The Daily Signal - Why Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza Famine

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

A Columbia University professor says Hamas is responsible for the ongoing famine in Gaza.  “It is in Hamas' interest, as they have defined it, to actually create a situation of misery and starvation, rather than worrying about its population and making sure that its population stays safe,” according to Awi Federgruen, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a global supply chain expert.  The United Nations says there is a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza, which has led to additional pressure on Israel to allow more aid into the region, but Federgruen says the problem lies more in the aid not reaching the people it is intended to help. “A quick analysis shows that the amount of food that is coming in from Israel is absolutely plentiful to feed every single individual that lives in Gaza,” the professor says.  In recent weeks, Federgruen says, food truck deliveries were slowed because “Hamas has chosen to send its rockets specifically to the crossings.”  Federgruen joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to unpack what is known about the food shortage in Gaza, and Hamas' role in blocking civilian aid. He also discusses the continued fallout from weeks of anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, May 23rd. I'm Virginia Allen. The United Nations says that there is a full-blown famine in northern Gaza, which has led to additional pressure on Israel to allow more aid into the region. But a Columbia University professor says that Hamas is responsible for the ongoing famine in Gaza. Ave Fedegroon joins us on today's show to explain the situation in Gaza. And why and how so much of that food that is being brought in is not getting to the individuals it is intended to reach and how Hamas is blocking it. Stay tuned for my conversation with Abe Fedegruin after this. Conservative women are problematic women. Why?

Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia. Allen are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, problematic women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. It is my distinct honor and privilege to be joined today on the show by Columbia University Business School Professor and Global Supply Chain Expert, Abe Fedegroen, Professor.

Thank you so much for being with us today. The pleasure to be here. So we're going to be talking quite extensively during this time about what's happening specifically in Gaza regarding the famine there and Hamas's role in this. But given the fact that you do teach at Columbia University, I'm wondering if you can just give us a little bit of an update on the atmosphere on campus, considering the fact that we watch protests unfold there for weeks, specifically pro-Palestine protests, anti-Semitic chants being heard across campus. Explain what exactly the atmosphere is right now, specifically among the faculty at Columbia University. Well, as you've read and seen, there are pockets in the faculty that are vocal sympathizers of these pro-gasm and pro-Gamas protesters. It's certainly not universally agreed upon and also opposed by other pockets of faculty members, such as myself. But there are pockets, powerful pockets in faculty that are lending their support in a very active ways to these encampments and to these protests.

And it's very disturbing. The faculty at Columbia just voted on a vote of no confidence. They passed a vote of no confidence against Columbia's president. What do you think that might lead to? It's hard to forecast that. It is clear that the president has been struggling with how she should respond. And she has managed to anger people on all sides with her actions or her changes of actions or what this will lead to. I know that the university or that there are people in the university that are trying to get at the issues very directly,

whether they will be successful, and the atmosphere remains to be seen. What, in terms of her personal fate, I couldn't tell you. That's up to the board, that's up to the board of the university. From my perspective, my intent and my activities are geared in that domain, are geared to cleansing a very anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic environment. What the mechanisms are will remain to be seen. Have you spoken to many Jewish students on campus about how they're

Of course I have, and there's widespread fear and grievances, fully understandable. People chanting, go back to Poland, people chanting. We will do October 7 massacres a thousand times, 10,000 times again. Who could not be deeply insulted, deeply breathed, deeply living in fear? So, yes, I've spoken to many students. And we're in touch with many students. If I email by other mechanisms. medium. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it probably means a great deal to those students that you're asking those questions. That's very significant. I want to pull for the next several minutes, the rest of our time that we have together on your experience, your expertise in the area, not only of Gaza and Israel, but specifically

of supply chains and understanding global supply chains and how that is affecting what we're seeing play out in Gaza right now, specifically around the food shortage there, the famine there, the UN has said that there is a full-blown famine in northern Gaza. Explain exactly what the situation is right now in northern Gaza. Okay, so there is this wide reporting in the mainstream media that either says there will be an imminent famine or that actually claims that there are famine. to begin with very little of, if any, evidence that it is happening. Now, that there's actually a famine in Gaza.

I'm not excluding that there might be pockets where there is a famine. All I'm saying is that the evidence of that is scanned if it is existing at all. I can tell you is that in thinking about the food supply and distribution, this is an example of a supply chain that has many stages and many actors that are important to make sure that the food gets there to the ultimate population. That supply chain starts with food coming in through Israel. We've been investigating this from day to day, what is happening, how much food is being sent. And as we described in several opeds, a quick analysis shows that the amount of food

that is being coming in from Israel is absolutely plentiful. to feed every single individual, every single individual that lives in Gaza. There are now, to be more precise, after a start-up, the number of food trucks that are coming in has been going up to 400. The defense minister, Gallant, of Israel,

said he will try to bring it up to 500. And there were several weeks in which that was regularly done every single day. Lately, the last two weeks, there's been a little bit of a point, in this, why and how? Because Hamas has chosen to send its rockets specifically to the crossings, make to the few crossings that there are, in order to prevent food from coming in. It is in Hamas' interest, as they have defined it, to actually create a situation of

misery and starvation, rather than worrying about its population and making sure that its populations they're safe. They're actually doing everything in their power to try to prevent it. And so temporarily, because it was under barrage and under shooting, and from a security point of view, it was very difficult. It had to close down certain crossings. Egypt, one of the crossings is a crossing near Rafa itself, which is coming from the Egyptian side,

and Egypt has prevented to cooperate to cross. But all of these attempts notwithstanding, things are being reopened. And I just checked this morning. We are back up to 250 truck loads. We ideally will receive 400 to 500 truck loads, although it's not even necessary to do so. That gives us more than double what we need.

That's the first part of the supply chain. Now, what happens after that, there are other people that need to take over in order to bring it. Isle cannot be responsible to actually make sure that food actually gets delivered house-to-house. it is not the governing authority by any means. It doesn't want to be the governing authority by any means.

In 2005, it may be delivered the decision to completely pull out of unilateral decision to completely pull out of Gaza. So other parties need to take over to bring that food once it's beyond the Gaza border and to distribute it to so that it gets in the hands of individuals. Who are people? Yeah. Well, I was just going to ask, how do you do? that effectively in a war zone? How do you have, make sure that they deliver safely?

Yeah. It's certainly a challenge, but it can and should be done. To the extent that the food is not arriving to the people that need it and for whom it is ultimately destined, it is because the subsequent chain, subsequent links in that supply chain. What are the subsequent and there are, what are those abstractsacan links? Those are provided by international aid organizations, the United Nations being a primary one. And one of the problems that may and may arise there is that there is insufficient capacity on their part.

In addition to that, as I said, Hamas is on record, not just from this war, but from prior occasions, to actually do two things that, compete on the distribution in a major way. One is that they are on record as being confirmed by many, including Congressman Jim Heinz, who was a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, of stealing the food away, and even going as far as killing aid workers.

To all prevent the food from coming there to population, it wants to create a situation where it can demonstrate to the world that the country is an impossible situation and all of that is then being used and exploited in order to say, well, gee, the situation is so bad, everything has to be done in order

to stop this war, which would mean keeping Hamas in power. And that's what's happening. So, to summarize what I was saying is that the provision of food is an example of a supply chain, like in most supply chains,

The supply chain consists of many different links. The initial link is secure, and Isl does everything in its power to provide more than enough foods for every individual, not on a persistent level, but we compare it against what the normal person is consuming. If there are 400 food trucks that are coming in every day, twice the amount that's needed to get a normal consumption pattern of people is actually being provided. That's the first link. That's the only link that Israel can be held responsible for it. So in other words, more than enough food in your assessment is entering Gaza to feed all the mouths. Right, right. Now, it's quite possible that food doesn't reach certain populations, which might cause local famines.

It's quite possible, although we don't have direct evidence of it, but it's quite possible. But that's then due to subsequent links in that chain that are indefinient and which the which consists of the aid organization, which consists of the United Nations, and then the active intervention of Khamas to prevent the food to come to people's houses. So from my perspective, and I know not just from my perspective, but from virtually everybody's perspective in Israel, for example, we want to make sure that this war that is, unfortunately, has become a necessity given Hamas's operations, that is being conducted in a way that needs the population to be in a safe position. And certainly they get all the medical and food supplies that they need.

So in that spirit, if people were really concerned about it, and we are, we should investigate these subsequent links and try to do something about them. So to make sure that indeed the food arise at the destinations where they should arrive to. Professor, if Hamas is stealing large amounts of that aid that's coming in, food, medical supplies, why are we not hearing about that within? Oh, we are. We are. We are, but it's not being covered by the mainstream media.

And that's an enormous frustration that it is not. But it is being covered. But unfortunately, mostly by media that are not at the center or left center, perspective, which is, for better or worse, the majority of the media. So one of the reasons, maybe the primary reasons, that we've been writing op-eds, and as well as doing interviews like the one I'm doing right now with you, is to bring that message out precisely because we are concerned about the population, the Gaza population, and making sure that they are not becoming the innocent victims of

what is, like every war, is a terrible, occurrence, a terrible situation. Distortion of the facts and misrepresentation of the facts unfortunately has become the norm in many media. Another example is what our colleague, Abram Beiner, professor, statistics professor and expert in forensics at the Wharton School, the Wharton Business School, has been writing and showing is that in the area of reporting on death tolls, the numbers are completely fake and cannot be correct. He has demonstrated that, he has published that and he's represented his arguments in a very cogent way in an article that was published in Tablet Magazine. He was also

interviewed or show you to what extent the media often goes to bury information. He was interviewed by the New York Times about this, but the New York Times just today came out with an article reporting on this, completely ignoring everything he said about it. They don't want it, they don't want to, they were not only brought by the facts as we say. Don't bother me with the facts because I I have a preconceived notion about what's happening and the facts will not alter that vision whatsoever. I think that's, I know what the Heritage Foundation does, and I completely applaud every initiative that it does. And we are here together to combat that, I believe.

That's the information war. We have to get the truth out there. It's critical. Yes, absolutely. Well, and that message that you speak of and kind of the battle, in many ways, against the mainstream media, we've seen play out at universities like Columbia, where we've seen rhetoric about Israel from students in these protests, comparing Israel to an apartheid air, South Africa. And that kind of language is, I think, very shocking and surprising.

To many Americans, if you had many of those students in your class who were out there at the protest, saying things like Israel. Israel is an apartheid South Africa state. What would you want to tell them? Well, first of all, I try very hard, and most of my colleagues try very hard to leave politics outside of my classroom. I think I am, my charter is to educate people in the subjects that they want to get known. And I don't want to intermingle the two things. There's also one thing, One thing the people have to know is that Colombia is not a uniform, homogeneous population. And while there are all these protests happening in many parts of the university, there are also many parts that want to have nothing to do with it.

It's primarily, if you're talking about professional schools, primarily the business school, but medical school, engineering school, we're trying to do our work, to educate, to do research, to... And there is very little of that going on there. So this issue hardly arises in my own classrooms, if at all. It does not arise there, but it's there very probably in many pockets of the rest of the university. Yeah, fascinating. Professor, before I let you go, I would be curious to hear from you how you think the United States is doing in its engagement on the war between Hamas and Israel

and how you think world leaders are handling the situation. Specifically, we see leaders at the UN engaging on this. I think the United States is following a policy that is very unproductive that will just prolong the misery and the war rather than bringing it to an end by virtue of, I think we all, when it started, we all understand that the United States proclaimed that Hamas as an organization has to be and the people of Hamas

has to be limited. The objective should be to advance that goal in the fastest and most effective way. Instead, what we're seeing is that the United States who various actions are trying to handcuff the Israeli government, and

as a consequence, what happens is that the war prolongs and that it takes much longer, and as a consequence, there will be more victims on both sides that for reasons, that are unnecessary. So I don't think that, and also the policy is not consistent. It is, as we all know, it is based on the one hand trying to, a little bit to help Israel, but at the same time worrying tremendously about getting votes in Michigan in order for the re-election of the president.

And as a consequence, the president and its administration is doing all kinds of things that are actually not consistent, but conflicting with each other in an attempt to pursue. very conflicting objectives. So I don't think that the policy of the United States and that of other governments is very effective to summarize my comments on that. Columbia University Business School professor and global supply chain expert, Avey Fedegreen. Professor, thank you so much for your time today. We greatly appreciate it. Absolutely. It was a pleasure. And if you have other questions, I'm always available. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Subtitle podcast.

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