The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Israel is weaponizing food, and Hamas is weaponizing its own people

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice open today's show talking about starvation in Gaza. How do we find ourselves here, and what can be done about it? While it is true that Hamas steals food to sell on the black market to pay its fighters, there is no justification for using food as a weapon. Can Israel recover from this moral stain? And why is Hamas not subject to international pressure to release the hostages that could end this war? Both Rudyard and Janice agree that the time is over for diplomatic solutions. International security forces need to intervene and put an end to this conflict. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to France's intention to recognize Palestinian Statehood at the UN in September. This might not be welcome news to the Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas as it comes with expectations of governance and elections. How does a statement or recognition actually change events on the ground? Is it enough to break through the defensive shield Bibi has built around himself? Ultimately, If this declaration does nothing to change Palestinian leadership or Israel's control over the West Bank, then it is nothing more than empty rhetoric with no consequence. To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website.

Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 25th of July, 2025. I'm Redyard Griffiths, chair of the Monk Debates, joined by Janice Gross. the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice, we're, I guess what, at the midpoint of summer, can we be that optimistic and say that? How's your summer going?

Are you getting some time off? You seem to be traveling a lot. Today we catch you in Toronto, but it seems like half of the summer you've been on the road. It is true, Roger. The pace is unrelenting. I have joined your group now. that we have to disconnect for no matter what for a period of time because the world pours in at you. And I'm complicit because I do not turn off my devices. It is on me. My bad.

Well, I am connecting with you without Wi-Fi on my cell phone because my network seems to have come down after last night's big storms that went through Ontario and Quebec. So if my audio is a little bit squeaky. I apologize in advance, but let's give it a college try. Janice, we agreed to focus today's show on events in Gaza, the Middle East, and Israel, because of a feeling that we both have, and I'm sure many of our listeners do, of just an untenable crisis that is now culminating inside Gaza. There is significant evidence, and this is well beyond anything, released by the Hamas-controlled Gaza health. authority. We're hearing from a lot of other sources, NGOs on the ground, that starvation is

beginning to set in inside Gaza. And this is particularly, as it always does, unfortunately, is impacting children. We've seen kind of shocking, horrific photographs of heart-wrenching photographs of young Gaz and children severely malnourished. Let's talk about Janus, just how we find to find ourselves here in what was a week that also seemed to suggest that peace talks, negotiations between the United States, Hamas, and Israel broke off once again. Look, Richard, this is beyond horrific. People, kids are dying. Young children are dying. Older people are dying. And, you know, anybody who's vulnerable are always the principal victims. there's not enough food.

There's not enough food. At the very best, people are, you know, adults are hungry all the time. They eat one meal a day. And it's criminal. Let's just call it what it is. It's criminal. I think most of us thought we were beyond this. How do we find ourselves here?

Question number one. And question number two, what can be done about it? Because this is not a surprise that we're here right here. This is a crisis that has been building. This was predictable. There were warnings, famine and starvation. We're finally at the moment. So let's talk first about how we got here.

This is the weaponization of food by both sides. Israel clearly, when it stopped in March, It largely stopped the inflow of aid into Gaza, and it did it in order to bring Hamas to its knees. And why, to some degree has a word, but not really. It's worked because there is some evidence that Hamas systematically loots food, loots humanitarian trucks, skims off anywhere from 25 to 40 percent, and sells it into the black market in Gaza, and that's what he uses, to pay salaries for its fighters and to buy weapons.

And this is an open secret among humanitarian agencies. You know, I read a report this morning from USAID just before we got on the line. And they say, well, there's no evidence and then go look at the numbers. A 25% of the incidents could be attributed to Israel, directly or indirectly, but what's happening to the other 75% of the looted food, right? So the tactic then became, okay, stop the entry of food in order to starve Hamas of funding. But oh, by the way, there are two million people inside Gaza who are also starving. And let me just say it like it is from my perspective, Roger.

there's no excuse for knowingly using a strategy in which you make two million people hungry to the point of starvation. There just isn't. There's no justification no matter what your adversary is doing. There's no justification. It's criminal. Now, what's how I'm doing right now? It's not able to pay a lot of its people. It's very weak.

it's the weakest point that's been since the start of this war. Clans inside large extended families, tribes are now taken over in many of the neighborhoods. They're looting as well. There's fighting going on among these clans. And we're at, I think, the peak point of this now, because Israel says, oh, Hamas is going to break. So we're going to be tough in the negotiations.

And Hamas says, no, no, no. Israel is going to break because of the global a program to which it is being subjected now as virtually any government in the democratic world excoriates Israel for what it's doing. So let's focus on the two malfactors. I don't think they're protagonists anymore. And let's start on the, well, it's really the Israeli-American side. So Israel and America set up this NGO called the Gaza humanitarian foundation. If there ever was a bit of greenwashing in a name, that was probably one for the history books.

It is attempting to distribute food to circumvent Hamas, you know, proffering and to, in a sense, control distribution inside Gaza. But we increasingly again have credible reports. that now over the course of weeks, upwards of a thousand people, a thousand people likely have been killed, often shot in, I don't, I'm hard to understand what circumstances by IDF troops probably in, you know, from their perspective, trying to either defend these, these aid centers from, you know, riots and looting. But the consequence is that there are large-scale civilian deaths that are occurring at the distribution sites of the Gaza humanitarian foundation.

And I think if you understand, let's say you're going to be skeptical. Maybe some of our listeners are about reports from inside Gaza of a thousand people dead. What if it's 100 people dead? 100 people dead is 500 people probably critically injured by machine gun bullets as they try to collect food from this, this U.S.-Israeli Foundation in these utterly chaotic scenes of just desperation and deprivation. This is a huge policy and public relations failure. Is it not, Janice, for Israel and for the United States? Couldn't agree with you more, Roger. I think you were too polite.

It is beyond a huge policy in public relations failure. It's a deep moral stain. That's really what it is. It is a deep moral stain. And it's questionable whether Israel recovers from this. The problem, you are absolutely right in the numbers. Beyond that, let's talk about the bigger problem because this is occurring not only, and this is what makes the situation, frankly, even more alarming. It is not only occurring around the four

sites or five, depending on how you can't account of the GHF, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It's actually occurring also around the few sites where the UN is delivering humanitarian aid. But it's not written about to the same degree. What does this really tell us? Public order has broken down completely in Gaza now. There, as Hamas has retreated entirely from any role in policing, well, you say, good, that's what you want, except there's no substitute. There's no police function in Gaza now. So anytime any truck with food arrives, it is sworn. by desperate people who are hungry to the point of starvation. And of course, then, you get an attempt by security forces to prevent crowds that are storming supplies.

It is urgent, right? It is not only urgent that we get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Well, let's talk about the bigger problem here, why we don't have it, because there's no security force inside Gaza. That is the crucial issue, a ceasefire which doesn't provide for a security force. You know, if we were real in the world as opposed to what we are, which is not real and not serious, we would be saying, you know, countries would be saying to Egypt put in 20,000 troops tomorrow. We'll pay for it.

So it's not a financial problem, but put 20,000 troops on the ground tomorrow, which they have. They have a very large army to guarantee secure access to food. And Israel, you pull back now if we were real. But if we don't do that, if there's no security force that comes in, whenever this elusive ceasefire happens, we will have the same problems of deaths around every distribution point. Because what it testifies is, one, how desperate, ordinary Palestinians are, Hamas doesn't care, by the way.

It simply doesn't care. And I think that's an important point that we should make. Because coming out of all this, if there's any hope for the Palestinians, it cannot be with Hamas after what it's been complicit in doing to its own people. But it also cannot be a situation where Israel neither controls the population that is frankly conquered. but doesn't let anybody else in to do it, because that's what creates the conditions that we're seeing now, which are catastrophic. Yeah, I think the thing we all have to remind ourselves is as appalling and amoral

as many of the Israeli governments' recent decisions have been in Gaza, especially around food distribution, effectively barring UN groups from surging supplies into the area. Israel, not the people, but the government, is responsible for Gaza. It is engaged in the conquest of Gaza. And as a result of its conquest, starvation is now occurring. And that's happening under Benjamin Netanyahu's and his cabinet's watch. But all of this could end tomorrow if Hamas gave up the hostages.

And we know, Janice, that Hamas's leadership are still in luxury hotels in Qatar, in Turkey, in Egypt. And I guess what I don't understand, Janice, is why Hamas is not subject to pressure. Pressure in terms of its, you know, to the point of this war, many of its leaders, Sinwar and others were billionaires. They had skimmed so much money off the UN and off other aid groups in the provisioning and funding of Gaza and the weaponization of Gaza into this horrible terrorist machine that they built up over the decade plus that followed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. and I don't understand, Janice, why two things can't happen, why the international community can't bring immense pressure on the leadership and say, okay, you're out of the four seasons in Qatar. Turkey, you will be subject to sanctions if you provide aid and refuge for these killers.

Why aren't we pursuing that? Why Janice does it seem like the leadership is still functioning out there and has a lot of support, if you want to be honest about it, from these important governments like Turkey, like Egypt, like Qatar? And then on the inside, you know, how is Hamas holding together? How can it, you know, control its own what's left of its own fighters? I mean, and how do these people who are these fighters put themselves in allyship with a group that they see as starving their own children, their own sons and daughters? I mean, it suggests maybe, Janice, a level of radicalism and fanaticism on the part of those

elements of Hamas that remain in Gaza, that we really have to take seriously, that these simply are not, unfortunately, not people that you can have a negotiation with. You know, Roger, let me talk for a sentence about the international community, capital I, capital C.

Why aren't they doing more? Why aren't they really cracking down, especially on Turkey, right, in which they have some leavers? Because we're not serious, because we issue statements. Because we issued calls and that's what we do. Turkey is a NATO, a NATO member.

It's a fellow NATO member. It is a signatory to the NATO charter, which is more than just military defense. It's an expression of a set of values, a so-called democratic creed. And they're giving these jerks, assholes, killers, genociders, refuge in Ankara and Istanbul. People ask me, you know, last week, 25 governments called, signed a statement, criticizing Israel and I was asked, well, should Canada sign that? Of course, we should sign it.

But what I really said is, but what does it matter? What does it matter if there's one more statement? It's not going to have any impact. And everybody in the Middle East knows they're immune to these kinds of things. Macron recognized in Palestine. He said he will in September at the UN. Well, fine. Is that going to matter to the Gazans, to the Palestinians and Gaza?

It's going to have zero impact, Richard, okay? If anything, it might have a negative impact. So let's come to Hamas, which you talked about right now. There's two wings of Hamas. There's the political wing that lives in these luxury hotels. And that wing is the wing that the mediators, Egypt and Qatar, engaged with throughout these negotiations. all of our coffee in the four seasons, as we say, all right? The political wing have contact with the military wing that lives underground now in Gaza.

It's very slow. It's very hard. They're frustrated, by the way. The Qataris, to be fair to them and the Egyptians, are hugely frustrated now with Hamas. Who is underground right now? And it's really hard to get information. So I'm going to share what I know, but I tell you it's not with it. I don't have confidence in this because it's so difficult.

Both Seymour brothers are gone. Mohammed Dif is gone. There are maybe one or two leaders. And in some sense, they are the most radical who still survive. They don't have money to pay their fighters. That we know. Because they haven't been able to weapon. It's the food.

So you're dealing with a small group of the most radical leaders inside the gas strip who are isolated and there was a terrible video. It could have been a deep fake, by the way. Let me start by saying that. Of three Hamas leaders inside gas are eating grapes and bananas this week, I don't know if you saw it. It could have been a deep fake, but it sent a strong message. I think the time is over that we can. insult these guys. It's over. We have to end this form of negotiation. The discussion has to be

with the Egyptians, with the Turks, with the Qataris, about what kind of security force is going into Gaza and with Israel that as soon as a reasonable security force goes in, they pull back. I think we should be done. If we really care about Palestinians right now and these horrific pictures, which I find, frankly, and I will make a personal comment, which I rarely do in these. But, you know, as somebody who's Jewish who grew up with pictures of emaciated children, and I see these children in Palestine looking like this, I find it unconscionable, and it is so painful, Roger, to watch it. The time is over for talk. The time is over for these diplomatic rituals, both on our part, I mean the West, where we issue a statement to around and go about our daily life.

And we're dealing with a group like Hamas in Gaza that so clearly doesn't care and is weaponizing its own people. That's what it's doing. Israel's weaponizing food and Hamas is weaponizing its own people. None of it passes the minimum test of humanity. frankly we have to stop yeah you know never again has to mean never again yeah and uh that has to be extended to humanity and i guess let's wrap up this half of the show jazz though by i think that sentiment that you and i share i'm sure the vast majority of our leadership i'm sure a large section of israeli society maybe the majority of israeli society maybe the majority of

of Israeli society, American society, Canadian society, but the starvation goes on. The shootings at the aid food centers continue almost daily. Like, are we just trapped here, Janice? Are we just going to watch this horror show? So that's why I say there should be an... And what is that, and what does that say, Janice, about, I don't know, about who we are. leaders about about who we are about what about the reality of and I'll lay some of this at Trump's feet the reality of this international disorder that Trump has has created a

kind of callous deal-making morally void theory of how the world should work it's just the strong praying on the week Yeah, that's exactly what it is, right? That is Trump's view of the world. The strong do what they want, the weak do what they must. And we have the most extreme example of it right now in, for Palestinians who live in Gaza. There should be outrage, Richard. But we have to stop doing the usual.

Because we've exhausted. And I'll say it again, we've exhausted all the years. usual niceties, which we know are going to fail, right? So it's got to be, there has to be a security force that goes in there now. And it's got nothing to, you don't ask for Hamas's consent any longer. And you don't ask for much of Israel's consent either. It goes in. No.

No. No. And the United States basically has propped up for a decade or more than not only the government, but the economy of C.C. and Egypt through. For massive foreign aid and military assistance, the President of the United States could pick up the phone today to CC and say, okay, 20,000 troops in. Yep. Another phone called to BB saying, you guys have lost it. You're out.

And, you know, this stops. I'm just not holding my breath for that, Janice. It's a horrible feeling, but I don't know. I sense somehow that we are going to be involved, as you say, in a moral stain in something horrific that could unfold over, I hope not. I hope not, but many more weeks to come. I will just say this, if you're right and you could be right, Rudyard, then we're all complicit. Janice, thanks so much. It's a dark moment, and I think it's been important for us to reflect on it with our community.

and let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and join on the other side of this short break are monk donors for a wrap-up conversation on something you mentioned in the first half of the show and that's France's recognition or intention to recognize a Palestinian state, which Macron declared yesterday Thursday. Let's unpack that a little bit for our monk curators and supporters after the short break.

Thanks for listening to this excerpt. of the Friday Focus podcast to get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program. Simply go to our website, www.com. Triple-W. The Monk Debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site. Make a donation as little as $25 a year of 50 cents an episode. And we'll send you not only the full-length editions of each and every Friday Focus podcast, but all kinds of special offers per episode.

access to events and additional content. Again, you can do that right now by becoming a donor to the Monk Debates at Triple W Monk Debates, MUNK, DebateswithanS dot com.