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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we'll hear from leaders of two relief organizations who have been struggling to save lives in Gaza, Doctors Without Borders and Mercy Corps. They will describe some of what their staff is seeing and experiencing themselves, and will ask, can President Trump's acknowledgment of the starvation make a difference to the short or long-term situation? If you've missed this headline over the past day, here is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says about starvation in Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.

Brian Lehrer: In a rare and dramatic break, here is what President Trump said yesterday.

President Trump: We can save a lot of people. Some of those kids are-- That's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that.

Brian Lehrer: President Trump, yesterday and just this morning, the UN issued an alert that said more than 20,000 children have been seen for acute malnutrition between April and this month. The statement says, "Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City." The UN called for "immediate action toward unimpeded large-scale life-saving humanitarian response." That's from a UN group with a technical title, The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

With us now, Katy Crosby, senior director of policy and advocacy for the group Mercy Corps. In a few minutes, we'll also be joined by Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States. Katy, welcome to WNYC.

Katy Crosby: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You were on our national show, All Things Considered with Ari Shapiro, last week. Maybe some of our listeners heard that talking about the statement from 115 international aid organizations about starvation. You used the term tipping into a point of no return. Can you describe here in a little detail what you meant by point of no return?

Katy Crosby: Absolutely. As my colleague, as you said, described it as a tipping point into no return, this is really the culmination of over 21 months of essentially constant conflict, violence, displacement, and now increasing food insecurity, tipping into starvation. There's been essentially no or very little access for food and essential services into Gaza since March. We really are getting to-- I don't know how to say it other than getting to the bottom of the barrel. As the UN mentioned this morning, we are seeing starvation across the Gaza Strip, that is, including children who are severely malnourished. That is something that you can't get back.

If a child loses or misses out on basic nutrition in the early years of their lives, that causes irreparable harm. We're now at the point where it's not just a matter of getting food in, it's a matter of getting food and nutrition and clean water and expertise needed to bring many of these children back from the brink.

Brian Lehrer: Can you describe for our listeners a little bit of what Mercy Corps does? I think Avril Benoît from Doctors Without Borders will join us in a minute. Probably more people have a better idea of what Doctors Without Borders does. How about Mercy Corps? Who are you? What do you do?

Katy Crosby: Of course. Mercy Corps is a humanitarian organization working in over 40 countries around the world, largely in fragile and conflict-affected communities. Certainly, Gaza fits that bill. We have been active in Gaza since before the events of October 7th and have since then continued to seek to provide basic services. We have sought to bring in food kits, shelter, shelter repair kits, basic hygiene kits. Especially when you have poor nutrition and a lack of clean water, disease becomes rampant very quickly. Hygiene and clean water is absolutely critical.

As I said, since March, we have continued to try to gain access into Gaza with supplies, but we have over 1,300 pallets at the moment still waiting on the border of Egypt and on the border of Jordan that have not yet been approved to come into Gaza. We've continued to try to provide clean water where we can, and that involves trucking water. You may have seen in different news reporting photos or videos of what looks like tankers or even just flatbed trucks with large tanks of water on the back of them. We help source that, make sure that the water is clean, and get them to communities. We're now currently serving over 8,000 people with water as often as we can.

Brian Lehrer: Also joining us now is Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States. Avril, welcome back to WNYC. You're on with Katy Crosby from Mercy Corps.

Avril Benoît: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned in the intro before you came on the latest UN release this morning, which said more than 20,000 children have been seen for acute malnutrition between April and this month. Since that UN statement was a medical classification, would you, representing Doctors Without Borders, describe the presence that you have had during these months, and if the statement from the UN is consistent with your staff's observation and experience on the ground?

Avril Benoît: Yes. Unquestionably, people are starving, and the food and water is being deliberately withheld. We were not able to do the kinds of generalized screening in the community because of the insecurity, the constant evacuation orders. It's impossible for any organization to go out and measure everybody and check on their status in terms of malnutrition. What we did is because we work in several hospitals and we are running some field hospitals, some clinics, we have a lot of operational presence, we decided to screen people last week for malnutrition.

We really focused on the children and pregnant and breastfeeding women who need the nutrients to be able to breastfeed successfully. We found that one in four met the classification of malnutrition. 25% of children between the ages of six months and five years old, and all these pregnant and breastfeeding women were malnourished.

Brian Lehrer: I see Doctors Without Borders put out a statement last week saying that your staff, as well as patients, "are wasting away as mass starvation spreads across Gaza." People may not think about aid workers themselves not being able to get food. Is that unusual in a relief work situation? How would you begin to describe the situation as it affects your workers?

Avril Benoît: It's really unheard of. Many of our staff, it's true, are only eating one meal every other day. That meal might just be simple carbs. It's not the kind of fuel, calories, energy they need to be able to work and help other people. We have medical staff in surgical programs that are fainting, that are just too weak, and then they spend their days doing the best they can to help their people. They're still showing up, but it's absolutely unheard of for us to have this kind of intentional withdrawal of food to an entire civilian population.

What we also have to consider is whatever food we can bring in, we want to give our patients a fighting chance to heal properly from burns, from injuries, and if they're not getting enough nutrients, what we end up with are, for example, malnourished women giving their own treatment supplements to their children who are starving. We've got babies being born prematurely, sometimes so many that we have to put multiple in a single incubator in the neonatal wards. That's just a snapshot. Basically, you've got everybody affected by this. There is no one spared.

That's one of the difficult things in all of this because you can see that your patients are not able to even overcome some of the severe traumas and injuries because they're malnourished. Malnourishment is causing its own health consequences, but they're also impacting on people's ability to heal.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're talking about the starvation situation in Gaza that over 108 organizations have stated exists. Now, President Trump, as of yesterday, has stated exists when he said, "You can't fake that," disagreeing with the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to deny that there is starvation in Gaza. We can take a few phone calls and text with questions or comments, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, for Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontière in the United States, and Katy Crosby, senior director of policy and advocacy for the group Mercy Corps.

Katy, you're the director of advocacy, I see, for Mercy Corps in D.C. The clip we played of President Trump is being heard around the world. Trump acknowledging the reality of the starvation and rare break with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Can the president's statement lead to real change in the delivery of relief? Has it already in any way at the policy level?

Katy Crosby: As humanitarians, as counterintuitive as it may seem, we really have no choice but to be optimists in this line of work. We certainly are encouraging any and all engagement from capitals, including most certainly our own in the United States, to acknowledge the depths of this crisis and to push for the fact that none of the things that we have seen to date, whether it is small scale pauses or airdrops or stopping and starting trucks at the border, none of these are adequate substitutes for a functioning humanitarian system.

The fastest and most effective way to save lives right now is to open every border crossing, and having the president and others acknowledge the suffering that we are seeing every day in Gaza is certainly a first step. I would add to what Avril was saying about her staff. We, on the outside, are doing all that we can, and at the end of the day, we go home to our families and our children. Our staff are continuing to live this day in and day out. They themselves are having to find adequate nutrition. Every single one of our staff in Gaza has been displaced by the violence, many of them multiple times from their homes, from their families, and there is no respite for them.

Brian Lehrer: Avril, the aid system has changed several times. Katy was just talking about some of the things that she would like to see. I assume you agree with all of those, but the aid system has changed several times from a UN one to a US-Israel one this year. Then last week, in response to this starvation being so widely reported, another new system got implemented that included airdrops of food. I see your group, Doctors Without Borders, has criticized the use of airdrops. What's your best understanding of what had been happening over the last week, and why were you critical?

Avril Benoît: Tactical pauses in the fighting, limited entrance of aid trucks, as we've seen a few, and airdrops are nowhere near enough to meet the massive needs. The problem with airdrops is they're incredibly inefficient, and they don't resolve the problem of the total chaos on the ground for people that see the parachutes coming down with pallets of food. A couple of months ago, you had five people killed when one of the chutes failed to deploy and the pallet landed on them. Other people were injured. It's a free-for-all.

It's similar to the food distribution coordinated by the US and Israel-backed GHF, which stands for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It's disastrous and deadly. I'm worried now that the Trump administration is acknowledging, because you cannot fail to acknowledge that there's starvation and that children are on TV and the newspapers, and you can see for yourself how starvation is being used as a tactic of war here. I'm afraid that they're going to just pour more money into this GHF, which in fact needs to be dismantled.

The UN beforehand was doing a reasonably good job of delivering food in a safe and effective way. There was no indication, no evidence of any widespread or systemic diversion of that aid to Hamas or anywhere else. Of course, when you have a chaotic distribution, you've got a lot of desperate people who are going to rush forward and criminal organizations, honestly, that are going to rush forward and try to grab what they can. That's not an organized distribution system.

You've got Palestinians having to choose between risking their lives for scraps of food, knowing that they have to cross unsafe zones, often at night, to get into the area of the distribution early enough, because they know that this GHF is going to run out. They have to choose between doing that and maybe getting shot or finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time of an airstrike or just starving and allowing their children to starve. We've seen a lot of patients coming in with bullet wounds in all the facilities around these GHF distribution sites.

What you would normally want is to go back to a system where experienced humanitarian responders, whether it's the UNRWA, World Food Program, whoever it is who's got a lot of experience in this, to carry out food distributions as they have always done, without people getting shot. Do it in a humane way. Go to the places where people are living, not just have a few sites where people have to risk their lives to reach them, and also focus on the most vulnerable. Focus on the children and the women, and the ones who really should be first in line, instead of this pushing and shoving that we've seen at the GHF sites.

Brian Lehrer: You've several times now suggested that the starvation, I think you said a tactic of war, and you said deliberately withheld food. I want to play another clip of Prime Minister Netanyahu casting blame for whatever is happening in Gaza on Hamas. Here's that.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Hamas robs, steals this humanitarian aid and then accuses Israel of not supplying it.

Brian Lehrer: Avril and then Katy, I'll bring you in on this. I don't want to ever deny or whitewash Hamas' role in the grave situation in Gaza, whatever it may be. Reporting has always been that they do embed among civilians. For example, Israel argues if Hamas admits it lost the war and surrenders and returns the remaining hostages, that would be the fastest route to ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Continuing the war guarantees thousands more of their own civilians will die. When is that a war crime, too, in addition to whatever Israel is doing? There are other arguments. Do you acknowledge a role for Hamas in this in any way and urge them to take action, as well as Israel and the United States?

Avril Benoît: We're not seeing Hamas interfere with aid distribution. Hamas is not in a position to control what enters Gaza; Israel is. It's not just food that's running out. It's medical supplies. It's fuel for ambulances and water trucking, and water sanitation. It's health care. Everything is being blocked by Israel from entering. We have to lay responsibility for that part of it on the Israeli government. It is a siege, of course. It can appear sometimes like, oh, look at these trucks, they're coming in, or look at the parachutes that are dropping food. Those are public relations things. They're not really the most effective.

If you really cared about starvation, you would deliver aid in an effective way. Of course, we in the humanitarian sector have been doing distributions and responding to needs for decades without people facing these kinds of atrocities. It is across Gaza. Look, everything is lacking. That's because of a tactic of war. It is a strategy to make life unlivable. It pains me to remind everybody that the US is funding a lot of this, not only with weapons transfers that should have conditions on them according to US law, but nobody seems to be holding Israel to account for weapons that might be used against civilians or violation of human rights.

There's that part of it, but also in just funding the GHF, essentially, the US government is complicit in funding and enabling a horrific system that is risking people's lives instead of addressing their desperate need for food assistance.

Brian Lehrer: Katy, I believe both your organizations are calling for a ceasefire. That's been very hard to get. There are accusations that go both ways as to which of Israel or Hamas, or possibly both for their own reasons, are not agreeing to any ceasefire terms. Is that appeal directed in Mercy Corps case at both warring parties?

Katy Crosby: Absolutely. We are not political actors in this conflict. We are a humanitarian organization, so our only role is to serve people and uphold our shared humanity. I think, as Avril mentioned, what we are witnessing now is a humanitarian crisis. People are dying of hunger just miles from where food is available, and this scarcity just magnifies and increases desperation from everyone. That makes food insecurity worse, that makes physical security worse.

What we have been pressing for is to flood the zone because the more access that you have and the more assistance that goes in, not just food, but clean water, medical supplies, basic essentials, that then reduces the pressure, that then makes those goods less appealing to looters, to other malign actors, and increases the likelihood of them getting into the hands of, of the people who need them the most. We really do see a ceasefire as the only way to ensure that we can have that access, that we can move into and around Gaza to reach those most vulnerable.

Brian Lehrer: Jay in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jay.

Jay: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. This is a really painful thing for me personally. I have a 17-month-old daughter here, healthy, thank God, and I live in Bay Ridge. We have a large Palestinian population here. I'm not Palestinian. I have a mixed family. One side is Jewish, and it's just-- I have a family member who believes in starvation as a weapon of war and echoes everything Netanyahu says. It's like Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Everything goes back to them. Who's doing it here? Who's starving? Who's starving the population? How can you get to this point?

Brian Lehrer: Of course, we can't verify this, but what's your version of why your family member says they believe in starvation as a weapon of war?

Jay: He says that some people don't want peace. He says they don't want peace. That's the justification. To me, it goes against everything I was raised with. It's just hard to fathom. This is an otherwise caring person.

Brian Lehrer: Jay, thank you for--

Jay: How did we get to this point? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. James in Baldwin, you're on WNYC. Hi, James.

James: Thanks, Brian, for taking my call. I just wanted to make a couple of comments. First of all, like many people, my heart goes out to the people of Gaza that are just suffering terribly and unnecessarily as a result of this man-made disaster spearheaded by the Netanyahu government. I also want to pay recognition to the tremendous work being done by the humanitarian community, the United Nations, and non-UN actors like Médecins Sans Frontières and others. They really are working under extraordinarily difficult conditions.

My main comment at this point is that we are seeing now an enormous gap between reality, namely the starvation taking place in Gaza, and the statements of the Netanyahu government. This is doing enormous damage to the credibility of Israel. Anyone who is concerned with Israel should really reflect on what the whole world is seeing. They are seeing starvation photos that cannot be denied by anyone, including by President Trump yesterday. Yet we are hearing statements by the prime minister and this morning by the foreign minister saying that starvation is taking place.

Many thinking people will be saying, if they are obviously lying on this issue, what other issues are they lying on, and to what extent can we trust the Israeli government in the future? I'm concerned for Israel, also leading this starvation campaign in Gaza. Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. Leon in Titusville, you're on WNYC. Hello, Leon.

Leon: Hi. I'm curious as to what happens to the small number of trucks that get in. I understand that these trucks are getting looted, and I'm curious how and why they're getting looted, and is Israel actually helping people loot these trucks, the small number of trucks that do get in.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that question. For context, Avril from Doctors Without Borders, I know that your group put out a statement the other day on the Issue of so many Palestinians being killed trying to get food. You wrote, or your group wrote, Doctors Without Borders, massacres at food distribution sites in Gaza are occurring near daily. As of July 13th, the UN confirmed 875 Palestinians were killed while seeking food, 201 on aid routes, and the rest at distribution points. Thousands more have been injured.

These are related issues, the looting and Israel always says the shootings are when troops themselves are being put at risk by Hamas fighters or by crowds charging at them. What's your best understanding, and how do you answer the caller's question about how to best prevent the looting?

Avril Benoît: A permanent ceasefire, of course, would calm things down. As was stated earlier, a ceasefire applies to everyone, all the belligerent parties. It needs to be long-term; it needs to really hold for a long time in order to allow us to flood the zone with enough food so that people don't feel like this is my one chance to help my children survive. I'm going to do anything to get what I can, anything to rush that truck. You can imagine that once even trucks are allowed in, they need to be able to safely take the food and to organize the distribution.

A lot of the Israeli authorities' way of managing this, whether it's facilitating the arrival, expediting clearance procedures, allowing the entry of the goods at scale, coordinating a safe collection and delivery, they're not doing. That's one of the reasons that we are so concerned with these statements that are just denying the reality. We have many authorities, Israeli authorities, top officials, multiple well-documented dehumanizing statements by these Israeli officials calling for the annihilation of the population or the transfer out of the Strip.

The only reasonable inference of these tactics of the denying people access to aid is that there's an intention to erase Palestinian people from Gaza, ethnic cleansing, or what others would call genocide. You end up in a situation where we're not only seeing, and just to reflect on what one of the earlier callers said about how Israel's standing in the world is being so diminished by the actions of Israeli authorities that it's becoming known as a pariah state, but we need to remember that the US is also seen globally as the enabler.

That's where there's an opportunity for Americans to do something, to speak up to express that we're not going to have this done with our taxpayer dollars. We're not going to fund and back this political. We're not going to make excuses, and we're not going to believe the lies about what is actually happening in Gaza.

Brian Lehrer: Katy, since you're in Washington, I'll let you follow up on that, and you'll have the last word. As Trump's position seems to change on this claim that Netanyahu keeps making that Hamas is stealing the food, there was an article in The New York Times just a couple of days ago, for example, headline, No proof Hamas routinely stole UN aid, Israeli military officials say. It's even quoting Israeli military officials saying that's not happening, while Netanyahu is saying that it is. To the extent that the United States has some policy control over this, what can the United States do right now?

Katy Crosby: I think certainly being able to validate and echo what was reported, as you said, by Israeli military officials, that's also echoed by the USAID's own analysis, that has confirmed that over the last 21 months that there has been no evidence of systematic diversion from the UN or US-funded aid organizations. That really just demonstrates that with proper safeguards, humanitarian aid can be delivered securely and independently.

Having the US and that's certainly the administration as well as Congress, which has its own role to play to make the case to Israeli officials, as well as others in the international community, that truly a ceasefire and the allowance of aid in through all access points is the first and most necessary step towards alleviating the suffering that we are seeing in Gaza.

Brian Lehrer: Just one more thing, Avril, on maybe the most controversial thing that you said, that people may question that this is intentional. I know there was a column in The New York Times by their conservative columnist, Bret Stephens, the other day, arguing against the use of the word genocide with respect to Gaza. His argument was as many tens of thousands of Gazans as may be being killed, it's a population of so much more than that. What is it, over a million? That they're not going to wipe out the population. They're not going to starve the population to death, even if many, many, many thousands of people are starved to death.

How could that be the policy? That's not going to end the war. That's not going to remove all the Palestinians from Gaza.

Avril Benoît: Look, the technical legal definition of genocide is one thing. If you're really homing in on that, it's for a population in whole or in part with an intentionality to remove them or to kill them. In the sense that we have, as humanitarians, seen a campaign of ethnic cleansing where people are being pushed out, and the West Bank is similar in that respect, they're creating conditions where their homes are demolished and where they're--

87% of the Gaza Strip is now under an evacuation order. We've got almost total dismantling of the health care system, destruction of civilian infrastructure, repeated failure to protect civilians or give them the adequate warnings about attacks about to take place, deliberate destruction of homes, weaponization of hunger. It amounts to collective punishment. At a very basic level, those are all war crimes. When you put it all together with the dehumanizing statements of Israeli officials, you do come to the conclusion that there is an attempt, an intention here to erase the Palestinian people in whole or in part from Gaza.

We can get to a talking shop about the genocide world or not. What we have here, though, is an occupying force, Israeli government, that is committing these things against civilians. Yes, Hamas is to blame for what happened on October 7th, and yes, Hamas is to blame for holding of hostages and for lots of things, but that does not mean that Israel is off the hook. The US Government needs to recognize that.

Brian Lehrer: Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States, and Katy Crosby, senior director of policy and advocacy for the group Mercy Corps. Thank you both very much for joining us today.

Avril Benoît: Thank you.

Katy Crosby: Thank you.

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