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Rabbi David Wolpe, stepping down from a top pulpit, wants you to stop arguing and start listening

(JTA) — David Wolpe has been called one of the most quoted rabbis in the United States, and not always to his advantage. As senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, one of the largest and most visible Conservative pulpits in the country, the decisions he makes and things he says are often treated as bellwethers of centrist American Jewry. When he questioned the historicity of the Exodus story or began performing same-sex marriages, for example, he made front-page news.

Wolpe has also led an unusually diverse synagogue, with pews filled both by largely liberal Jews of Ashkenazi descent and Persian Jews with roots in Iran who tend to be more politically conservative. Bridging these divides has been a signature of his rabbinate, and in recent years he has been writing and tweeting about civil discourse in increasingly polarized times. 

On Friday, Wolpe, 63, became emeritus rabbi of Sinai Temple, where he had been the senior rabbi since 1997. As he prepared to step aside – he’ll spend the next year as a fellow at Harvard Divinity School — he joined me in a public Zoom conversation Tuesday to talk about what he learned as a rabbi, the changes he has seen in American Judaism, and his hopes and fears for the future. But I especially wanted to talk about the polarized political climate and his views on moral and political discourse (with which I have occasionally disagreed). We also talked about rabbis who speak about politics from the pulpit, a topic which led to a fascinating back-and- forth among Wolpe and his colleagues in the pages of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.

“We’re much more polarized than we were in 1997,” Wolpe, the author of eight books and a long-running column in the New York Jewish Week, told me. “Everybody knows that. And you can get into much more trouble by expressing an opinion on one or the other side of a controversial issue than you could back then.”

Our conversation was wide-ranging, and I encourage you to watch the whole thing here. Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity, focusing on our discussion of civil discourse. 

You have a famously diverse synagogue. What were some of the cultural and political divides that you had to bridge and how have they changed? 

There were political divides, first of all. I have right and left. I have some very ardent supporters of Trump and very ardent detractors. And there was a cultural divide because the patterns of language and so on of the Persian community and the Ashkenazi community were different. I wrote about this in a forthcoming New York Times editorial, about the two best ways to bridge [these divides]. I’ll take a step back to explain it more fully than I did there. We don’t have a common culture. Nobody reads the same books. Nobody watches the same movies. Nobody watches the same television shows. I mean, the “Who Shot J.R.?” episode [of “Dallas,” in 1980] drew tens of millions of views, but the finale of something like “Succession” draws a couple million. The one thing everyone has in common is politics. So when people talk, when they meet each other, they start with politics, which is guaranteed to cause division. 

Sinai Temple, where David Wolpe was senior rabbi starting in 1997, is known for the political and ethnic diversity of its large congregation. (Courtesy Sinai Temple)

One of the things I tried to encourage in the synagogue was to get people to know each other in different ways than opening the conversation about politics. Talk about your kids. Talk about school. Talk about what you’d like to do on vacation, talk about food. Talk about life so that you know the person as a person before they express their opinion so at the outset of the conversation you wouldn’t totally dismiss them. And the other thing I encourage, which is difficult, is just listening. Understand that growing up in Tehran gives you a different view of the world than growing up in Philadelphia. And I have to respect the fact that it’s a very different orientation. And in order to understand it, I can’t tell someone else what to think. I have to listen to what they think and ask questions about it. Which is not easy. Here’s a little Hebrew lesson: The word “savlanut,” which means patience in Hebrew, comes from the word “seivel,” which means to suffer. Because patience is suffering sometimes, but you have to go through it to understand others.

I want to talk a little bit more about how you bridge those gaps. But I want to go back to a famous moment in your rabbinate. This is in 2001, when in a series of sermons you cited archaeologists who said that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all. The L.A. Times picks up the story. And you were accused by some as being the rabbi who chose science and history over faith and Judaism. I want to ask not just about that, but also what you think a rabbi would have to say today to spark a similar furor.

I’m going to start with the first part. My whole point in the sermon was that it didn’t matter — that actual faith transcends the facts of the case. And that I celebrate Passover the same way despite the fact that archaeologists rebut the historical record, and also that you can’t make historical claims and then tell archaeologists “what you say doesn’t matter.” But that is a separate controversy for another time. 

I think today it’s very audience-dependent. If you got up in a Reform congregation and said that, you wouldn’t cause a ruckus, but if you got up in an Orthodox congregation and said that — most, but not all — you would cause a furor. When I came out for same-sex marriage, it was on the front page of The New York Times and the L.A. Times because it caused such a furor in the congregation. When that happened, I said to my daughter, “I want you to know when you go to school tomorrow, people are going to be saying bad things about your father,” and she said to me, “Why?” And I said because I’m sending a letter that I’m going to be doing same-sex marriages. I remember her looking at me and saying, “What took you so long?” Because for her it was like I was saying, “I’m gonna marry brown-haired people to blonde-haired people.” She didn’t understand why that was an issue. The nature of controversies change a lot, but there will always be controversies.

So how did you weather it? What helps you keep congregants on board – or not, and decide it’s okay to let some congregants slip away?

If you believe what you’re saying matters and is true, it helps a lot. I also told my daughter what Churchill said, I think after the Boer War, which is “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” In other words, the people who didn’t like me before didn’t like me after, and the people who loved me before loved me after. You realize that there is an immediate cost to being true to yourself, but there’s a long-range, huge benefit and that it’s worth it. So I was very fortunate. I didn’t lose my job. I didn’t lose my friends. You know, there are people who take stands and they lose much more than I did. And obviously, you know, if you’re in a different kind of country, you lose even more than that. So, I think if you’re given a pulpit, then to the extent that you believe something, it’s really important to enunciate from the pulpit, and that you can [create] change by doing it. You have a responsibility.

Still, there’s a big debate over whether rabbis should be talking politics from the pulpit. Where do you stand on that? What do you think are the limits of literally the bully pulpit?

I’m very, very opposed, actually, to rabbis talking politics from the pulpit, and I’ll tell you why I say that. First of all, it’s not like I know more about politics than my congregants. So if I talked about gun control, for example, about which I have strong feelings, I’m talking to people who know as much or more about it than I do, who see it differently. And it seems to me it is an illegitimate arrogation of my role as a rabbi to say that “because I see it this way, this is Judaism’s position,” which is generally how it’s framed. I actually gave a class years ago where I took a whole bunch of issues — immigration, abortion, women’s rights — and I gave all the Jewish sources on both sides, just so people should realize that Judaism speaks to both sides of these issues. 

I always ask rabbis who speak politically from the pulpit, “If you were not a rabbi, if you were not even Jewish, would your political position be different?” In other words, is your political position mandated by what you understand the Torah to be even though it’s not your personal position? Or is it just your personal position filtered through the Torah? And almost inevitably, it’s the personal position, filtered through the Torah. That to me is just basically preaching politics with a little Judaic twist. And I don’t think that’s what a rabbi should be doing. If there is one place that can be a refuge in a country that is saturated with politics all the time, so that you can actually elevate your soul and hear things about your life and about Jewish history and aspiration, it seems to me it would be the synagogue. I should say as a caveat, I exempt Israel from that: Being pro-Israel seems to me a fundamental Jewish tenet and not a political one.

But I want to push back a little bit. Historically, we look back with such pride on rabbis like Abraham Joshua Heschel or Joachim Prinz in Newark, who in a very polarized time in this country took a strong stand and threw their Jewishness, threw their pulpits, they threw their whole selves into the civil rights movement.

That is the example that people always point to: Heschel. And I say that’s exactly right, because it’s the exception, it’s not the rule. If there is a radical injustice being perpetrated — and I felt, for example, [the denial of] gay marriage was a radical injustice — then you speak up. But everything becomes a question of radical injustice now, everything, every political issue. Civil rights was a uniquely morally urgent issue, about which I really believe it was right to speak up, but those are few and far between. And instead what happens is everything gets thrown into the same pot. Minimum wage becomes just as urgent and people will invoke civil rights to argue one way or another on minimum wage and every other issue in the world, and whether you should be a Republican or a Democrat. And the way that they speak about the other part of the country, it’s like, “they’re obviously radically immoral and terrible.” And I don’t think the rabbi should contribute to that discourse, except in the most extreme circumstances, which obviously civil rights was.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (far right) marches with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery on March 21, 1965. (Getty)

You’ve been writing frequently in the journal Sapir about the ethics of dialogue. And in one essay you ask, “How should we respond when someone promulgates a view with which we disagree, or one that we find offensive, repugnant, even dangerous?” So I’ll throw that question back to you. How do we respond?

The first way you respond is you ask the person, “Why do you believe that?” Because you’ll learn much more and you might discover interesting facts both about the person and about the belief that you didn’t know at first. I’ve had this discussion many, many times with people who have political beliefs that differ from my own and once you actually interrogate the belief, then you can respond to it. But we’ve become a culture in which the way you respond is by attacking the person. I also want to say that, in my experience, most of the political diatribes that we hear change nobody’s mind. Instead, they make your team feel good. And the other team doesn’t even listen to you. 

What also tends to happen is that if you reach out your own team gets upset, because you’re just supposed to be supporting them and you’re not supposed to be listening to the other side. But the Talmud is filled with argument and debate. And the reason you listen to the house of Hillel and not the house of Shammai [two famous antagonists in the Talmud] is because of the way they conducted themselves during the debate. They let Shammai express their opinion first. They listened. They were kind. They were understanding. So this is a multifaceted question. It’s not just a question of abstract opinion. It’s also a question of the way you bear yourself in the public square.

But I wonder if something’s changed. I don’t know if you’ll agree with me, but in terms of public debate I think there’s a different dialogue when one side is trying to muster facts and good-faith arguments, and the other side responds with straw man arguments and conspiracy theories. I’m wondering when trying to seek an argument for the sake of Heaven falls down because one side isn’t really willing to play by the rules.

First of all, I’ve seen both sides indulge in conspiracy theories and false facts. And while one side may be more egregiously guilty of this than the other, I’m always suspicious of someone who thinks their own side doesn’t do this. So if you’re willing to fess up and say “we do this” and then you turn to the other person and say “I see your side doing this,” that’s the beginning of a dialogue. Instead, what I hear is, “My side does facts. Your side does conspiracy.” That’s not going to start a dialogue. So if you’re willing to look at your own shortcomings, then you have the possibility of actually starting a dialogue. But that isn’t what I see. And I don’t want to make this all about the worst actors on [either] side. Because there’s a range and I see that in the people that I talk to.

You also recently tweeted, along the same lines, “Being right is increasingly favored over searching for truth. A healthy society like a thoughtful individual values discovery over justification.” That sounds like a summary of what you’ve been saying.

I had this proposal that I don’t know will ever be realized. I wanted everybody to have a politics dinner. And the idea was, you had to take the other person’s position. You could not express the opinion you believed in. You just had to take the other person’s position and see how well you could articulate what you think the other believes. Because when you start to do that, you start to realize that the other side actually has things that are worth hearing, and truth never resides entirely on one side of the argument. I want to be clear: That does not mean that I don’t favor certain sides over other sides and there aren’t people in the public sphere that I am not fans of, to say the least. But that alone doesn’t help advance the dialogue. To say that doesn’t move things forward. And I’m really interested in trying to move things forward.

What does “moving things forward” mean in this regard? 

Genuine discussions with people who you really disagree with — that’s what I think of as moving things forward. Not ruling them out of court because they support this candidate or that candidate. This is not too crazy. You and I grew up in an America where people actually did this. Let me give you a statistic that I find really striking. When I was young, if you asked the average American, “How do you feel about your child marrying someone of another race?” The percentage was very small of Americans who felt good about that. If you said, “How do you feel about your child marrying someone of another political party?” Overwhelmingly, people were in favor of that. Now the numbers have exactly flipped. Now, that shows you that we can change for good and we can change for ill but the only way to change for good is by actually really engaging with the other. Otherwise, we’re going to dig deeper and deeper bunkers. And that can’t be good for America or for the world.

What are the limits of engagement? I’m thinking of when organizations are pressured to cancel a speaker because one side claims the other poses a threat or is somehow beyond the pale. Are there red lines that Jewish organizations shouldn’t be expected to cross?

I would not invite a Holocaust denier to speak to a Jewish organization. 

An anti-Zionist?

I wouldn’t invite an anti-Zionist, but if a Jewish organization did, I would not say that they should never have done that. But I would say that they have an obligation to have somebody speak to the other side of that question. Because anti-Zionism to me often shades into antisemitism — they’re not exactly identical, but they’re closer than second cousins. 

My general predisposition is that the way you combat bad ideas is with good ideas, not by saying those bad ideas can’t be heard, because we know this strategy doesn’t work. All it does is give fuel to the people who have bad ideas [to say] “Oh, you see, you don’t even want to engage with me. That’s because my idea is so dangerous that you can’t stand to hear it.”

I can give you other examples. I wouldn’t invite a Jew for Jesus to speak at a Jewish institution either. I have specific reasons. But it’s tricky, and there is no perfect distinction that you can make. I think we should try to err on the side of being a listener, as opposed to a censor.

Israelis and American Jews protest outside a Teaneck, New Jersey synagogue where Israeli politician Simcha Rothman, a leading figure in his government’s push to overhaul the judicial system, was giving a speech, June 1, 2023. (JTA)

I’ll throw out one more example and this is purely hypothetical: perhaps inviting an Israeli cabinet member who represents anti-democratic tendencies in the Jewish state

If I were in that [institution] I would ask them to have somebody cross-examine this person, as opposed to just have them speak, because I think those views are too important to pretend they don’t exist, but they’re also too toxic to not be challenged.

At the risk of making you repeat yourself, I want to refer to the chat that is accompanying this Zoom. I don’t know if you have been following it but what I’m seeing is people saying that there are political questions that are moral questions, and if we overdo the idea of trying to learn from the other side, we are conceding a moral, just stance.

I hear this all the time. But what you don’t understand is that you hear it from both sides.

But that doesn’t mean both sides are right.

My brother who’s an ethicist [Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University] says ethical dilemmas are almost always a choice between two rights, not between a right and a wrong. And in every political question there are usually buried in it two things that are principles that everybody agrees with but just that we favor one principle over another. So for example, with immigration, the humane treatment of human beings, the right of a country to define its own borders and to decide who it is and who it isn’t. And we see this in multiple ways. And it’s not so easy to say this is clearly right and this is clearly wrong. And understand I’m not asking you to not take a stand. If someone wants to ask me my private opinion, I’m always happy to give it. I pull no punches when they ask me what I think of this person or that person in private. That’s not the question. The question is how do we conduct public dialogue so it’s not just two people shouting at each other? And believe me, as soon as you say to the other side, “I’m just right and moral and you’re just wrong” you have just closed down the possibility that you can talk. And if you want to do that, you can, but realize that that will just mean that everybody in your camp will agree with you, and everybody in our camp won’t listen to you, and nothing will get done. 

People always hear listening as giving up on your own moral position. But it’s not. It’s listening. It’s being able to hear that someone else also has a moral position, even if you disagree with it. And if you really understand, if you can express the other person’s opinion really well — if you can do that well, then I think you’re ready to say, “and this is why I disagree with it.” But if you’re going to caricature it as just, well, “you’re an immoral jerk,” then honestly, you don’t understand what you’re arguing against.


The post Rabbi David Wolpe, stepping down from a top pulpit, wants you to stop arguing and start listening appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says

A closed Israeli military gate stands near Ramallah in the West Bank, February 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.

The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.

Saturday’s meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.

The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah – including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers – postponed the visit after “Israel’s obstruction of it,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was “a clear breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying force.”

The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.

An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”

A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.

Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”

Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.

But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an “historic moment” for settlements and “a clear message to Macron.” He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.”

The post Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited

Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

Armed men hijacked dozens of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip overnight and hundreds of desperate Palestinians joined in to take supplies, local aid groups said on Saturday as officials waited for Hamas to respond to the latest ceasefire proposals.

The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close but Hamas has said it is still studying the latest proposals from his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the proposals.

The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

On Saturday, the Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.

The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.

Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.

The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war began 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.

Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.

At the same time, a separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.

However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.

“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on the social media platform X.

NO BREAD IN WEEKS

The World Food Program said it brought 77 trucks carrying flour into Gaza overnight and early on Saturday and all of them were stopped on the way, with food taken by hungry people.

“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” it said in a statement.

Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.

He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”

Overnight on Saturday, he said trucks had been stopped by armed groups near Khan Younis as they were headed towards a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and hundreds of desperate people had carried off supplies.

“We could understand that some are driven by hunger and starvation, some may not have eaten bread in several weeks, but we can’t understand armed looting, and it is not acceptable at all,” he said.

Israel says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.

Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.

The post Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a US-backed proposal for a temporary ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but President Donald Trump’s envoy rejected the group’s response as “totally unacceptable.”

The Palestinian terrorist group said it was willing to release 10 living hostages and hand over the bodies of 18 dead in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. But Hamas reiterated demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, conditions Israel has rejected.

A Hamas official described the group’s response to the proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “positive” but said it was seeking some amendments. The official did not elaborate on the changes being sought by the group.

“This response aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.

The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

A Palestinian official familiar with the talks told Reuters that among amendments Hamas is seeking is the release of the hostages in three phases over the 60-day truce and more aid distribution in different areas. Hamas also wants guarantees the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire, the official said.

There was no immediate response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to the Hamas statement.

Israel has previously rejected Hamas’ conditions, instead demanding the complete disarmament of the group and its dismantling as a military and governing force, along with the return of all 58 remaining hostages.

Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close after the latest proposals, and the White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the terms.

Saying he had received Hamas’ response, Witkoff wrote in a posting on X: “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”

On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief on May 13, confirming what Netanyahu said earlier this week.

Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s deceased leader and mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.

The Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said on Saturday it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.

The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.

Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.

On Saturday, aid groups said dozens of World Food Program trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people desperate for food after weeks of mounting hunger.

“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement.

‘A MOCKERY’

The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.

The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.

“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on X.

Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.

A separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.

However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.

Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.

He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”

Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.

Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.

Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters.

The post Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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