"Is Hamas Causing The Famine?", And Other Reader Questions

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Silvia asks on Facebook, “Many people in Europe are convinced that the famine in Gaza is caused by Hamas stealing humanitarian supplies. Where is the truth?”

The truth is that this is a propaganda narrative which has been debunked by some of the most pro-Israel, pro-establishment sources you can imagine. The New York Times reported last month that senior Israeli military officials had said this is false:

“For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.

“But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.”

Also last month, Reuters reported the following:

An internal U.S. government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies, challenging the main rationale that Israel and the U.S. give for backing a new armed private aid operation.

The analysis, which has not been previously reported, was conducted by a bureau within the U.S. Agency for International Development and completed in late June. It examined 156 incidents of theft or loss of U.S.-funded supplies reported by U.S. aid partner organizations between October 2023 and this May.

These are mainstream media sources citing Israeli military officials and the US government, respectively. This claim could not be more thoroughly debunked than it is, and it’s insane that I still see people trying to push it.

Every major human rights group is in agreement that people in Gaza are starving because Israel is starving them, from Doctors Without Borders to Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch to UN special rapporteurs to hundreds of NGOs. This is a settled matter.

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We Are The Many, They Are The Few on Twitter asks, “A question, how do you see yourself politically? You’ve mentioned you’re not a Marxist, but you do seem close to it.”

The best way I’ve been able to sum up my politics is that I support shoving things as far to the left as possible until we get a healthy world. Shoving as far away from capitalism, ecocide, militarism, empire-building, oppression and exploitation as is necessary to have a peaceful and harmonious world where everyone gets what they need and we’re not cannibalizing our biosphere for shareholder profits.

I probably am pretty close to a Marxist in a lot of ways, but I avoid categorizing myself as such for a couple of personal reasons which are unlikely to be of interest to many people.

Firstly, I try to avoid joining up with any ideological factions because humanity is still in a state of extreme delusion at present, so even the best political groups will be full of wildly dysfunctional individuals whose thinking and behavior I’d rather keep at arm’s length to make sure I stay on the right track. I’ll help with leftist movements and agendas where I can be of service in my own capacity like I am with Palestine right now, but I personally don’t find that aligning myself with any group is a safe move at this point in the human adventure.

Secondly I try to avoid limiting my thinking to anyone else’s -ists or -isms. I’ve seen a lot of Marxists get super religious about it and close themselves off to whole aspects of human psychology and spirituality just because of something some dead guy said in the 1880s. That’s something I find too confining as a writer, as a thinker, and as a human organism.

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Teddy on Substack asks, “Your paintings absolutely rival your writing. Have you had formal art training or are you a self discovered painter?”

Art was my best subject in school and I’ve always enjoyed it, but I never really buckled down and pursued it in a disciplined way until Covid when I taught myself oil painting through some online courses. Before that I mostly did watercolor, block printing, and drawing.

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misschryss on Twitter asks, “Where do you find the time to write so prolifically? And do you ever use AI to help you write? How do you make a living?”

I’m fortunate enough to be an entirely reader-funded writer, with many small donors supporting this project so that I and my husband/cowriter can work at this thing full-time.

I have never used AI to help me write, and I never will. I honestly don’t believe AI will ever be able to do what I do, because so much of it comes from inspiration and insight that machines will never be able to imitate.

With regard to staying prolific (major overshare incoming), one indispensable tool is maintaining high sexual energy. Men can train themselves to orgasm without ejaculating, allowing a high level of sexual energy to be maintained at all times which two partners can then keep stoked in each other with mutual attraction. This allows for a fairly stable state of inspiration and creative output where your intense attraction to each other turns you both into each other’s muse.

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The Revolution Continues asks on Substack, “Question for Caitlin and Tim: What is your writing process like? Do you come up with ideas for a piece separately and write the article separately, then come together and discuss and revise together or is the opposite — you write and discuss together and then separately revise? Thanks for letting us take a look into your heads!”

The only thing I do separately from Tim in this project is the painting; the writing is intimately collaborative. Articles typically start with a conversation where one of us says something interesting or insightful, and we unpack it verbally before turning it into text. The sparkliest lines you’ll read here are usually a repetition of something we’d said out loud to each other not long before, often verbatim.

We live and work joined at the hip; we’re both writers and we enjoy writing, but one of the main reasons we love this job so much is because it has allowed us to be together every day. We had a long-distance relationship from 2014 to 2016 before Tim came to Australia from the US, and ever since we’ve been together we’ve avoided spending any time apart. Being separate that whole time was excruciating, but it really made us appreciate how much we like being near each other.

In terms of what our individual roles are, I’m more of the big-picture guiding vision for the overall spirit and direction of the project, and Tim’s better at the details. One way of describing it is that what we write is more Caitlin, how it’s written is more Tim. The general mood, ideology, content and character of these writings is more Caitlin, but that one liner or crackling bit of prose that stuck in your memory is more likely to have come from Tim. But there’s extensive overlap in both of those areas too. Like I said, it’s intimately collaborative.

If you have a question or comment you’d like a response to, just write it in the replies section of whatever platform you’re reading this on and I’ll try to get to it.

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Feature image via Adobe Stock.