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U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee lashed out at almost 30 Western countries who on Monday called for Israel to end the war in Gaza, saying in a post on X that “when Hamas thinks you do good work, you are doing evil.”
“How embarrassing for a nation to side w/ a terror group like Hamas & blame a nation whose civilians were massacred for fighting to get hostages released,” wrote Huckabee after Hamas – whose Oct. 7, 2023, mass terror attack on Israel sparked the ongoing war in Gaza – said it welcomed “the contents of the joint statement issued by the United Kingdom Government along with 25 other countries, calling for an immediate end to the war on the Gaza Strip.”
The U.S. and EU-designated terror group also reiterated its claims that Israel was carrying out a “policy of starvation” on the coastal enclave amid unverified reports that people have died due to hunger-related reasons. Fox News Digital has not been able to independently verify such reports.
STUDY CLAIMS US NEWS OUTLETS SERVED AS ‘MEGAPHONES’ FOR HAMAS IN GAZA WAR
Hamas terrorists stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7 2023, attack, in Rafah, Feb. 22, 2025. (Reuters/Hatem Khaled/File Photo)
“The statement’s condemnation of the killing of over 800 Palestinian civilians at the gates of U.S.-Israeli-controlled aid checkpoints underscores the brutality of this mechanism,” Hamas wrote following a statement issued by the U.K. Foreign Office and U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” read Lammy’s statement, which was also signed by the foreign ministers of 28 countries.
“If Hamas embraces you – you are in the wrong place,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gidon Saar responded on X. “Hamas’s praise for the statement by the group of countries is the best proof of the mistake they made – part of them out of good intentions and part of them out of an obsession against Israel.”
France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot, from left, Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, pose in the offices of the honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Geneva, June 20, 2025. (Fabrice Coffrini/Keystone via AP)
Since launching a new model for food aid distribution in the war-torn strip in early May, Israel and the U.S. have come under fire from the international community over near-daily reports of people dying while attempting to receive aid or not receiving any aid at all.
Israel has refuted claims that there is hunger in Gaza or that it is using starvation as a tactic of the now 22-month-old war. Rather, officials have said they are working to prevent Hamas from stealing aid being distributed by veteran, mostly U.N.-run, humanitarian agencies and sold for exorbitant prices in a bid to continue funding terror operations.
US-BACKED GAZA AID GROUP LAUNCHES BOLD NEW SYSTEM TO DELIVER FOOD DIRECTLY TO FAMILIES
Ambassador Mike Huckabee speaks to Fox News Digital during an interview at the American embassy in Jerusalem, Israel. (Yoav Dudkevitch/ TPS-IL)
Israel, which is tasked with securing routes to four aid centers run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund, has also denied that its soldiers intentionally kill Palestinian civilians but is rather issuing warning shots as a measure of crowd control. The GHF has so far delivered some 85 million meals since it started its aid operation in May.
U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said on Monday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “deplored the growing reports of both children and adults suffering from malnutrition and strongly condemned the ongoing violence, including the shooting, killing and injuring of people attempting to get food.”
“As someone who has spent over 40 years in Israel’s Security Establishment – both as IDF Chief of Staff & Minister of Defense, I can say this unequivocally: Not only has Israel never starved or targeted civilians, but it goes above and beyond to protect civilians in the most complex of war zones like Gaza,” Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz wrote on X.
“We must be clear – culpability for harm inflicted to civilians rests on terrorist Hamas and Hamas only,” he added.
HAMAS LOSING IRON GRIP ON GAZA AS US-BACKED GROUP GETS AID TO PALESTINIANS IN NEED
Protesters rally against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (Fox News)
On Tuesday, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, said in a statement that “twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip.”
“Every moment, new cases of malnutrition and starvation are arriving at Gaza’s hospitals,” he said.
Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv who has been monitoring the situation in Gaza closely, told Fox News Digital that he was “not aware of a single official report that people died because of starvation or hunger.”
“I’m not familiar with any such report, but I am familiar with many warnings that were published by international organizations about the catastrophe that exists in Gaza and how in two months or so, 40 or 50,000 people will die because of hunger, but nobody has died because of hunger, because there is no hunger,” he said, adding, “if there are some local problems of supply, it is because of Hamas – not because of the IDF.”
Michael, who is also a fellow at the Misgav Institute in Jerusalem, pointed out that Hamas “loots, robs and steals the humanitarian aid, partially for themselves, to feed themselves and the rest is sold in very high prices to the local population in order to make money.”
Palestinians carry bags and boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
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Israel’s goal of weakening Hamas’s grip on the Strip – and on aid agencies – appeared to be working on Monday, with The Washington Post reporting that the terror group “is facing its worst financial and administrative crisis in its four-decade history” and is struggling to find the resource it needs to continue fighting Israel or rule Gaza.
Quoting a former high-level Israeli intelligence officer, and current Israel Defense Forces officers, the report said that Hamas could no longer pay its fighters or rebuild its underground terror tunnels, where it is believed to be holding some 50 hostages, both alive and dead, who kidnapped during its Oct. 7 attack.