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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Trump, breaking with Netanyahu, acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza. Reddit discussion.

This makes him the first right winger I've seen say anything about starvation after something happened recently that made lots of places start talking about it, maybe the move to GHF food distribution? I can't really trust the UN when they talk about it, since they may have been still pissed that Israel cut UNRWA out, plus I heard it was only two dedicated Gaza writers putting out statements of that kind. I can't really trust leftists when they post about it, because they fail to show me their homework and seem to argue a very motivated stance. But Trump talking about it... I don't know about that either. He has spoken off the cuff before. But it brings me to ask: how bad is it? What footage did he see and is it reflected in the data?

Supposing that there is starvation: is that Israel's intention? What is Israel's strategy going forward? I thought that making camps to move civilians into was a good idea, and then once everyone's out, painstakingly clear the whole place, but I think that the international community wouldn't accept that because it's technically ethnic cleansing. There isn't actually anything the international community would be satisfied by except for total ceasefire and return to October 6th. But I don't actually know what the intention is, is the intention to draw Hamas out of hiding to get to the food somehow? I have a hard time discerning what is true about the war and what isn't.

  1. No nation at war has ever been required to feed the opposing army's solders (obviously if taken POW, not the central case) or allow the opposing army's soldiers to be supplied with food by a third party
  2. The enemy army controls the area in which the populace lives
  3. The enemy army will seize the lion's share of food aid for their own soldiers, even if requires shooting their own people to get it

That's pretty much it. You can spend hours looking up historical practice around sieges, I don't know what else you expect to find.

No nation at war has ever been required to feed the opposing army's solders (obviously if taken POW, not the central case) or allow the opposing army's soldiers to be supplied with food by a third party

Doesn't Israel claim sovereignity over the area? This isn't "they won't feed foreigners", this is "people are starving within their claimed jurisdiction" which I think plenty of countries have been blamed for in the past. A pretty significant chunk of Mao and Stalin deaths were starvation in their own territory after all.

Doesn't Israel claim sovereignity over the area?

No, they do not.

I don't think they recognize any state's claim to the territory, do they? I guess that's not completely unprecedented, but I think in practice it is for populated territory.

I believe Israel recognizes the Palestinian Authority's claim, but they don't recognize the PA as a state.

Even with that, the PA doesn't really control Gaza anyway.

Yes, but recognizing one entity's claim to a territory that another entity controls isn't unprecedented at all.