We all know that the BBC is biased over Gaza. It can’t bring itself to describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, which it obviously is.

The Corporation has sometimes been too quick to blame the Israeli Defence Forces. In November 2023 it claimed an IDF missile had caused the deaths of dozens of people in a hospital before it transpired that a Hamas rocket had gone astray.

Earlier this year, it was forced to apologise after it emerged that the paid 14-year-old narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a senior Hamas official.

Some will therefore discount the Beeb’s latest outpouring of stories about Gaza, which it claims is on the verge of an Israeli-orchestrated famine.

Sceptics may also point out that in recent days the Beeb has repeatedly broadcast harrowing pictures of the same six-month-old emaciated baby girl, Siwar Ashour. This poor child is being used by Hamas (with the BBC as a willing accomplice) as a propaganda tool to demonise Israel.

Yet the fact remains that Siwar Ashour is not an invented victim. She is very sick because there is no formula milk as a consequence of the aid blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel for the past ten weeks.

It is also the case that there is a shortage of food at reasonable prices in Gaza – which is hardly surprising given that no aid has reached it since early March.

Because Israel won’t allow journalists into Gaza, unless supervised by the IDF, we have to rely on the United Nations (often critical of Israel) and UNRWA (its relief agency, with established links to Hamas). Their accounts of hunger and famine may be exaggerated, but they’re not lying.

Accounts of hunger and famine may be exaggerated, but they’re not lying, writes Stephen Glover

Gaza, where 60 or 70 per cent of buildings have been destroyed since the war started in October 2023, faces new horrors. Unless Israel allows aid to flow into the tiny territory, it’s possible that many will die of starvation.

Why is Israel doing this? Its enemies accuse it of genocide, defined as a deliberate attempt to destroy a nation or ethnic group. I believe, as do many of his countrymen, that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a self-serving, ruthless politician with authoritarian tendencies. But I doubt he is genocidal.

The Israeli government’s reason for blocking food aid is that it believes with some justice that much of it is looted by Hamas, and given to its followers or sold to buy weapons.

In other words, aid helps to sustain Hamas. But its withdrawal causes terrible hardship for people who have already suffered greatly. We shouldn’t assume, by the way, that every Palestinian in Gaza supports Hamas. In recent weeks there have been expressions of defiance on the streets. Hamas’s policies have ruined Gaza.

And of course Hamas could still save the people of Gaza, if it cared about them. Were it to release the remaining 59 Israeli hostages it seized on October 7 2023 (of whom only 23 may still be alive) Israel would almost certainly lift its blockade.

Hamas is evil. It is abominable. Israel is neither. It is a civilised, pluralist democracy which is disfigured by a nasty government.

Unfortunately there is no immediate prospect of Netanyahu leaving office (whereupon he would have to answer corruption charges) as long as he is supported by far-Right parties that would be delighted if every last Palestinian were driven out of Gaza.

Last week finance minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party – one of the far-Right brigade – vowed that ‘Gaza will be entirely destroyed’ as a result of a new Israeli assault that could start as early as next week, and that its Palestinian population will ‘leave in great numbers to third countries’.

Unfortunately there is no immediate prospect of Netanyahu leaving office as long as he is supported by far-Right parties

Last week finance minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party – one of the far-Right brigade – vowed that ‘Gaza will be entirely destroyed’

If the Israeli government inflicts famine and ethnic cleansing on Gaza, many of the country’s friends and supporters will despair, and Israel will be in danger of becoming a pariah state.

Could this happen? Would Netanyahu be so rash and brutal? The answer to these questions could depend on an unlikely hero: Donald Trump.

Netanyahu was delighted by Trump’s victory, describing him as ‘the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House’ when he visited Washington in early April. Standing alongside Netanyahu, Trump said he wanted to turn Gaza into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.

Weeks earlier he had posted a bizarre video depicting Gaza as a Middle Eastern resort with skyscrapers, luxury yachts, a golden statue of himself – and precious few Palestinians.

This omission must have pleased Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister apparently believed he had been given free rein by Trump to do whatever he liked. Yet in recent days it has become increasingly clear that the two men don’t see eye to eye.

Netanyahu was blind-sided by Trump’s ceasefire deal with the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The American President described the Houthi rebels as ‘brave’ days after one of their missiles hit Israel’s main airport. Meanwhile, much to Netanyahu’s displeasure, Trump has been extending an olive branch to Iran.

Then, a few days ago, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff grumbled to a group of former hostages and relatives of those still held in Gaza that Israel was drawing out the war, which America wants to end.

The Israeli prime minister apparently believed he had been given free rein by Trump to do whatever he liked – but it has become clear the two men don't see eye to eye

Trump, for all his sins, sees himself as a man of peace. In his mind, human beings are best employed making money. On Tuesday, in Saudi Arabia, he said: ‘My greatest hope is to be peacemaker, a unifier. I don’t like war.’

In that he is diametrically opposed to Netanyahu, Smotrich and Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, another representative of the Israeli far-Right. They seem to like war quite a lot.

In the end, Israel will follow its own interests. But Netanyahu, facing mounting opposition at home, now finds himself being squeezed from the opposite direction by that unlikely peacenik, the President of the United States.

Trump’s administration is also reportedly trying to find a way of getting aid flowing back into Gaza, a point twice made by David Mencer, a spokesman for Netanyahu, during a stormy interview yesterday on Radio 4’s Today programme.

How ironic that, on Gaza, the BBC and its bete noire Donald Trump should be at one. On this they happen to be right. The Israeli government mustn’t be allowed by America and other decent countries to cause a famine or practise ethnic cleansing.

Before I get carried away in praising Auntie, let me say how appallingly her (happily soon to be retired) sports presenter Gary Lineker behaved on Tuesday in sharing a pro-Palestine video featuring a rat emoji that echoed anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda, for which he subsequently apologised.

I pray that Netanyahu and his government won’t give the likes of Lineker any more excuse to vilify what is still, despite everything, a civilised nation. Hamas are the real villains, and Israel must not stoop to join them.