As people in the Gaza Strip starve, some of Israel’s supporters and global allies, including President Donald Trump, are beginning to change their views on the humanitarian crisis in the region. Michelle Cottle, a national politics writer for New York Times Opinion, joins columnists Lydia Polgreen and David French to discuss this shift and Israel’s fundamental mistake.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Cottle: We’re recording this on Thursday and we are going to talk about Gaza, where things have reached a new level of horror. Recently, a U.N.-affiliated group stated that the worst-case scenario for a famine has been reached there. This seems to have caused a tipping point both globally and here in the U.S., and now politicians who had been mostly quiet when it came to criticizing Israel are starting to speak out.
News clip:
On Monday, MAGA stronghold representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
ramping
up her criticism, becoming the first congressional Republican to call Israel’s actions in Gaza, a quote, genocide.
Donald Trump:
We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are, that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake that.
Bernie Sanders:
U.S. taxpayers have spent many, many billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough.
Cottle: Let’s just get right into it.
Lydia, kick us off. You’ve been reporting on this issue for years — and in particular since October of 2023. Seems like there has been a sea change now in the number of people calling what is going on genocide and denouncing it. What do you think shifted and why now?
Polgreen: Obviously, in the immediate aftermath of the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel, everyone expected a response, and a strong response. And that is, indeed, what we got.
But I think that there were many people, myself included, who were listening closely to the kind of rhetoric that was coming out of elements of the Israeli government and worried that this was going to quite quickly tip into war crimes and possibly genocide.
We’ve reached a point now, with the freezing of aid to Gaza, where we’re seeing what is just an undeniable level of human suffering involving hunger. And hunger, I think, is particularly resonant because it’s such a universal human experience, right?
Historically, as I’ve covered famine and hunger across the world, it does have this ability to activate a response in people. It’s interesting because hunger is very intimately linked with the birth of the idea of and the coining of the word genocide. Raphael Lemkin, the man who invented the term in the Holocaust, really identified hunger and starvation as a critical weapon in this type of war.
And I think people know it when they see it. When you see these pictures of emaciated children, women who are unable to nurse their newborns, it just reaches a level of horror that becomes hard for really anyone, including President Donald Trump, to countenance.
I think that’s a big part of why we’re seeing this shift. There are a lot of longer-term issues that are at play here, but I really think that the emotional resonance of that is a big part of it.
French: Yeah. I’m seeing a shift even amongst people who’ve long supported Israel in this war, like me.
Why would you see that now? I think one of the reasons why you see it is that it’s beginning to dawn on people — it’s a very different scenario than Oct. 8, 9, 10. It’s a very different scenario than even the months immediately following.
In the months immediately following, if you were supporting Israel, you were presuming three things were going to occur: No. 1, there was going to be a very strong Israeli response just as there would be from any country attacked the way Israel was on Oct. 7.
No. 2, you knew immediately it was going to be very, very tragic — bloody, messy, horrible. Because Hamas had wormed its way into the Gazan infrastructure to such an extent that taking on Hamas was going to mean something like what happened when we took ISIS out of Mosul, for example, or out of Raqqa in Syria. This was going to be brutal, brutal urban combat.
And the third thing that a lot of supporters of Israel knew is that immediately, big parts of the international community were going to turn on Israel — and that happened as well. Even in the first few days after the attack, you began to see harsh criticisms of Israel based on its early response.
That No. 3 thing did something, that immediate harsh criticism of Israel — really began to almost inoculate friends of Israel against criticisms of Israel. Because what you saw was, “Wait a minute, right after civilians have been massacred in their homes, you’re already after us for a military response that is exactly the one your own nation would do?”
That hardened people against critique. And why would they start to soften now? There has been fighting for a long time. Hamas has been utterly decimated as a fighting force. Hamas is not what it was before.
Now, it’s not completely dismantled, it’s not completely gone. So, I think there’s a very logical question that people ask, which is: “Wait a minute. After Hamas has been utterly decimated, it has a fraction of its fighting power. It has a fraction of the ability to govern and control Gazans — why are we having possible famine conditions now? Why now? Isn’t this when Hamas is on its back? Isn’t this when Hamas is the weakest it’s been in decades? Why now?”
And I think that has penetrated through, and now the consequences of that Israeli approach are fully coming home to roost now. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Israeli government is reacting with alacrity to the crisis that it absolutely contributed to causing.
Now, we have to talk about Hamas here. Hamas not laying down its arms, Hamas not surrendering the hostages, is a grave, grave issue, and that needs to be discussed more. However, Hamas’ failures to comply with the law of war, Hamas’ failures to release hostages, do not relieve Israel of its own obligations.
Cottle: So, taking a piece of what you’re talking about and what Lydia’s talking about — it does seem like we’ve reached a point where nobody in good conscience or who’s being honest about this, can look at the situation and think this is a situation that’s a regular war, so to speak, where you have hostility on both sides — once you reach the famine point.
Whatever Hamas is still doing, there’s something about starving a people to death that feels somehow different in kind than just bombing — which everybody assumes is a part of war, no matter how horrific it is.
It does seem like nearly two years down the road we’ve come to this. It’s just got a lot of people thinking about, what is the end game on some level?
Polgreen: Well, that’s a great point, Michelle, because there’s also been some really excellent reporting on this. There was a fantastic New York Times Magazine piece earlier in July that really laid out in forensic detail how Benjamin Netanyahu decided to essentially prolong the war in order to hold his coalition together.
There’s also been other reporting that has discounted the idea and shown that there’s really no concrete evidence that there’s been widespread aid diversion by Hamas. Now, aid diversion happens in every conflict situation; David knows this, I know this, having reported and been on the ground in these places.
Cottle: Yeah.
Polgreen: But there have been these fig leaf explanations and I think that really tough-minded, fair reporting has really raised questions about those justifications and rightly so.
Cottle: So, now Europe is upping the pressure, as David has pointed out. Britain has said they will recognize Palestine as a state if Israel doesn’t end the humanitarian crisis. France has said they will recognize statehood in September, period.
So given the escalation of international pressure, what about Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition? What impact is this having?
French: It’s very uncertain because you have to look at this also in a larger context, because in a larger context, Israel is riding very high right now.
Oct. 7 was arguably even worse than the surprise before the Yom Kippur war because so many Israeli civilians were killed.
So, from that low ebb — arguably the worst day in the IDF’s military history, as far as allowing harm to Israeli citizens — the Israeli military has recovered and has won on every front in a way that I think very few people expected.
I think that that has created a sense of impunity, in some ways, that Israel has pressed forward, shed off a lot of restraints that people in the international community wanted to put upon it, and won a series of very decisive and very important military victories.
That has led, I think, Israel to this position where it might be feeling a lot stronger and a lot less dependent on foreign approval and authority than it has in generations.
But that is extraordinarily shortsighted thinking.
The European powers are using what leverage they have — which is not a lot, to be honest — to try to ease this crisis. So, in one sense, you would say, “Is Europe rewarding Hamas by saying, ‘Hey, you get recognition even when Hamas is not dismantled.’”
And I see that argument. However, I keep circling back to the point that I made before: Hamas is decimated. It’s not destroyed. It’s utterly decimated.
I know why this all occurred: because of the initial Israeli approach that it stuck to, which is they did not want to occupy parts of Gaza and take responsibility for the safety and the security and the sustenance of its citizens that — we did that in Iraq, in the surge, we took responsibility for the safety, security, and sustenance of the people in my area of operations. And that way we were able to secure it and hold it against al-Qaida when al-Qaida tried to come back.
Israel didn’t do that. They played sort of this game of Whac-a-Mole with a giant mallet where they’re just pounding every place where they saw terrorists and then did not move into the decimated and destroyed areas and provide safety and security and make sure that Hamas didn’t come back.
So you just have this endless round of Whac-a-Mole. What it is doing is it is annihilating Gaza, and it’s creating exactly the conditions that you have now.
Polgreen: In thinking about the European response and, frankly, the somewhat shifting Trump administration position on all of this, it’s helpful to look at the broader regional context. David is absolutely right that Israel has had this string of quite spectacular victories.
They’ve knocked out the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The spectacular strike on the leadership in Iran, obviously not including the supreme leader, but other major figures there. The things that they’re doing in Syria, for example, that threaten to be incredibly destabilizing.
I think that when European leaders, and when the Trump administration looks at this broader picture and looks at the way that Israel is seeking to essentially export its “mow the lawn” strategy from Gaza — which is essentially to do these occasional decapitations and keep the situation under control beyond its own borders and acting almost like an imperial hegemon in the region that starts to conflict with other core interests of these countries.
The Syrian civil war was a powder keg. Tremendous suffering for Syrians, but it completely reordered the politics of Europe, right? The last thing Europe wants is a destabilized Syria that’s going to send huge numbers of Syrians that they’re desperately trying to get back into Syria, back towards Europe or even to Turkey.
So, I think that there are a variety of complex interests, even beyond the humanitarian horror, that are creating a significant amount of daylight between Israel.
You’re starting to see countries like Germany, for example — which, literally claims as its reason of state the protection of the state of Israel and the Jewish people for very understandable reasons given the history — there’s been a real sense of discomfort in having to reassess “What actually are our interests as Germany in this region of the world and what should our commitment to this particular government and its prosecution of this particular war be?”
Cottle: So, where do either of you think this is going and how it’s going to end? I know that’s a really open-ended evil question for something this big and complicated. But, for instance, a senior Hamas official has told news outlets that the group would hold out for a deal that ends the war with a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Can Israel fight Hamas indefinitely in this way?
French: It cannot fight Hamas indefinitely with this degree of intensity. But what you’re hearing about Hamas saying they want a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — that’s a big part of the problem. What nation, after what Hamas did, would not create buffer zones? Would not expand its ability to interdict if Hamas stays in power, if Hamas is still a governing authority?
This is the consequence of the fundamental mistake Israel made with its approach, which was that it did not want to occupy Gaza, but it wanted to defeat Hamas.
Pick one. That’s the problem. They set a goal that was not attainable with the tactics that they chose. That means that you just have this continued round of conflict.
Now, I’m not saying that if Israel had chosen the more conventional path in response to an armed attack like that — which is an occupation, a temporary governance and a handing over to civilian authorities following the cessation of hostilities and the restoring of peace — that that wouldn’t have been extremely difficult.
It would not have been neat and easy and clean. It would’ve been infinitely better than this.
Cottle: Yeah.
French: And yes, the international community would’ve been yelling at Israel over an occupation. There’s no question about that.
Here’s my concern: Has the ship sailed on that? Is this something now where when I talk about it, it’s just like a bunch of academics in a panel discussion?
Are we now at a point where Israel just has to say, “OK, we’re going to negotiate a hostage release, we’re going to negotiate a ceasefire” — and then have what kind of influence on the ground in Gaza? Allow aid in, but what happens next? It feels a lot more like a ceasefire, although incredibly valuable, is a prelude to almost a “Mad Max”-type situation as people sort out Gaza.
Who’s going to run Gaza?
One other thing: There’s been a lot of defense of Israel on the grounds that when America has fought, particularly in World War II, we were very violent. No doubt, no question. But I will tell you this, when we attained control of an area, we took care of the people in it.
And what happened is that people then in Europe voted with their feet. They could have gone over to the Soviet side, or they could have gone to the American-British side. And by the millions they moved to the American British side.
Why? Because we took care of people, as best we could. And that is not just humane, it’s not just legal. It’s smart to do that. It helps you over the long term to do that — and it’s just so sad, tragic and infuriating to see the total disregard of these lessons from history.
Cottle: Lydia, do you have any sense of what could happen, what should happen that would make this a better outcome?
Polgreen: I think the great difficulty in seeing a positive future comes from the cynical and tragic choices that were made in the past.
It definitely aligns with a lot of what David just said. But I will say that the fact that Hamas was in power in Gaza and was able to sustain itself for so long in Gaza was the result of a deliberate strategy by Benjamin Netanyahu to sow division between the Palestinian Authority — which he wanted to be weak — and allowing Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to the horrific Hamas administration in Gaza.
There’s just so much history here and there’s so many terrible and cynical decisions that have been made that make it very hard to clear away the cobwebs and see a future.
I think Israel is riding high, in one sense, having had all of these military successes beyond the envelope of its own territory and the occupied territories. But I think it’s also showing tremendous strain.
One story that I’ve been tracking for some time is the extraordinary amount of mental health strain on IDF soldiers. We’re seeing a spike in suicides. I would not be surprised if, just as during the Vietnam War in the United States, we’re going to see more and more young people in Israel saying, “Look, I don’t want to be a part of this.”
There was an American former Green Beret who was hired as a contractor to work for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation doing whatever this supposed aid distribution was. And he’s come back and just given absolutely chilling accounts. I think that that takes a toll.
So, I do think that there’s just a deep rot that Israel is going to need to contend with both in its policy postures, but also just in its populace and in its own psyche.
Cottle: So, let’s dig in a bit on President Trump and the situation.
So, he has said that he wants to make sure that humanitarian aid is reaching Gaza, which is breaking from Netanyahu’s claim that there is no starvation, however incredible that seems.
But I want to hear from both of you on how you think Trump’s shift potentially changes the entire equation, at least in terms of America’s relationship with and support for Israel.
Polgreen: I think one of the striking things about Donald Trump — because he’s such a brutish and crude person, who seems to enjoy cruelty — I think one of the repeatedly surprising things about him is that he really does have this almost an ick response to seeing suffering children.
But I don’t know that that actually has real longevity in terms of policy. I think it’s quite possible that we could see a quasi return to just enough aid to — certainly not stem off a wave of death, because I think we’re a little bit too far gone for that — but I think we could turn the page enough to satisfy that impulse of Trump’s to be able to just say, “OK, this is fine.”
Trump has said so many different things about what the end state looks like here from his perspective. We all remember the crazy AI video of the Gaza Riviera. He wants America to take it over. There are going to be bearded belly dancers and glitzy resorts and a gold statue of Donald Trump.
My big fear is that the Trump administration will essentially enable an ethnic cleansing of the area. I have complicated feelings about that because I think that if there are people who are in Gaza who want to leave Gaza in order to be safe, who am I to say they shouldn’t go?
I mean, obviously ——
French: Right.
Polgreen: People have a right to live. At the same time, this is one of the most explosive questions of modern times: What happens to the Palestinian people who are currently experiencing incredible violence, not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank? There is just an incredibly complex set of questions that need to be answered here.
So, do I have a lot of faith that Donald Trump and his administration can somehow finally, magically find a way to solve this problem that has bedeviled American presidents for generations? Absolutely not.
French: I think right now, Trump is riding high a little bit because of the Iran strikes and he is also very much riding high with a specific part of his base — and that would be the evangelical conservative base — very, very, very happy with the way he has backed Israel.
But, at the same time, the right is beginning to split on Israel. It used to be quite united on Israel, but now you have outright antisemites like Tucker Carlson, like Candace Owens and others, who have audiences, sadly, millions and millions strong. And they are relentlessly attacking Israel, just relentlessly attacking Israel.
So, one of the things that could end up out of this conflict for Israel is it could end up with a big military victory, but an American public — both on the right and the left — that is substantially less likely to support Israel in the future.
And my question would be, what did they then gain? What did they gain by continuing and pressing and pressing and pressing, if it’s fracturing relationships that Netanyahu may not need — who knows how much longer he’s going be the leading the Israeli government — but Israel will need.
Cottle: I have been completely fascinated by the growing objections from certain parts of MAGA, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has come out and called the situation genocide and they are pressuring Congress and the administration to do something about this crisis.
What do you think ——
French: But I am not necessarily surprised that Miss Jewish Space Lasers is doing ——
Cottle: I know, but she had been pretty supportive of Israel ——
Polgreen: Yeah, but I think quite significant also is you’re seeing the Joe Rogans, the Theo Vons, people in this podcast universe — and I think they represent not necessarily the MAGA base, because I don’t think either of them represent core MAGA, but they definitely represent the soft fringe that drifted towards Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
And there are a number of forces that are pulling that fringe away from Trump — maybe they go to the Democrats, maybe they become just disengaged — but I do think that the relationship with Israel and Gaza feels wrong to that group of people.
I’m always suspicious of the idea of “common sense,” but there is this version — I mean, common and common to whom? — there is this version of an ordinary person looking at this situation, just being like, what the hell? How can we be part of this?
Cottle: Well, one of the things that I do think has come out of Trump taking the new stand he has is it gives permission for Republicans in Congress who are Trump’s “ride or die” group to also come out and be a little bit more critical. And I don’t know where that will go.
I mean, none of us know where that will go in terms of does any action get taken? But I do think that if the leader has opened up a little bit of wiggle room there, he’s given his followers permission.
Polgreen: Yeah. If you give any kind of credence to the notion that there is an actual idea behind Trump’s America First foreign policy, then you could argue that we’re moving in a direction of having more transactional relationships and fewer relationships that are based on these ironclad ideas that we’re always with you no matter what.
We’ve seen that play out in Ukraine. We’re seeing that play out with NATO and other allies. And it’s been interesting to see how that attitude towards foreign policy actually plays out both on the left and the right.
I think that there was a tremendous amount of praise, for example, for Trump’s decision to recognize al-Shara, the new president of Syria, and drop the sanctions there.
Talk about not giving lectures about human rights to countries and things like that, that’s something that was welcomed not just on the right, but also on the left.
Trying to pull America out of these entanglements, I think, is something that has broad support in various political pockets.
Cottle: That speaks to David’s shortsightedness point about what Israel’s done because as anybody who’s been watching American politics on this, both parties have been pretty strong on that over the years. In recent years, there has been a split in the Democratic base, and I think that has gotten very dramatic in recent months with what’s going on over there.
This has long-term implications for what Israel can expect from America in terms of support. This is not just domestic political machinations that we’re talking about. This has major global repercussions.
Do you think this is a permanent issue in the Democratic Party or at least semi-permanent? Lydia?
Polgreen: I don’t like the word permanent because nothing is permanent ——
Cottle: No, I know.
Polgreen: But I think this is a huge realignment within the Democratic Party. It’s notable to me that Bernie Sanders has put up these resolutions repeatedly in the Senate to try and block the sale of certain kinds of weapons to Israel.
You’ve seen the number of Democratic senators that have voted in favor steadily ticking up, and the most recent vote was a high-water mark of 27 Democratic senators. It included people like Jeanne Shaheen, who’s hardly a hard-left figure and is the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Amy Klobuchar; Tammy Baldwin. I mean, these are normal, centrist Democrats. They’re not wild and woolly leftists.
In the most recent Gallup poll, the support for Israeli military action among Democrats was at 8%. So, I think there’s a feeling that this is the direction that it’s going.
And, of course, we just had this historic Democratic primary here in New York City where there was an assumption that the stances that Zohran Mamdani took on Israel were going to be essentially disqualifying — and in the latest analysis of the vote, it seems that it was actually the opposite.
His taking a principled stand on this issue, particularly for voters under the age of 45, was actually really crucial in pushing him to victory. I think there’s going to be a lot of revisiting of this question, you know, around the 2024 election, and ancient history and what happened in the past. But I think in the future … I think there’s, there’s just a fundamental break.
Cottle: Yeah. I’ve just noticed among the generational split in the party on the question of Israel — with younger voters being much more outspoken in their criticism — for a party that’s struggling having lost ground with the young voter, I’ll be interested to kind of see where this goes.
French: This is more consequential than I think Republicans realize. Republicans have drunk their own Kool-Aid for a long time on this idea that the Democrats are the anti-Israel party. This has been a talking point — when I decided way back in 2016 that I’m definitely not supporting Trump, the argument was, “Say what you want to say about Trump, but you’re abandoning Israel if you’re not supporting Trump.”
And my argument was that it was always extraordinarily exaggerated because when the chips were down, Democratic administrations came through for Israel in big ways.
Cottle: Absolutely.
French: So, one of the largest arms deals that Israel has ever had with the United States was with the Obama administration. When Israel was attacked by missiles from Iran, earlier in the Biden administration, Biden put American planes in the air to defend Israel.
This is a very, very, very big deal that the U.S. under a Democratic administration gave Israel a huge arms deal. It’s a very big deal that a Democratic administration protected Israel physically with American pilots.
And so the question that I have is, will that happen in the future? And there’s another thing that’s happening here that — let’s put this in an even bigger context — we’re getting to a point where negative polarization in the U.S. is beginning to leak into our foreign affairs in some pretty substantial ways.
You could end up in a situation where Israel is the Republicans’ ally, and Ukraine is the Democrats’ ally. And so depending on who wins the election, that orients who our allies are and are not. It’s just a terrible formula, not just for us — it’s a terrible formula for Israel going forward.
Cottle: OK. Obviously, we’ve just skimmed the very surface of all this, and there’s a lot going on that people could dig into. Is there anything either of you want to recommend that people read or watch or listen to, to get a good sense of the situation?
Polgreen: I have a couple of recommendations.
Cottle: Please.
Polgreen: Our mutual friend Isaac Chotiner did a rather extraordinary interview, as he often does ——
Cottle: So good.
Lydia: With Amit Segal, who’s a quite right-wing journalist in Israel. And in classic Isaac Chotiner style, he brings out something really interesting that helps us understand the Israeli right perspective in this interview. It’s on the New Yorker website. Anybody can read it.
The other thing that I’ve read recently, that’s quite a long read, but I think very much worth looking at, is an essay by the writer Adam Shatz in The London Review of Books called “The World Since Oct. 7.”
What Adam does in that piece is really zoom out and take in the totality of everything that has happened — both since Oct. 7 but also with the context of history and looking forward to the future. I think it’s just a magisterial, quite deeply felt piece that people will benefit from reading.
Cottle: OK. David, what do you got? Hit me.
French: Well, Lydia got one of mine, which is the Isaac Chotiner interview — which, by the way, I love what Lydia said about the way that he interviews. Because I have often thought if I get a call or a text or something that says, “Isaac Chotiner wants to interview you ——”
Cottle: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I’ve known Isaac since he was a baby. He’s now officially scary.
Polgreen: Having been once interviewed by Isaac Chotiner, I can tell you he’s a sweetie pie — as long as you’re not a total liar.
Cottle: That’s how people wind up in this situation ——
Polgreen: Yes.
Cottle: Obviously answer Isaac’s calls.
Polgreen: Anyway, sorry, David.
French: I definitely recommend it because you can see how it’s so hard for Segal to rationalize or justify what’s happening right now, even in this person.
The other thing that I would say is that we have a problem with is we have an enormous amount of background ignorance in American society about a lot of things that are so important.
So, I’m going to recommend a book. It’s not about Gaza and Israel, it’s about the U.S. and ISIS in Mosul. It’s written by our former magazine colleague James Verini, and it’s called “They Will Have to Die Now.” It is the story of the battle of Mosul, and there are two reasons I recommended it.
One, it demonstrates to you the extraordinary difficulty that a military force faces when they fight a terrorist force that’s embedded in a city. But it also shows that, in fact, there are better ways to do this.
Now, I’m not going to say we’re perfect in this, in any way, shape, or form. Let’s emphasize: It’s horrible. But you never had to get where we are today.
Cottle: OK. Well, there you go. I now have my excellent beach reads for the week. Thank you both.
French: So uplifting.
Polgreen: Yeah.
Cottle: It’s going to be a doozy. With that, let’s just land this plane. Guys, thank you so much for coming in and explaining all of this.
Polgreen: Oh, thanks for a great conversation, Michelle.
French: Yes. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Lydia.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.