Huckabee hits back at Western countries that 'side' with terror group Hamas

"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.

"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." 

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. 

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.

"We must be clear - culpability for harm inflicted to civilians rests on terrorist Hamas and Hamas only," he added. 

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."

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.