Reginald Godwyn

Melanie Phillips and the War of Words: Gaza and the Truth She Won’t Face

When you have worked as long in the Law as I have, you will have one fact etched into your mind: no one is telling the truth. Litigants lie. Litigants have poor memories. Litigants want to believe falsehoods that reinforce their case. They do this when they are in the wrong and when they are in the right. It is for judges to make the final decision of who is telling the most truth in a case. But it is for instructing solicitors to look first through the evidence and to try to ensure that what gets into court is cleansed of the grossest untruths. Bearing in mind my fifty years of trying to establish the truth in private litigation, I will try here to clarify what is probably true and what probably untrue in the competing claims made about the present hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

On 23 July 2025, Melanie Phillips published an “Fever Pitch in the War Against Israel” on her Substack. In this, she launches an attack not just on Hamas, but also on the United Nations, the BBC, Western governments, foreign ministers, aid organisations, and even individual surgeons who have dared criticise Israeli conduct in Gaza. To Phillips, Israel is not merely defending itself—it is being ritually defamed by a chorus of malevolent actors, most of whom, she implies, are either stupid or actively antisemitic. The entire war, she writes, is being framed as a war crime by a complicit international elite, echoing Hamas propaganda.

Much of Phillips’ anger is understandable. Hamas is indeed a violent organisation that commits war crimes and obstructs humanitarian aid. Yet Phillips turns these facts into rhetorical absolution. Her loyalty to Israel’s official narrative is so absolute that there is no room for criticism or nuance. The result is a worldview where the IDF never acts unjustly, UN officials are agents of terror, and stating even the possibility of Israeli misconduct is a “blood libel.”

What follows is a detailed examination of her article, matching each major claim against documented evidence. Where she is right, that should be acknowledged. Where she misrepresents the truth, that must be exposed. The facts are taken from publicly available sources: the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and others. All sources are cited in full at the end.

Before I begin, however, I should make an important admission. I could insist that the bodies mentioned above are international organisations of good reputation. But I do not believe that they are. They are lying, or involved in lies, about climate change, the dangers of the Coronavirus, the safety of the Coronavirus vaccines, the rights and wrongs of the Ukraine War, and many other things. These are flagrant and easily detected lies. What reason have I for taking on trust anything that they say about alleged events in the Gaza Strip?

My answer is that what they say is confirmed in too much video footage to have been faked or used out of context. What they say is also supported by too many admissions made on the record, and not denied or withdrawn, by Israeli ministers and officials. Judging the truth of any matter does not simply involve gathering opposed statements and deciding on authority. It is also a matter of deciding on the balance of probabilities, taking into account other statements on the same issues by the persons in question. There is also the observation to be made that, unlike with climate change and the vaccines, there is no evident financial or other hidden motive to be suspected. Further, while denying that climate is affected by human actions, or that those vaccines are highly dangerous, comes with a price, in this matter, it is agreeing with the consilience of testimony from often suspect bodies that is likely to cause difficulties. It does look, for once, as if truth is being spoken to power by those who are normally both powerful and untruthful.

This being said, I will begin.

  1. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Not the Sole Saviour

The ‘Israeli government’s aid delivery model’—the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which is actually run by the Americans and supervised by the IDF—is the only means of reliably getting food to Gaza’s civilians rather than it being stolen by Hamas. The GHF has supplied more than 80 million meals to Gazan civilians. There are actually videos on social media of Gazans cheering the IDF and thanking them for the first food they’ve received that’s free.

Phillips presents the GHF as a benevolent saviour and the UN as either corrupt or complicit. It is true that the GHF, an American-led initiative with IDF oversight, has delivered over 80 million meals, especially in northern Gaza, where UN access has been most limited. COGAT confirms these figures (COGAT, 2025). Some social media videos do show Gazans thanking the IDF for aid, though these are typically distributed by IDF channels and are hard to verify independently.

What Phillips omits is the role of the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNRWA. According to UN OCHA, these organisations delivered aid to over 1.1 million Gazans between September and December 2024 alone (UN OCHA, 2024). The claim that the UN has refused to work with the GHF is misleading. The UN has protocols of neutrality that prevent direct cooperation with military entities. Furthermore, as OCHA notes, distribution is obstructed not by refusal, but by unsafe conditions: Israeli airstrikes, looted convoys, destroyed infrastructure.

In accusing the UN of complicity with Hamas, Phillips provides no evidence. She does not cite documents, testimonies, or investigations—only her suspicion and the presence of Hamas operatives within UNRWA, a real issue we address below. That is not journalism. It is polemic.

  1. Aid Entry: Figures vs Function

What ‘drip feeding of aid’? What Israeli ‘denial of essential humanitarian assistance’? Israel has supplied 1,863,357 tons of aid to Gaza. The IDF’s aid division COGAT says that recently close to 4,500 trucks entered Gaza with supplies, including flour for bakeries and 2,500 tons of baby food… There are currently around 950 humanitarian aid trucks that have crossed into Gaza but are just sitting there because the UN and its proxies can’t or won’t distribute their contents.

These numbers are not invented. COGAT’s own website tracks the volume of aid passing through crossings. By July 2025, the reported total had reached 1.8 million tons. However, Phillips uses these figures to suggest that Israel is not obstructing aid. This is misleading.

As Oxfam noted in March 2024, the actual volume of aid reaching people in need is only about 15% of what is required. UN OCHA reports that only 50–70 trucks enter Gaza daily, far below the 500 trucks per day needed to prevent famine; and only 34 were admitted in the closing months of 2024 (Oxfam, 2024; UN OCHA, 2025). COGAT itself acknowledges that hundreds of trucks are delayed at border crossings due to security checks, lack of UN coordination, or poor infrastructure. It is not enough to point to how much food is delivered to a warehouse—it matters whether that food gets distributed.

  1. Civilian Deaths: Intent is Not the Only Standard

Of course the IDF don’t deliberately kill Gazans queuing for food… Hamas, on the other hand, have killed hundreds of Gazan civilians for receiving food supplies.

Phillips insists that any civilian deaths caused by the IDF are accidental, and that Hamas executes civilians for accepting aid. She cites no source for the claim that Hamas has killed “hundreds” of Gazans for receiving food, and no independent NGO or UN body has corroborated this number. Amnesty International has documented Hamas intimidation and punishment of civilians, but not on the scale Phillips alleges.

As for Israeli responsibility, the February 2024 “flour massacre” is instructive. In this incident, over 100 civilians were killed during an aid delivery. Initial IDF statements blamed the crowd for stampeding. Later, a UN investigation found that most of the casualties were caused by Israeli gunfire (UN News, 2024). There is elaboration on this by Euromedmonitor (Euromedmonitor, 2024)

Even if the IDF did not intend to kill civilians, repeated incidents of excessive force suggest a pattern of recklessness. The UN reports that over 1,000 civilians have been killed near aid convoys since May 2025. Phillips dismisses these figures as fabricated or unreliable. But again, she offers no alternative data—only denial.

  1. Humanitarian Cities: A Euphemism?

What ‘permanent forced displacement’? The IDF are proposing to move Gazan civilians to a place of relative safety during this war so that Israel can finish off Hamas.

This is perhaps Phillips’ most dangerous minimisation. Israel has proposed moving civilians to designated “safe zones” such as Al-Mawasi. These are overcrowded and under-supplied, and they come regularly under attack. The ICRC and UN have warned that such evacuations, without a clear right of return, may constitute unlawful forced displacement under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (ICRC, 1949).

Indeed, this appears to be stated policy by the Israeli Government. I could supply many citations for this, but here is the Israeli Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, reported in The Times of Israel on the 24th July 2025:

“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu tells Haredi radio station Kol Barama. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on Mein Kampf.”

Eliyahu says Gaza will be cleared for Jewish settlement, but says Jewish towns won’t be “fenced in inside cantons.”

“All Gaza will be Jewish,” he says, though he clarifies that Arabs who are loyal to Israel will be tolerated.”

In July 2025, a joint statement from the foreign ministers of the UK, Spain, and Belgium warned that these plans risked “de facto population transfer.” Phillips mocks this concern as paranoia, but provides no argument in response. She assumes Israel’s intent is pure, and therefore legal frameworks need not apply. Sadly, Mr Eliyahu is not the only Israeli government minister who has confirmed that evacuation is a cover for ethnic cleaning and theft of property. What Phillips dismisses as paranoia or lies, is very easily seen by any impartial outsider as wholly justified suspicion.

  1. The UN and Starvation Claims

The UN is far from being an honest broker… it has employed thousands of Hamas operatives on its UNRWA payroll… It is promoting Hamas propaganda about mass starvation.

The claim that “thousands” of Hamas operatives work for UNRWA is an exaggeration. Israel’s 2024 report identified 450 staff with links to Hamas (Israel MFA, 2025). Some donor countries suspended funding pending investigation. UNRWA dismissed implicated staff and implemented reforms (UNRWA, 2025). But Phillips upgrades 450 to “thousands” without citation.

Her dismissal of famine warnings is equally unfounded. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported in June 2025 that 1.1 million Gazans face famine, based on food consumption surveys, satellite imaging, and mortality tracking—not Hamas press releases (IPC, 2025).

A further point is that Mr Eliyahu, speaking again, appears to be ignorant of his government’s legal responsibility for the citizens in an occupied territory:

“There’s no hunger in Gaza,” he says. “But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”

There is large and probably undeniable evidence of hunger in Gaza. More to the point, since Israel is an occupying power in Gaza, it is required by the Fourth Protocol to the Geneva Convention to take much greater care to avoid starvation than Mr Eliyahu insists is the case. Even without the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, his words are in themselves scandalously inhuman, and are indicative of a general inhumanity of the Israeli Government.

  1. Settler Violence: A Convenient Myth?

‘Settler violence’ is the latest group libel du jour based on lies… some 90 per cent of incidents of ‘settler violence’ claimed in recent years by the UN were fabricated.

Phillips cites a Regavim report to claim that 90% of settler violence reports are false. She references the recent Taybeh church incident, where a fire near a church was initially blamed on settlers but turned out to involve only adjacent property.

Even if the Taybeh story was misreported, the broader phenomenon of settler violence is well documented. UN OCHA recorded over 1,100 settler attacks in the West Bank in 2024. B’Tselem has published videos of settlers torching crops, destroying vehicles, and attacking Palestinians. Phillips ignores all this and relies on a single partisan NGO to discredit the entire UN dataset (B’Tselem, 2025).

  1. Professor Maynard: Libel or Testimony?

Maynard came out with claims that sounded as grotesque and loony as the medieval blood libels about Jews… that teenage Gazan boys queueing for food were being shot by Israeli troops or by Israeli-operated ‘quadcopter’ drones.

Nick Maynard is a British surgeon who has worked in Gaza. He has reported treating boys with injuries to the groin and legs, which he attributes to targeted drone strikes. Phillips calls this a blood libel, implying it is a form of medieval antisemitic conspiracy theory.

It is true that Maynard’s claims have not been independently verified. It is also true that he denied Hamas activity in Al-Shifa hospital—a denial later contradicted by IDF footage and arrests (Israel MFA, 2024). But to equate medical observations with a genocidal libel is irresponsible. Civilian casualties, especially among children, are reported by multiple sources. Dismissing these entirely as lies, without inquiry, is to abandon journalism.

  1. Western Media and Political Complicity

The statement by Lammy and the other foreign ministers… reads like UN-laundered Hamas propaganda. The BBC has become simply unhinged.

In July 2025, David Lammy and 27 other ministers signed a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and condemning the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Phillips sees this as proof of alignment with Hamas. Hamas did welcome the statement, but that does not mean the statement was authored by them. As so often in her article, alignment is mistaken for conspiracy.

As for the BBC, Phillips accuses it of abandoning journalism. She cites no specific falsehoods. But her anger is directed at tone: the BBC interviews Gazan civilians, reports food shortages, and uses the word “famine.” To her, this is unacceptable.

The Cost of Certainty

Phillips is right to criticise Hamas. But she goes further. She delegitimises all critics of Israeli conduct, equates criticism with antisemitism, and insists on Israeli innocence even when the evidence points elsewhere. Her certainty is not a product of confidence, but of necessity: to admit complexity would be to weaken the moral clarity she insists upon.

My conclusion? As ever, no one is telling the whole truth. I would not trust Hamas to tell me it was raining outside my window. But the Israelis also are not telling the truth when they answer claims that they are committing atrocities. I could compile a much longer article of statements from the Israeli media in which Israeli ministers almost gloat about their criminal intentions and conduct in Gaza. For the moment, it is enough to say that aid is delayed; civilians are dying; settler violence is real. Mrs Phillips must look deep into her conscience and accept that truth cannot proceed from loyalty alone.

Bibliography

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Phillips

Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Related posts:

No related posts.

3 comments


  1. Well, this is Melanie Phillips’s own identity politics. We are told white identity politics is evil, while identity politics of another group is great. And attempts to keep England English are evil, but the refusal to allow African and Asian migration to Israel is great, etc. We are nearing the end for this sort of self-serving propaganda. Melanie lacks any form of self-awareness. Most of us would be embarrassed to be so self-serving all the time. No citizen of the UK should have a greater loyalty to any other country than to the UK. This goes for Melanie’s ethnic group, of course, but also applies to Arabs and Palestinians, and so there should be no street demonstrations (for or against) on this issue in England.

    Reply

  2. I honestly couldn’t care less what happens overseas nor do I have any interest in the foreign policy narratives of the MSM.
    I neither require nor seek anyone’s interpretation of immigration or its alleged costs or benefits when I witness daily the consequences on my own immediate surroundings.
    I want both the Labour and Conservative parties to be utterly destroyed in the next election and if that election arrives early by some unexpected means then all the better.
    I habour no hope that any new party will mark a significant improvement over current circumstances but at least there is a chance that a new party might mark a turning point.

    Reply

  3. This article is unusually balanced. Generally, that is good, in this world of gray hats (with no white or black hats, as in some cowboy movies). But in the real world, some gray hats are closer to white than black, while other gray hats are closer to black than white. Thus, we are forced to either abstain from judgment, or judge gray hats on a relative scale, with no double standards.

    During WW2, US and UK bombers routinely bombed German cities, causing massive damage to civilians, civilian homes, and in infrastructure (including dual use). Many German “civilians” were Nazi party members or worked in war factories. The IDF takes considerable care to minimize civilian casualties (more than any other military), even though most of the harmed “civilians” have been brainwashed or coerced into support Hamas rule and terrorism, to one degree or another.

    Hamas embeds itself underground, deliberately firing from and placing themselves in the midst of civilians in order to sympathy from useful sympathizers. Videos document that
    Hamas targets Gazan residents from directly accessing supplies. Concerning how many Hamas supporters among UNRWA staff, how are they to be identified? Do they carry membership cards? Can we read their minds or document all their actions?

    Personally, while under Biden, my sympathies were more with Israel than the US. Under Trump, I am closer to midway between the two. Does the author really prefer Starmer over Bibi? Who knows?

    Reply

Leave a Reply