‘We’re not like the Nazis’: Netanyahu reportedly bickered with German FM over ‘famine’ in Gaza

A conversation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Germany’s foreign minister yesterday over the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip reportedly heated up when Annalena Baerbock charged that Israel is “heading towards famine in Gaza.”

Channel 13 reports that when the Baerbock offered to show Netanyahu and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer “photos of hungry [Gazan] children on my phone,” Netanyahu told the German official, “Come and see the pictures of the markets in Gaza, the beaches in Gaza, there’s no famine there.”

The report comes as photos circulating on social media show stocked market stalls and Gazans enjoying a hot day on the beach, after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew all of its maneuvering ground forces from the Strip two weeks ago, prompting displaced Palestinians to attempt to return to their homes.

Baerbock reportedly recommended that Israel stop circulating the photos of life supposedly returning to normal in the Palestinian enclave “as they don’t portray the real situation in Gaza. There is hunger in Gaza.”

At this point, Netanyahu is said to have raised his voice and insisted, “It’s real. It’s reality. It’s not like what the Nazis staged, we’re not like the Nazis who produced fake images of a manufactured reality.”

According to the Channel 13 report, the German foreign minister responded, “Are you saying that our doctors in the field in Gaza aren’t telling the truth? Are you saying that the international media is lying?”

Baerbock arrived in Israel yesterday for a flying visit in the wake of Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel overnight Saturday-Sunday, in which it launched some 350 attack drones and missiles at the country.

Germany urged Israel to show restraint in the aftermath of the attack, warning that any additional direct hostilities with Iran could send the Middle East spiraling into an all-out war.

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.