Gaza has been a mess since the October 7th attacks on Israel. The region has been brought to ruin. Hostages have been taken, and some are still being held nearly two years later. Attempts to create a lasting cease-fire have fallen on deaf ears. Now images of starving children are popping up as food aid and relief supplies are not getting to the people who need it most. Rich Lowry is the editor-in-chief of the National Review. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to discuss a recent column in which he reminds everybody who’s ultimately to blame for starvation in Gaza- Hamas.
Lowry told host Larry Mendte that most of the blame for any famine in Gaza falls squarely on the terrorist group, as they use the bad optics to create the narrative they want: “If Hamas were a decent political authority, they just cared about the welfare of people in Gaza and wanted to feed them, there’d be no problem… [Instead] Israel has been trying to get food aid into Gaza since then, but it’s difficult because the UN won’t cooperate with this agency that Israel set up and Hamas is doing everything it van to obstruct this agency, so clearly things aren’t working. Nobody wants to see kids starving, so Israel’s going to have to change its approach, but it’s a really frustrating situation. At the end of the day it’s Hamas’s fault, not Israel’s.”
Lowry says the famine crisis has become a “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” puzzle for the Israelis to solve: “Look, nobody wants the humanitarian crisis. It would be better if there were no war, it would be better if Hamas would just sign on a reasonable cease-fire deal, but that’s not going to happen, and Israel’s taken responsibility for feeding the population, so it’s going to have to do a better job of it.”
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