How Netanyahu’s authoritarian government propagandizes for its starvation policy in Gaza

Two Haaretz columnists, Yarden Michaeli and Nir Hasson, give a memorable description of an important aspect of authoritarian rule that Benjamin Netanyahu has put on display with his absurd denials of the extremely well-documented starvation campaign he’s been conducting against Palestinians in Gaza. A campaign that Netanyahu’s and Israel’s hasbara (in formation operations) flat-out deny is occurring. They describe what one has to pretend is believable in order to swallow the official claims,

The claim that there is no starvation in the Strip does not stand on its own. It rests on additional assertions. For example: After 22 months of bombings, Hamas has managed to recruit actors willing to pretend that they are desperately chasing food trucks, some even agreeing to be shot to death by the IDF in service of the campaign; children are pretending to be waiting for exhausting amounts of time for food to be distributed; parents are staging footage of themselves scrounging for crumbs in the sand; doctors are giving false testimony while nurses enter fake data from clinical examinations; countless residents are using AI to produce images showing they have lost weight; and, finally, journalists from around the world are in on the deception. It's all a performance. The entire world is acting in the service of Hamas. [my emphasis] (1)

Michaeli and Hasson do their job as journalists and cite the actual evidence, including referring to:

[A] document produced by the UN coalition of experts known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, considered to be the leading authority on identifying mass hunger. Two weeks ago, it determined that "the worst-case scenario of famine" is unfolding in Gaza and noted that one in three people there goes entire days without eating. Additional documentation has been disseminated by the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam (which works to end hunger and poverty worldwide),Save the Children and many other reputable sources. Most of these organizations have field staff in Gaza who directly monitor and also treat starving children.

The main argument that Israel clings to is that the emaciated youngsters are suffering from preexisting conditions. First, this claim is accurate only with respect to a very small number of them. Indeed, starvation first strikes the most vulnerable, those who require special nutrition or depend on a properly functioning healthcare system. But even in the case of a young person with preexisting conditions – severe malnutrition is generally not inevitable. [my emphasis]

They ask their Israeli readers to imagine themselves in the place of the Palestinians as a way of seeing what an absurd claim the Israeli government and its leaders are making.

But this is an example of what we still call an Orwellian situation, referring to George Orwell’s famous book 1984. Authoritarian rulers expect their populations to believe or at least pretend to believe even obviously false and absurd claims. It’s something that cult leaders also do. Cults have specific social and psychological dynamics, but they make particular use of the dynamics of mass psychology that also function in political and mainstream religious institutions.

Still, it’s important to understand the specifics of individual efforts to justify particular political action. And when it comes to genocide, it’s a critical element of understand it, much less trying to put a stop to it.

Michaeli and Hasson make this suggestion for how Israelis can attempt to gain a more realistic perspective on the situation than the huge fiction painted by Israeli hasbara:

Here's a thought experiment for anyone who still believes that there is no mass starvation in the Strip. Take the entire population of Jerusalem – including children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled – and now add everyone living in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Move them all to live in tents on beaches, or in the streets or in abandoned buildings, with no electricity, no running water, no cooking gas, no refrigerators or cupboards –and only one toilet for every 100 to 200 people. They will live intents that are gradually falling apart, while rivers of sewage flow between them. Around them will be swarms of mosquitoes, rats and wild dogs.

Freud made a famous and, for him, uncharacteristically optimistic Enlightenment observation about people’s ability to work their way to reality, even when there are strong social and psychological impediments to doing so:

We may stress as often as we like that the human intellect is powerless in comparison to the human instinctual life, and be correct about this. But there is something special about this weakness; the voice of the intellect is mild, but it does not rest until it has made itself heard. In the end, after countless repeated rejections, it makes its point. This is one of the few points on which one can be optimistic about the future of humanity, but its significance in itself is not small. (2)

That hopeful note is small comfort at the moment for the children and adults being deliberately starved to death by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government right now.

But it’s important for journalists like Yarden and Hasson and for activists against the genocide to insist on the reality and to refute the cultish propaganda on the Israeli government is currently insisting.

Here is a recent report from Kyle Kulinski on the situation. (Note: Kyle doesn’t always stick to safe-for-the-office language.) (3)

Notes:

(1) Michaeli, Yarden and Hasson, Nir (2025): 'There's No Hunger in Gaza,' Say Netanyahu, the Israeli Army and Media. Meanwhile, Starvation Worsens. Link to full article: Haaretz 08/14/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-14/ty-article-magazine/no-hunger-in-gaza-say-netanyahu-the-israeli-army-and-media-as-starvation-worsens/00000198-a8a1-d539-a5b8-fdf186180000?gift=5da281389ce44e9ca50d7650020a8f8b> (Accessed: 2025-15-08).

(2) Freud, Sigmund (1927): Die Zukunft einer Illusion. In: Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke XIV (1948), 377. London: Imago Publishing Co. My translation to English.

(3) Here’s Exactly How Israel Is Starving Gaza To Deth. Secular Talk YouTube channel 08/14/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1mwWpniv_Y> (Accessed: 2025-15-08).