On the menu today: We can debate the actions of the Israeli government, but most of the people who are angriest about Israel, and contend it is perpetuating a policy of genocide and deliberate starvation, never spend a moment’s thought on other, much larger, cases of starvation and genocide, because they are occurring far away and to a group of people that doesn’t get much news coverage here in the West. Sadly, if the manmade suffering of far-off people can’t be used to advance the worldview of progressives, it just doesn’t interest the media environments of the U.S. and other Western countries.
The Famines Ignored by the Media
While I was gallivanting through Spain, Russian state television hosted Bogdan Bezpalko. He works for Vladimir Putin on the Russian Federation’s Council for Interethnic Relations. He’s a piece of work, although I must admit that “work” was not the first four-letter word that came to mind when I wrote that sentence.
Here’s what Bezpalko had to say:
What do we want? We want Ukraine, as a state, to cease to exist, for its military potential to be completely destroyed, that the political class that has always turned the Ukrainian state into an anti-Russia, that it, too, disappear. That these people leave, so softly put, somewhere in emigration, or somewhere else, far away. But in any case, so that it would never be possible to create another anti-Russia from Ukraine in the coming decades and centuries. This is our goal. Based on this, we must make our plans, to carry out military construction, to expand, as recently signed, an order of the Russian president, our armed forces. To create art brigades of special power to break through the front. And if there is an opportunity to strike, if there is an opportunity to destroy military potential, destroy it. Let them be a little afraid of us. They relaxed there, playing soccer in Europe. They no longer consider Russia a threat to them in any way, even though they shout about it all the time. In fact, neither in Finland nor in Germany, nor in Italy, does anyone believe that Russia is capable of launching, for example, a nuclear strike. The Americans, in principle, allow it. But Finland, Italy, and Germany are very far away from the United States. A nuclear cloud will not reach New York or Seattle. And if these states are hit with our weapons, as an instrument of pressure on our country, then the Americans will sit down with us and negotiate and divide the world again. Just as they once did, as a result of World War II, as a result of the Tehran-Yalta-Potsdam conferences.
It is amazing how often you’ll hear people here in the U.S. insisting they see no empire-building going on in Russia’s ambitions, while Moscow’s officials go on Russian state TV, declare the goal of destroying the independent Ukrainian state; casually talk about nuking Finland, Germany, and Italy; and carving up the globe again like at the start of the Cold War.
Outside of a few of us who pay close attention to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world didn’t notice Bezpalko making these bonkers threats against Ukraine and the West.
Had the rest of the world noticed, most of it would have yawned. Most people would shrug it off as the usual saber-rattling on Russian state television. The Russian airwaves are always full of regime propagandists, frothing at the mouth, demonizing Ukraine and pledging to vanquish anyone who dares stand in the way of the regime. Russian state television hosts threaten nuclear tsunamis; pledge to conquer “Berlin, Bonn, and Paris”; predict that Trump’s cabinet will “quickly dismantle America, brick by brick”; and so on.
It would be easier to dismiss this as meaningless raging propaganda if every day and every night Russia wasn’t bombing civilians in Ukraine. See, the Russians aren’t just threatening to kill as many Ukrainians as they can; they’re actually doing it.
Since the beginning of the war, Russian bombs, shells, and shrapnel have damaged or destroyed more 3,790 educational facilities. Russians bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol March 9, 2022, Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital on July 8, 2024, and the maternity hospital in Kharkiv on July 11 of this year.
From the beginning of the war to July 10, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented the deaths of at least 13,580 civilians, including 716 children; and 34,115 civilians have been injured, including 2,173 children.
If the actions of the Israeli government — a so-called “genocide,” we’re told, over and over again — warrant front-page coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere, day after day, shouldn’t we pause and pay at least a little attention to the fact that officials on Russian state television are openly calling for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian state?
Nah? Just not a big deal?
Israel does not bring a light touch to armed conflict. And Israeli society is not awash in sympathy for the Palestinians.
The New York Times editorial board denounced the Trump administration and Israel’s joint creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, lamenting that the foundation “has operated only four distribution centers for Gaza’s entire population, compared with more than 400 that the United Nations and other aid groups previously operated.”
We can argue about whether the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is doing a good enough job; from all available evidence, it isn’t. But if you’re trying to commit genocide against a people, you don’t set up any food distribution centers, not four of them. You don’t “urge people to evacuate areas before ‘military operations that will escalate and intensify.” You don’t facilitate the airdrop of 131 tons of food aid to the targeted population in one day, or 675 humanitarian aid packages in a nine-day period.
If Bibi Netanyahu really is trying to wipe out every last Palestinian, this is the most incompetent genocide ever.
It is true that Israel is responsible in part for the killing of 15-year-old Muhannad Zakaria Eid on August 9. He was crushed by an airdropped pallet of food landing on him.
And oh, by the way, if Hamas would release the remaining hostages, we could go a lot further in calming down the conflict. But it’s as if everyone long ago recognized that Hamas is not a good-faith negotiator, is not interested in peace, and is not interested in anything other than the extermination of the Israeli people. (You know, genocide.)
All responsibility for the safety of everyone in the conflict is placed on the backs of the Israelis; no one ever seems to expect any Palestinian leaders to do anything to ameliorate the situation.
Now we are told that there is a risk of great starvation and famine in the Gaza Strip.
From January to July 27, the World Health Organization counted 74 malnutrition-related deaths in the Gaza Strip. The WHO said, “So far in July, over 5,000 children under five have already been admitted for outpatient treatment of malnutrition in just the first two weeks.”
There are an estimated 2.1 million people living in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations said July 29, “Two out of three famine thresholds have been reached in Gaza: plummeting food consumption and acute malnutrition. Famine has not been declared as the third criteria, deaths from malnutrition, cannot be demonstrated.”
That is indeed grim. But you don’t have to look far to find far larger numbers of people at risk for malnutrition or starvation in other countries that get a fraction of the attention of the Gaza Strip, if they get any attention at all.
According to the World Food Program, there is great starvation and famine currently going on in Sudan, where 2 million people are facing famine or are at risk of famine and 24.6 million people facing acute hunger. The WFP declares a famine when three criteria are reached:
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At least 20 per cent of the population in that particular area are facing extreme levels of hunger;
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30 per cent of the children in the same place are wasted, or too thin for their height; and
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The death — or mortality — rate has doubled, from the average, surpassing two deaths per 10,000 daily for adults and four deaths per 10,000 daily for children.
In Haiti, 5.7 million people face acute hunger.
In Syria, 9.1 million people are classified as “food insecure” and “nearly 3 million people are projected to be severely food insecure.” (During my trip there earlier this year, I saw long bread lines in Aleppo and a group of men getting into an altercation over loaves of bread in Idlib.)
In Afghanistan, 9.5 million people are severely food insecure. (Shockingly, the Taliban is not committed to good government. It’s even more shocking that the Taliban would be so brutal and callous after Jen Psaki emphatically assured us that the U.S. government has a lot of leverage over the Taliban.)
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 28 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and 4.75 million children under age five are facing or expected to face acute malnutrition.
(You can find more information about the World Food Program’s efforts in each of those countries at the links above, if you want to kick in some to do something about them.)
How much coverage have you heard about the Democratic Republic of Congo or Sudan, compared to Gaza? And yet many, many more human beings are at risk of malnutrition and starvation.
The typical Western social-media influencer offering performative rage over the Gaza Strip can go a long, long time without ever thinking about Afghanistan, Syria, or Haiti.
Speaking of genocide, when’s the last time you heard about the Uyghurs? The Biden administration waited until literally its last day in office to release its report on China’s large-scale crimes against humanity:
Over the last four years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has carried out a mass detention and political indoctrination campaign against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang), a large region in western China. The courageous voices of survivors, their family members abroad, researchers, and international advocacy groups have thoroughly documented the PRC’s discriminatory use of surveillance technologies and trumped-up administrative and criminal charges to abduct and detain more than one million Muslims, including Uyghurs, ethnic Hui, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, ethnic Tajiks, and ethnic Uzbeks, in as many as 1,200 state-run internment camps throughout Xinjiang. Detention in these camps is intended to erase ethnic and religious identities under the pretext of “vocational training.” Forced labor is a central tactic used for this repression.
Gang rape, torture, shackles, indoctrination, banning native languages — the whole thing is nightmare stuff. The moment today’s newsletter goes online, the Chinese regime’s propaganda bots are going to insist this doesn’t count as a “genocide.” What would you call large-scale forced sterilization? Do you think the birth rate in a region drops by one-third in one year out of natural causes?
In 2022, Chamath Palihapitiya, a Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American venture capitalist, infamously said on his podcast, “Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay?” As terrible a statement as that was, it was largely accurate. In the West, the manmade suffering of far-off people is discussed in a direct proportion to how much their suffering advances the worldview of Western progressives. You can’t easily demonize Republicans, Christians, neocons, conservatives, pro-lifers, or gun-owners by spotlighting the starvation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Even the New York Times observed that you almost never see a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker anymore. American progressive culture is perfectly fine with some forms of military conquest and attempts at cultural eradication.
Why all the attention on Israel? Because a lot of people in the West hate Israel and put it at the nexus of a vast conspiracy that encompasses all the world’s problems. Israel is committing “ecocide” — “inflicted severe and lasting damage on the environment, transforming the region into a toxic wasteland.” Israel is spurring “Islamophobia” across Europe. Israel inspires Islamist terrorists.
If you stubbed your toe this morning, it was probably Israel’s fault.
The unspoken lesson of today’s mainstream media in the West is that only certain genocides are bad and worthy of our attention and denunciation. Put a bunch of Uyghurs in camps, and most of the West will happily continue to trade with the regime that put them there. Talk about the desire to see Ukraine “cease to exist” and the world will ignore it. After all, it’s not February 2022 anymore.
ADDENDA: Thanks to Audrey, Noah and Dominic for filling in while I was away.
In case you missed it yesterday, all that incoming revenue from our new far-reaching tariff regime is starting to add up. . . .
I have no beef with actor Dean Cain announcing he intends to seek a position with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was charming by the standards of early-’90s prime-time television, and worked around its limited special-effects budget by showcasing the abundant chemistry of Cain and Teri Hatcher.
But it is a little ironic that Cain’s old show had a scene where immediately after stopping a bank robbery, Superman gets in trouble for not reading the bank robbers their Miranda rights, gets reminded that the robbers have a Second Amendment right to bear arms, is reprimanded by a Federal Aviation Administration official for flying without a license, the Internal Revenue Service wants to know what his Social Security number is, and Immigration and Naturalization Services demands to see his green-card.