Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Famine in Gaza

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Famine in Gaza
Plus: The Columbia settlement as a “blueprint” for going after other universities, South Park lampoons Trump, and more…
ERIC BOEHM
A food crisis in Gaza has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation,” according to officials from the World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations that provides nutritional assistance around the globe. They estimate that about 20 percent of the 2.1 million people still living in the besieged strip are facing starvation conditions.
Though the situation in Gaza has been worsening for months, the news seemed to break through in American media this week, as both The New York Times and The Washington Post published major reports on the ongoing famine. Citing the U.N. data as well as eyewitness accounts from doctors on the ground in Gaza, the Times reported that “hollow-eyed, skeletal children languish on hospital beds or are cared for by parents, who gaze helplessly at protruding ribs and shoulder blades, and emaciated limbs resembling brittle sticks.” The Post published a similarly stunning report, accompanied by this disturbing photo of an emaciated child in his mother’s arms:
“The latest reporting shows telltale signs of rapidly accelerating mortality—the kind of classic famine scenario we know from places like Sudan or Somalia,” wrote Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, in a thread on X. “This famine has now gathered momentum, accrued over months of worsening deprivation and the collapse of the relief effort due to Israel’s blockade.”

Following the Hamas-led attack that killed dozens of Israelis in October 2023, the Israeli military has invaded and pulverized much of Gaza. In March, Israel imposed a strict blockade on food aid into Gaza, a move that drew condemnation from the leaders of Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. When that blockade was partially lifted in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that “pictures of mass starvation” from Gaza could harm public opinion in the United States, which continues to support Israel’s operations in Gaza.

Now, those pictures have arrived. As conditions in Gaza worsen, it’s long past time to halt the fighting before more horrors come to pass.

New targets acquired. After getting Columbia University to pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations that it permitted antisemitism on campus, the Trump administration is preparing to target other colleges for the same thing.

The Columbia settlement “is now a blueprint for negotiations with other universities,” an unnamed White House official told The Wall Street Journal, which reported that Cornell University, Duke University, Northwestern University, and Brown University are among the schools in the administration’s crosshairs. If so, those schools can expect to see their federal grants cancelled and accreditations threatened—but the bigger question is whether they will fight back (as Harvard University has done) or bend the knee.

“We’re in a world now where the government can say to all these schools, ‘Hey, we’re serious, you’re going to have to pay the piper to get along with the most powerful organization in the world,'” said Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, told the Journal. “Which is the federal government.”

Scenes from…South Park: The irreverent (and often libertarian-coded) cartoon’s 27th season premiered this week with a skewering of President Donald Trump.
Fans of the show will no doubt notice that the president’s depiction—in style, mannerisms, and choice of boudoir-partners—winks at how Saddam Hussein was mocked in the long-ago South Park movie (which still holds up as a biting commentary on moral panics). The behind-the-scenes drama is even more interesting, as South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone recently inked a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount, which is simultaneously trying to curry favor with the Trump administration in order to secure approval for its merger with Skydance.

Parker and Stone also mocked their own bosses for caving to Trump by settling a lawsuit in which Trump claimed 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Trump administration is apparently displeased by the mockery, but the ability to satirize the overblown egos of our political leaders is one of the things that makes America great. Few are better at it than Parker and Stone, who clearly haven’t lost their edge.

QUICK HITS
  • President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton are among the dozens of rich and famous “friends” who submitted birthday messages to Jeffrey Epstein for a 2003 book assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell.
  • Trump has ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Justice Department to begin “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings” as part of an effort to clean up city streets.
  • Donations to public broadcasting stations have reportedly surged since Congress voted to cut federal funding to PBS and NPR. That’s great! Better to have donors than taxpayers footing the bill.
  • Federal export restrictions on advanced semiconductors are working about as well as any federal program: An estimated $1 billion worth have been smuggled into China.
  • RIP to a “Real American.”
Thank you for reading,
Eric Boehm

Reporter, Reason
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Categories: Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

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