After more than a year of repeated warnings, the UN-backed Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) announced last week for the first time that famine is underway in parts of the Gaza Strip. According to the IPC, the lives of 132,000 children under five are at risk from malnutrition, and by the end of September more than half of all children in Gaza are expected to suffer from acute undernourishment.
In response, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF issued a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell warned: “As we have repeatedly said, the signs were unmistakable: children with emaciated bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying of hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children.”
UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk described the famine as “a direct result of the Israeli government’s actions.” Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissed the IPC report as a “lie” claiming – contrary to the entire international humanitarian community – that Israel is pursuing a “policy of hunger prevention.”
The Israeli government’s desperation to mask the consequences of its starvation strategy in Gaza can be seen in the wave of sinister ads saturating platforms like YouTube. Some smear the UN as the cause of the crisis, while others push the opposite claim – that there is no shortage of food in Gaza at all. Videos of supposedly bustling fast-food restaurants flash across the screen with the caption: “There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie.” These ads are sponsored by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
At the same time, while Israel’s war regime continues to promote the myth of “humane” and “proportionate” warfare – dismissing Gaza’s unprecedented civilian death toll as Hamas propaganda – investigations by 972 Magazine, Local News and The Guardian show that by May 2025, 83 percent of those killed in Gaza were civilians. Their research is based on an internal Israeli intelligence database.
Overall death toll estimates range from the UN’s conservative figure of 60,000 to over 80,000 according to an independent study that also counts the indirect effects of Israel’s campaign: hunger, disease, and the deliberate destruction of the health system. According to research by Yossi Bartal even these estimates are far too low and the death toll exceeds 100,000 – not taking into account the consequences of famine.
Against these harrowing figures of the unfolding genocide, the catastrophic consequences of Israel’s announced invasion are all too clear. The IPC identifies Gaza City as especially hard-hit by famine, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, according to the Times of Israel, expects up to one million people to be displaced. The invasion has already begun, with bombardments and troop incursions leaving massive destruction, as Palestinian journalists and organisations like Doctors Without Borders on the ground report.
The full-scale offensive is yet to come, pending the mobilisation of 60,000 reservists. Netanyahu has already rejected a ceasefire proposal by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. According to Haaretz, he is banking on Hamas rejecting his counter-offer in order to escalate the war further – despite mass protests in Israel calling for a ceasfire-deal.
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities continue to entrench the occupation and seizure of Palestinian territory. Right-extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the long-contested “E1” settlement plan, openly mocking European governments’ recognition of a Palestinian state. While many Western observers see this as the final nail in the coffin of a contiguous Palestinian territory, others point out that the occupation regime already fragments the West Bank at will, cutting off enclaves—including areas where “E1” is to be built – whenever it chooses.
None of this is surprising. Netanyahu and his cabinet are candid: there will be no Palestinian state and “autonomy” only to the degree that they dictate. Despite protests against his government, polls indicate that this position reflects the mainstream of Israeli politics, not a fringe view.
Germany, meanwhile, continues to act as though it is sincerely working toward a two-state solution. Its lofty appeals for “humanitarian conduct of war,” access for aid, and an end to illegal settlement policies ring hollow against the reality on the ground—one in which Germany itself plays a decisive role.
As Israel’s largest trading partner in Europe, second-biggest arms supplier, and diplomatic shield from international accountability, Germany is deeply complicit in the genocide unfolding in Gaza and the annexing of the West Bank. Neither its airlift of aid to Gaza, nor the symbolic curbing of future offensive arms export licenses (backed by a majority in German society), alters this. Moreover, such steps were only taken after opposition from within the foreign office – former and current diplomats – become to loud to ignore.
Netanyahu’s immediate response to the German governments moves – announcing a full offensive in Gaza and the launch of new settlement projects – made clear how little impression Berlin has made. This is no surprise: Germany has not revoked existing export approvals, only held back new licenses for weapons that might be used in Gaza. And as the Times of Israel notes, such deliveries accounted for just six percent of Israel’s imports in the first year of the war. Israels real dependency lies not in conventional arms, but in access to the German market and Germany’s delivery of billions-worth of custom-built submarines for Israel’s nuclear fleet, which also keep German shipyards profitably busy.
The only measure that could exert genuine pressure – economic sanctions – was ruled out from the start by Merz, despite calls from EU partners and a European Commission report concluding that Israel is in breach of the EU Association Agreement’s human rights clause. Instead, Germany has once again aligned itself with Netanyahu, alongside authoritarian partners such as the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, in the name of economic interests and preserving the infamous Staatsräson-doctrin. As Daniel Marwecki has put it in his analysis of Germany’s supposed “atonement policy“ towards Israel: “The price for Germany’s absolution is paid by others.”
The strongest step Berlin is willing to take is sanctions against individual settlers and institutions – while willfully ignoring the fact that settlement and annexation are explicit state policy. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel Katz, and Netanyahu are not coy: they see settlements as central to preventing a Palestinian state or any meaningful notion of self-determination of Palestinians. Behind the rhetorical invocations of a two-state solution, German policymakers have long known this formula is detached from reality. In 2023, former foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen to Chancellor Angela Merkel – who coined the Staatsräson-doctrin – told SPIEGEL bluntly: “We are intellectually unwilling to admit that there will be no two-state solution.”
Given Israel’s war regimes declared intentions and actions, there is little reason to believe the current German government would reach a different conclusion. By pretending that sanctioning “settlers” is a substitute for addressing the state policy of apartheid, displacement and dissposession of Palestinians, Berlin continues to deliberately mislead the public with a façade of commitment to peace that is not backed up by any meaningful political measures.
Democratic forces in Germany in the media and in politics at large have so far failed in acknowledging Israel’s real objectives in Gaza and the West Bank, and in insisting on serious measures from the government. Meanwhile, state oppression against the Palestinians and palestinian solidarity movement has reached unprecendeted levels of brutality, arbitrarriness and impunity. A comprehensive investigation was recently released by a coalition of Palestinian groups.
The glaring media bias favouring Israeli military and state sources above Palestinian and dissenting Jewish voices as well as the combined warnings of the international humanitarian community, have enabled the genocide in Gaza and ridiculed the very foundations of international law and justice.
At the same time, a marked shift has become evident in Germany’s mainstream media discourse and even within the political establishment, particularly after Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and intensified its policy of genocidal starvation against the people of Gaza.
The Israeli regime and its German lobby appear increasingly desperate – struggling to conceal the unconcealable – while lashing out aggressively at dissent from all sides. Progressives forces in Germany and across Europe who truly intend to uphold their universalist ideals, must keep pressing for comprehensive economic and military sanctions. There is no time to lose.
After the summer break, EU member states will debate an EU Commission recommendation to partially exclude Israel from the EIC Accelerator investment program. This would be a small but important step in the right direction, and one where Germany, as the EU’s largest country, wields considerable influence. The immediate suspension of the EU Association Agreement and total embargo of arms deliveries to Isreal must follow. It would not absolve either the current or previous German government of their responsibility for Israel’s genocidal crimes in Gaza. In the face of the horrors still unfolding, it would be the barest minimum.
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