Rich, Charlie, Andrew, and Noah, on today’s edition of The Editors, look at conflicting reports coming out about the food situation in Gaza.

Rich lays out the realities clearly, saying that absent a workable government in Gaza, “Israel is responsible for providing aid to a population that is largely hostile to Israel and largely has supported this hideous terror group that perpetrated these horrible atrocities on October 7. But the fact is that Israel does have functional control over much of Gaza. And if Gaza is starving, Israel, in the court of public opinion, is going to be blamed even if the ultimate source of the problem is obviously Hamas.”

“Yeah, it’s a horrible topic,” Charlie agrees. “I sometimes think that it is good that we live in a world in which the tolerance for the sort of outrages that populated most of the 20th century is low. . . . On the other hand, the mechanism that makes it quite difficult to get away with the awful conduct that reached fever pitch in the 20th century is the smartphone and the news truck and the instant outrage and impatience. And in this case, this is working against Israel’s ability to prosecute a war that is necessary.”

Charlie says he’s concerned “that we have got to a point as a culture where we’ve overcorrected against terrible things happening in the world such that necessary things cannot. That said, there will be a point here at which it matters that there is global outrage and there is a point at which Israel will need to help those it has temporarily occupied.

“But I can’t help but see this through the lens that treats Israel differently, blames Israel first, assumes the worst, takes at face value everything that Hamas says. . . . This is an ugly, ugly scenario, and we can’t expect otherwise.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.