie Defrin, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, told reporters that most of the images were fake and distributed by the militant group Hamas. “It’s a campaign,” he said. “Unfortunately, some of the Israeli media, including some of the international media, is distributing this information and those false pictures, and creating an image of starvation which doesn’t exist.”
But even President Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel and Netanyahu, had to concede when asked about the crisis. “That’s real starvation stuff — I see it, and you can’t fake that,” he said Monday while in Scotland, where he met with European leaders and fielded questions about a crisis of another sort (his relationship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein). “We have to get the kids fed.”
The undeniable horror in Gaza has hit an inflection point, and while the spike in compassion among the MAGA set may be momentary, other world leaders are seeking solutions to the suffering with or without U.S. support. Late Tuesday, France and 14 other Western nations called on other countries to move toward recognizing a Palestinian state. The statement was signed by the foreign ministers of Andorra, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Slovenia and Spain.
Greene’s use of the word “genocide” is her strongest condemnation yet of Israel’s war conduct, and it deviates from the Republican Party line of unconditional support for that country. But she has also targeted pro-Palestinian lawmakers such as Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), accusing them of “antisemitic activity” and “sympathizing with terrorists” when they called for Israel to lift its blockade of humanitarian aid for Gazans.
Greene’s comments about Gaza were in part a rebuke to a Republican representative, Randy Fine of Florida. Last week, he said the images of skin-and-bones children in Gaza were “Muslim terror propaganda” and posted, “Release the hostages. Until then, starve away.” The New York Times reported that Fine’s remarks were made the same day he was promoted to a seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee where he would focus on international policy.
Greene posted Sunday that she “can unequivocally say that what happened to innocent people in Israel on Oct 7th was horrific. Just as I can unequivocally say that what has been happening to innocent people and children in Gaza is horrific.”
Recently, the IDF announced it would pause action in certain parts of Gaza for hours each day and increase aid drops. The death toll from the war in Gaza has topped 60,000, with more likely buried under rubble from nearly two years of fighting. Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in an Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel.
Though there has been an outcry over the staggering number of civilian deaths since the start of the war, increasingly graphic coverage of the Gaza famine has engendered new levels of outrage on both sides of the political spectrum. Too bad it’s taken the unspeakable suffering of babies, families and innocents to get us here.
