Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

I write to you out of grave concern regarding the growing global perception that Israel is responsible for a policy of starvation in the Gaza Strip.

While I recognize that Israel is engaged in a war against a brutal enemy in Hamas—an organization that openly uses civilians as human shields and withholds aid from its own people—the images of malnourished children and empty food markets are rapidly fueling an international narrative that Israel is intentionally starving civilians. Whether or not this is true, the perception is gaining momentum and risks undermining the moral clarity of Israel’s justified fight against terrorism.

I urge you to consider the following:

1. Humanitarian optics matter. Israel’s moral argument is based on its efforts to minimize civilian harm and uphold international law. But when famine conditions are shown in global headlines, that moral standing is eroded—regardless of the facts behind the supply chain or Hamas’s interference.
2. Make Israel’s aid efforts visible. If Israel is facilitating humanitarian aid, open those channels in a way that is transparent, well-documented, and impossible to distort. Publicize the convoys, invite neutral observers, and broadcast any efforts to protect civilians—even if Hamas undermines them. Silence is being filled by hostile voices.
3. Call out Hamas—by name—for the suffering. Israel’s leadership should not only permit aid; it should repeatedly and publicly blame Hamas for turning food into a weapon. This includes naming and shaming Hamas operatives who hijack or tax humanitarian shipments.
4. Make it clear that starvation is not Israeli policy. A clear, unambiguous statement from the Prime Minister’s Office—disavowing any intent to harm civilians through hunger—would go far in defusing accusations that could otherwise haunt Israel for decades to come.

Israel must win not only the battlefield war but the information war. If images of starving civilians define this conflict, it will drown out all evidence of Hamas’s war crimes and sabotage Israel’s moral standing in the eyes of the world.

I stand with Israel’s right to self-defense. But I also believe that moral clarity requires active compassion and transparency. Please let Israel be seen not only as strong—but as just.

With deep concern and hope,

Samuel Bahn, New York 

There it was, on the front page of the New York Times: a photo of a painfully malnourished 18-month-old Gazan named Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq. It was accompanied by the headline, ‘Young, old and sick starve to death in Gaza: “There Is nothing.”’

Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet leader Mohammad Mustafa on Tuesday accused Israel of opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state and waging an economic war against the Palestinian Arab population through what he described as a financial siege.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting in Ramallah, Mustafa stressed that efforts are ongoing to secure the release of PA funds withheld by Israel, which he described as essential for economic stability in the Palestinian Authority.

On the diplomatic front, Mustafa referred to an international conference held recently in New York, which voiced support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. He called the event a significant milestone.

According to Mustafa, several world leaders subsequently contacted PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas to express their intention to recognize a Palestinian state during the upcoming UN General Assembly session in September.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the PA cabinet called on the international community to use all available means of pressure to halt the spread of hunger in Gaza and to resume large-scale entry of aid trucks into the territory.

They’ve been claiming it for so many years, what’s stopping the European Union, USA and UN from creating their dream Palestinian state? Simply international law, which forbids them so. If they had this power, they would have used it a long time ago.

So who can create this state? A unanimous vote of UN Security Council? No. UN General Assembly in plenary meeting? No more.

The only entity that has the right to create the State of Palestine, according to international law, is Israel, and only Israel.

Specifically, it is UN Charter resolution 80*, the document that created the UN in 1945, which prohibits it from approving the request of the Palestinian Authority and the OLP.

And this is why the UN and European nations are putting pressure on the Jewish state, instead of coming together and deciding to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank of Jordan and in Gaza.

When resolution 80 was passed, it was unofficially called the “Jewish Clause”, because it retained intact all rights granted to Jews in the United Nations British Mandate for Palestine, even after the expiration of the mandate on 14/15 May 1948.

What’s this all about?

The Charter of the United Nations is an international treaty Resolution 80 of this Charter of the UN has the force of the international treaty.

Applied in the case of Palestine, it explains that the Rights given to Jews on the land of Israel cannot be amended in any way unless an agreement of guardianship between the states or parties concerned has transformed the mandate into guardianship, or “territory under” guardianship.

Under Chapter 12 of the same Charter, the UN had a window of three years to do so, between 24 October 1945 (the date on which the Charter of the United Nations came into force) and 14/15 May 1948, when the British mandate on Palestine expired and the State of Israel was proclaimed.

As no agreement of this kind has been passed in these three years, the rights given to Jews in the British mandate on Palestine have enforcement, and the UN is blocked by Article 80. She can’t undo it or change it.

The UN has no possibility of transferring a part of the Rights that have been given to the Jewish people over Palestine to a non-Jewish entity, the Palestinian Authority in that case. All lawyers at the UN know it, all specialists in international law know it, and vote for this unavoidable resolution. This doesn’t stop propaganda, obviously, and you regularly hear the media talking about “Israel’s violation of international law.” No need to make a picture of yourself, you doubt that journalists have no knowledge of international law, and they just repeat what others have said.

However, when you finish reading this article, you will know what international law says, and when you find yourself in a conversation with opponents, you will have the arguments to answer them.

Let’s go into detail: what rights are we talking about?

Article 6 of the Mandate: the right for Jews to “immigrate freely on the land of Israel and to establish settlement colonies there”

Among the most important rights granted to Jews in the British Mandate are those of Article 6. He recognizes the Jews:

“the right to immigrate freely to the land of Israel and to establish settlement colonies there.”

Under the British mandate, all of Palestine was reserved for the establishment of the Jewish national home and the future independent Jewish state, in confirmation of what had been decided at the San Remo peace conference in April 1920.

No part of Palestine under the British mandate was given for the creation of an Arab State, because Arabs’ rights to self-determination were granted elsewhere: Syria, Iraq, Arabia, Egypt and North Africa

In total, 21 Arab states were created on a huge landmass that went from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean.

Against a single Jewish state, in historic Palestine.

Therefore, from a legal point of view for the UN, there is no possibility of creating an independent Arab State on the specific territory of the mandated ex-Palestine reserved for Jewish self-determination, and more particularly in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Creating such a state on Jewish lands would be illegal under Article 80 of the Charter of the United Nations, and would exceed the legal authority that the UN has given itself. This is why the UN does not do it. She is totally blocked by her own Charter, whatever her political will.

The UN has no power to create a state

On a broader note, it is good to recall that no article in the Charter of the United Nations gives the Security Council, the General Assembly, or the Guardian Council the power to create an independent state. If this power existed, the UN would be a universal legislative power that could make or undo states of its own will, and it has not given itself that right to avoid endangering the world order.

If the UN has no legal power to create a State, it cannot confiscate some of the territory of another State, whether Israel or Cyprus or Korea.

Conclusion:

If someone wants to kick you out of your home, and you don’t put your property title under his nose to tell the intruder to get out of his way, don’t complain afterwards that he will break in.

It’s unfortunate what the State of Israel has been doing since 1967 until now. This is the taboo that Israeli society doesn’t talk about.

Every time a state, international organization, media, public figure, the UN, its Human Rights Council, or politician condemns Israel’s “illegal” “colonies”, the Israeli Prime Minister should remind Israel’s rights, he never does. He should denounce the hypocrisy and remember that:

France has colonies in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, Russia annexed Crimea and now part of Ukraine, China annexed Tibet and islands in the China Sea, Great Britain still has 10 colonies, New Zealand still has Tokelau colony, US colonies of the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Samoa.

Turkey colonized northern Cyprus

These have the right to break UN resolutions on colonies, and vote for another State to withdraw from their so-called – who are not even concerned with international law?

And yes: because if the main concerned person doesn’t say anything, it’s not the Palestinians who will remind the world that Israel is legitimately settled on the territorial surface it occupies.