U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, criticized nearly 30 Western nations on Monday after they called for an end to the conflict in Gaza. In a post on X, Huckabee stated, “If Hamas appreciates your efforts, you are likely perpetuating wrongdoing.”

He commented, “It is shameful to align with a group like Hamas and blame a country like Israel, which is fighting to free hostages after its citizens were brutally attacked,” after Hamas expressed approval of a joint statement by the United Kingdom and 25 other nations urging for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. This statement came following Hamas’s mass terror assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, which ignited the current conflict.

The U.S. and EU-recognized terrorist organization also reiterated claims accusing Israel of implementing a “policy of starvation” in the coastal region amidst unconfirmed reports of deaths caused by hunger. Fox News Digital has not independently confirmed these reports.

Protesters rally against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (Fox News)

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.”

Palestinians carry bags and boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israel’s goal of weakening Hamas’s grip on the Strip – and on aid agencies – appeared to be working on Monday, with The Washington Post reporting that the terror group “is facing its worst financial and administrative crisis in its four-decade history” and is struggling to find the resource it needs to continue fighting Israel or rule Gaza. 

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.