The IDF announced late yesterday they'd fly airdrops and open a "humanitarian corridor" for UN aid trucks, and, as of this morning, they also "paused" some fighting to facilitate the delivery of food. Per The Guardian:
The Israeli military said it had began a “tactical pause” in the densely populated areas of Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Muwasi to “increase the scale of humanitarian aid” into the strip. The pause would be repeated every day from 10am to 8pm local time until further notice and Israel would continue fighting in other areas of Gaza.
Soon after the humanitarian pause began, Israel carried out an airstrike on a building in Gaza City, killing a woman and her four children.
These efforts were announced by the IDF ... not by the Israeli government. And it came about eight hours after the NY Times reported that the IDF found no evidence Hamas was stealing food aid ... which was Netanyahu’s predicate for shutting down aid many months ago and the stated rationale for ultimately hiring gun-toting mercenaries to take control of distribution.
I speculated yesterday that the timing of the story may reflect the IDF's concern about the optics of lording over a famine. To wit, the IDF announcement explicitly said the aid is meant to “refute the false claim of deliberate starvation in the Gaza Strip.”
Again, the statements came from the IDF, not the government.
That means one of two things: the IDF is acting on its own initiative and, in effect, it vetoed Netanyahu's official policy to institute its own policy on aid ... OR ... Netanyahu quietly directed the IDF to jumpstart aid to stop the mounting wave of starvation deaths. If he directed the IDF to deliver aid, he may be using the IDF to keep a thin layer of plausible deniability with the genocide enthusiasts in his own government.
One of those enthusiasts is Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, who attacked Netanyahu as “morally bankrupt” for allowing aid into Gaza and that “the only thing that should be sent to Gaza is bombs – to bomb, conquer, encourage emigration, and win the war.”
If the intent was to deflect criticism by making the IDF the public face of the policy … it’s not working on Ben Gvir and, I suspect, that’s likely the case with the vocal ethnic cleansers who’ve kept Netanyahu’s government afloat. Frankly, he’s on the same page with Ben Givr, which is why I suspect this policy shift is being forced by the IDF. They have their own long-term interests to preserve and I’d bank on them not wanting to be forever associated with images of emaciated children.
Whatever is going on behind the scenes, there’s no doubt that the damning scenes coming out of Gaza forced Israel’s hand. The evidence of intentional starvation was mounting. Intentionality is a key hurdle for proving genocide, both as a legal and an historical question.
The fact that the IDF statement directly addresses “the false claim of deliberate starvation” says it all. Interestingly, Miriam Adelson’s newspaper Israel Hayom headlined the story this way:
Israel modifies aid mechanism in response to incitement campaign
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/07/27/israel-modifies-aid-mechanism-in-response-to-incitement-campaign/
Referring to international criticism as an “incitement campaign” is decidedly Orwellian, but the truth reappeared at the end of the story.
The IDF reiterated that claims of intentional starvation in Gaza are false and part of a propaganda campaign by the terrorist organization Hamas. "Responsibility for distributing food to residents lies with the UN and international aid agencies," the IDF stated, urging those bodies to operate more efficiently and ensure that aid does not fall into Hamas' hands.
There it is again … this time the IDF said publicly what unnamed officials told the NY Times privately about “Hamas is stealing the food” lie. This statement also reinforces the case for scuttling the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s deadly aid distributions and, instead, handing the job back to the unarmed organizations with the infrastructure and experience to feed hundreds of thousands of starving people.
But there is another hurdle to this obvious solution … President Trump.
During a press availability with EU President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump repeated the "Hamas is stealing the food" lie twice. Both times he went unchallenged by reporters.