Trump shouted at Netanyahu in phone call over PM’s denial of Gaza hunger — report

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump recently had a phone call turn into shouting over the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, NBC News reports, citing unnamed senior US officials.

According to the report, the fiery phone conversation took place on July 28, after Netanyahu said at an event that, despite widespread reports of hunger and starvation in the Strip, “there is no starvation in Gaza” — to which Trump publicly responded the next day that he was “not particularly convinced” by Netanyahu’s assurance, saying there was “real starvation” in the Strip and adding: “You can’t fake that.” 

The report says that after Trump’s comments, Netanyahu demanded a phone call with the president, and the two spoke hours later.

During the call, the premier told Trump that the reports of starvation in Gaza had been “fabricated” by Hamas and that hunger was not widespread in the enclave. Trump then interrupted Netanyahu, NBC says, and began yelling, saying that the president’s aides had shown him proof that children in Gaza were starving and that he didn’t want to hear it dismissed as “fake.”

The report describes the conversation as “a direct, mostly one-way conversation about the status of humanitarian aid” in which the US president “was doing most of the talking,” according to a former US official who was briefed on the call.

According to the report, officials in both the White House and Israel have declined to comment on the phone call.