Al Jazeera English’s Listening Post: ‘”Who is the superpower? The US or Israel?” The absurdity of airdrops in Gaza.’

You’ve seen the images in the media coverage: the US air dropping aid into northern Gaza to feed hungry Palestinians. Headline news but also a textbook case of cognitive dissonance on Washington’s part – dropping food while continuing to provide Israel with bombs to pulverise Gaza. 

What makes the starvation there different is that it’s deliberate. Israel is manufacturing this famine. It has systematically attacked what little aid gets through. Last week more than a 100 Palestinians, who lined up to get some flour to cook with, were slaughtered by Israeli troops. 

Israel’s response to that atrocity was straight out of its misinformation playbook: deny, then blame Palestinians, then accept limited responsibility. We’ve seen it so many times before.

What is unprecedented though, is the scale of what is now unfolding in Gaza: the hunger, the mass killing, the rewriting of the map.

And the gulf between what is happening on the ground, and the obsolete narratives coming out of the White House and the mainstream news media, has never been bigger …

View the video above for the full program.

More information: Jeremy Konyndyk, ‘Airdropping aid is inefficient – so why is the U.S. doing it in Gaza anyway?’ Interviewed by Ari Shapiro, NPR, 6th March 2024.