Bob Geldof condemns Israel over mass starvation in Gaza

Bob Geldof has condemned Israel's policies in Gaza as "a despicable disgrace" amid a growing humanitarian crisis and reports of mass starvation of Palestinians.

The Irish singer and activist appeared on RTÉ's flagship current affairs programme Prime Time last night following a report that featured recent footage of malnourished children in Gaza under Israel's occupation.

"They are deliberately killing children by purposely starving them," Geldof said, "and when their panicked mothers try and approach whilst they dangle food tauntingly in front of their starving bodies, they shoot them."

Yesterday, the United Nations reported that over one million children in Gaza are suffering from starvation and malnutrition. And today, Doctors Without Borders stated that the deliberate use, by Israeli authorities, of starvation as a weapon has reached unprecedented levels, with patients and health care workers now fighting to survive.

Speaking to Prime Time anchor Miriam O'Callaghan, Geldof said that the photos of starved Palestinians reminded him of 1984 — referring to the famine in Ethiopia that led him to organise the Band Aid single and subsequently Live Aid as a fundraising initiative for relief efforts — but in "completely different circumstances."

"Please don't ask me, 'Oh, will we do another Live Aid?', or 'What do we do?'" Geldof said.

"What do we do, except appeal to the Israelis to snap out of it?"

Geldof denounced Israel's government and military as "out of control" and emphasised that "for the Israeli people to allow this in their name is a despicable disgrace."

"The only possible way to stop this is for the Israeli people, though they are watching heavily censored news and heavily censored social feeds, to equally rise up in disgust as the rest of the world is," Geldof said.

The sentiment echoed that of Geldof's statement released on Wednesday to the Express, in which he made a plea to the Israeli people to stand up against the starvation and killing of Palestinians, asking, "Have you become so inured to the similar images of your own historic horror that you cannot feel or see anything anymore?"

Geldof is a Founding Patron of the British Holocaust Museum's Aegis Trust for Genocide Studies; he gave the inaugural address for the first National Holocaust Day Memorial in the U.K. and received the Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Medal from the Houston Holocaust Museum in the U.S.. He said he has spent a great deal of time with Holocaust survivors, who "were they alive today, they would possibly die of shame" over Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

"It is so utterly bizarre that we're talking about Israel, given the horror of their own past," Geldof said.

"The shame of this, the shame for Israel...This is unconscionable."

Geldof told viewers that "we've got to do something and the something must be a political situation." He urged the British government to follow the lead of France, which recently announced that it will recognise the State of Palestine, and added that "Ireland has something to say to this because of our past."

"Our diplomats are very clever and very respected," Geldof said.

"I’ve seen them at work in the UN. I think we step up now and we speak very loudly and very clearly about what we as a country feel."

Watch the full interview below: