After Netanyahu and Cindy McCain meet, she calls out ‘desperation’ in Gaza, and he accuses her of ‘misrepresentation’
McCain said Gaza is ‘at a breaking point’
Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Photo by Haim Zach/ GPO
By Hannah Feuer August 29, 2025
It appeared to be a moment of grace for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: A joint statement with a top international relief official that said food aid to Gaza was on the increase, coming after months of allegations that Israel was driving the strip into starvation.
It soon unraveled when United Nations World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain, just hours after her meeting Wednesday with Netanyahu, said 500,000 people in Gaza were starving and called for a ceasefire.
Netanyahu lashed out at McCain, an extraordinary rebuke to the widow of Arizona Sen. John McCain, for decades one of Israel’s most stalwart defenders in Washington.
“It is regrettable that Mrs. McCain has since issued statements contradicting what she told us in Jerusalem,” he said in a statement Friday. “That is a misrepresentation. Israel is enabling a steady flow of aid in sufficient quantities.”
The back and forth was a signal of how Israel’s reputation has eroded as the war Hamas launched on Oct. 7, 2023 with an invasion and massacres nears its two year mark. Israel is facing criticism for its conduct from figures once identified as its most strident defenders; President Donald Trump last week said he was “not happy” with an Israeli strike that killed five journalists.
The WFP did not return a request for comment, nor did it confirm whether McCain had signed off on the original joint statement issued by Netanyahu’s office. That statement said the meeting was “constructive” and that Netanyahu and McCain “noted the increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza over the last month and agreed to redouble efforts to expedite and sustain the entry of humanitarian goods into Gaza given the dire needs on the ground.”
As if to emphasize its claim that the meeting had been convivial, Netanyahu’s office, in its rebuke of McCain, released a photo of McCain and Netanyahu shaking hands.
On Thursday, McCain had posted to X, “#Gaza is at a breaking point. I’ve just seen it myself,” sharing a video of her visit to Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip. She warned that “famine is expected in the coming weeks if food doesn’t reach the thousands of starving families here fast enough,” and “the desperation is overwhelming.”
“I met starving children receiving treatment for severe malnutrition – and I saw photos of when they were healthy. Today they are unrecognizable.” McCain said in a World Food Programme press release.
Netanyahu’s office said McCain’s comments contradicted what she told the prime minister. During their meeting McCain, Netanyahu’s office said, acknowledged “stolen aid that goes to Hamas is not humanitarian” and that she had seen “a dramatic improvement” in Gaza: “food was available, prices had dropped, and markets showed goods in sufficient supply and at affordable prices.”
“The only ones being intentionally starved in Gaza are our hostages held by Hamas,” the statement concluded.
McCain, in the WFP release, said she “appreciated” Israel’s coordination with food aid groups, but made it clear it was not enough. She also emphatically called for a ceasefire, at a time when Israel is positioned to intensify the conflict with plans to occupy Gaza City.
“What we need is a ceasefire,” she said. “My heart goes to the mothers in Gaza, as well as to the mothers of the Israeli hostages, whose children are currently starving. Enough is enough.”
The split comes as a separate international hunger monitoring group last week said parts of Gaza now meet its threshold for declaring famine, intensifying global pressure on Israel to address the humanitarian crisis.
McCain’s tough posture should not have come as a surprise. She has been a vocal advocate for the expansion of food aid into Gaza. In May, she said that parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing a “full-blown famine” and refuted Israeli claims that Hamas is stealing aid.
Netanyahu has denied the existence of mass starvation in the strip, and said that allegations amount to an antisemitic blood libel – language that in this instance he spared McCain.
It’s not the first time Israel has alienated a onetime ally with its war conduct. Chef Jose Andres, whose group World Central Kitchen has helped lead relief efforts in the strip and to Israelis made internal refugees of the war, vigorously defended Israel’s conduct after the Oct. 7 massacre. That changed in April 2024, when an Israeli missile killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, an act Andres’ group called “unforgivable,” after Netanyahu apologized for what he said was an accident.
Friday morning, Israel said it had begun the initial stages of its attack on Gaza City, with the Israel Defense Forces writing in a statement that “We will deepen our strikes and will not hesitate until we return all the abductees and Hamas is dismantled militarily and governmentally.”
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