TEHRAN — Israel has resorted to public relations stunts in a bid to distract global attention from its brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in “mass starvation” in the Palestinian territory.

Since launching its war on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians and largely restricted the flow of essentials such as food into the enclave.

In recent months, Israel’s almost total siege of Gaza has plunged the territory into deeper famine.

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 130 people — most of them children — have died from malnutrition and hunger. Recently, more than 100 NGOs warned that “mass starvation” is spreading in Gaza.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, also said Gaza is suffering from man-made mass starvation caused by the blockade of aid into the territory.

Despite growing international pressure, Israel continued to block key food items, bombed aid convoys, and targeted displaced people near distribution points.

Israel has attempted to suggest that there is no hunger in Gaza, or that if hunger does exist, it is not Israel’s fault — instead blaming Hamas, the UN, and aid organizations for problems with aid distribution. It has also used platforms such as YouTube to remove itself from blame for the starvation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

But the comments made by Amichay Eliyahu, a lawmaker who leads Israel’s Heritage Ministry, have contradicted the regime’s narrative.

“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out…Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf,’” Eliyahu said last week.

In an apparent attempt to deflect attention from its starvation campaign, the Israeli military on Sunday began a daily “tactical pause” of its operations in parts of Gaza and established new aid corridors. It also resumed aid airdrops in northern Gaza — a move that has drawn strong backlash.

Nearly a dozen Palestinians were injured by an aid airdrop in northern Gaza when one of the pallets fell directly on tents where displaced people are living, according to medical sources.

Aid officials describe airdrops as inefficient and unsafe. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, warned: “Airdrops are a last resort. They’re expensive, random, and dangerous. The only serious solution is to allow aid trucks in at scale.”

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor strongly condemned the airdrops, calling them “humiliating and ineffective” in addressing the deepening starvation in Gaza. It stressed that only the opening of land corridors in sufficient quantities can meet the needs of the besieged population.

The group described the airdrops as: “Another layer of Palestinian humiliation and a tool of engineered starvation” designed to serve Israel’s political and military goals.
“We warn against using these drops as a distraction to deflect rising international pressure,” the Monitor added.

Hamas echoed the criticism, saying it considers Israel’s airdrop operations and limited humanitarian corridors in Gaza a “symbolic, deceptive move aimed at whitewashing its image before the world.”

In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said: “Israel is deflecting international demands to lift the siege and end the starvation campaign against Palestinians,” calling it part of “a calculated policy to manage famine, impose coercive realities, and subject civilians to danger and humiliation.”

“The arrival of food and medicine to Gaza is not a favor, it is a natural right and an urgent necessity to stop the catastrophe imposed by the Nazi-like occupation.”

Observers say Israel’s resort to aid airdrops is an effort to obscure its growing international isolation. The United States — accused of enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza — employed the same tactic last year to cover up its complicity in the conflict.

In June 2024, Israeli forces reportedly hid inside a humanitarian truck from a US-built port to raid Nuseirat camp, killing nearly 300 Palestinians

In March 2024, the administration of former President Joe Biden announced the construction of a temporary pier on Gaza’s coastline to allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory. The move immediately raised suspicions about Washington’s ulterior motives.

These suspicions deepened in June 2024, when an Israeli raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed nearly 300 Palestinians, ostensibly to free four Israeli captives. Reports suggest Israeli ground forces hid inside a truck used for the delivery of humanitarian aid to infiltrate the camp. That truck had come from the American-built port.

In effect, the aid truck that left the US-built port acted as a Trojan Horse — enabling Israel to massacre Palestinians under the guise of humanitarian relief.

Both Israel and the United States have acknowledged that they want to depopulate Gaza and pave the way for settlers to move in. Aid airdrops and similar tactics are just part of their broader strategy to distract the world from what many now describe as a campaign of engineered starvation and ethnic cleansing.