Long Reads: Trump’s Gaza Famine w/ Akbar Shahid Ahmed

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🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

Gaza is experiencing a man-made famine as Israel blocks the supply of almost all humanitarian aid. By the start of August, Israeli soldiers had killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians as they were looking for food. Most of the killings happened near sites managed by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF. The GHF was sponsored by the Trump administration earlier this year to replace legitimate aid organizations with a track record of operating in Palestine.

For this week’s episode, we spoke to Akbar Shahid Ahmed of the Huffington Post about the famine and recent massacres in Gaza. Akbar has been a guest on the show several times before. He’s currently working on his book about the Biden administration and Gaza, which will be published next year.

Find Akbar’s previous interviews with Long Reads here: https://jacobin.com/author/akbar-shahid-ahmed

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you're very welcome to Long Reeds, a Jacobin podcast where we look in depth
0:06.0	of political topics and thinkers. My name is Daniel Finn. I'm the Features editor here at
0:11.1	Jacobin and I'll be presenting the show. Gaza is now experiencing a man-made famine, as Israel
0:18.6	continues to block the supply of humanitarian aid to its people.
0:22.6	By the start of August, Israeli soldiers had killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians as they were looking for food.
0:30.6	Most of the killings happened near sites managed by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF.
0:39.3	The GHF was sponsored by the Trump administration earlier this year
0:43.3	to replace legitimate aid organizations with a track record of operating in Palestine.
0:49.3	It hired a US mercenary firm called Safe Reach Solutions to assist its work in Gaza.
0:57.0	Last week, the Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen interviewed a US Army veteran, Anthony Aguilar,
1:05.0	who was employed by Safe Reach Solutions. Aguilar told Van Hollen what he discovered from his time in Gaza.
1:11.6	Who is giving the orders for all the GHF operations?
1:16.6	I was told very explicitly, directly to my face,
1:20.6	that our client is the IDF.
1:24.6	Your client is the IDF.
1:26.6	Our client is the IDF. And this came out a discussion once where
1:30.0	I was in the control room. I was on control room duty that day. So I was in there that day
1:37.2	with the radio observing site number two distribution. A Palestinian man had picked up some children
1:43.5	to let them step on his shoulders to get onto a berm because they were being crushed in the crowd.
1:48.1	Site two is very small, smallest of all four sites.
1:51.3	And these children are being crushed and you picked them up there and put them up on the berm.
1:55.3	And the Israeli Defense Forces liaison officer in the main control center with us comes up to the screen that I'm watching and he says, tell your men to get them down. I was like, we got this under control. I was like, I know they, they know what they're doing. No, they're children. Let's calm down. Get them down now or I will. He leaves and goes to his desk in the operation center and he gets on the radio and he speaks something on the radio. It was in Hebrew. I don't speak Hebrew. One of the contractors that
	...

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