by Sara Flounders, published on Workers World, August 8, 2025
Faced with demonstrations, urgent appeals and growing mass outrage that permeates all public space, the leading governments of the European Union staged a series of fraudulent photo ops that must be exposed and denounced globally. The EU is an imperialist bloc dominated by the former colonial powers of Europe.
For 22 months, European imperialists have stood with U.S. imperialism in shipping arms and munitions parts to Israel, while continuing all other forms of trade and giving diplomatic support to the apartheid state to aid in waging a genocidal war on resistance in Gaza.
For two years, EU countries have made every effort to shut down all forms of solidarity with Palestine by grassroots movements. But the groundswell of support refused to be silenced, and the mobilizations have grown in numbers and determination.
Now these same countries have changed tactics. With wall-to-wall publicity, video images were broadcast of French military officials loading palettes of material aid onto a cargo plane for a humanitarian airlift to Gaza. Close-in camera shots made it appear to be substantial material.
Headlines declared that France and other EU countries, in alliance with the corrupt monarchies of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, started to air-drop 40 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza on Aug. 1.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron wrote a grandiose statement on social media platform X on Aug. 1: “Faced with the absolute urgency, we have just conducted a food airdrop operation in Gaza. Thank you to our Jordanian, Emirati and German partners for their support and to our military personnel for their commitment.”
Cynical, criminal ploy
A front page picture on the Sunday, Aug. 3, New York Times leads with the headline: “Trying to save lives.” Its caption under a picture of parachutes reads: “Amid reports of starvation, a Jordanian Air Force plane dropped 20 tons of aid packages on southern Gaza on Thursday.” The accompanying news article is headlined: “A desperate effort to feed many desperate Gazans.”
Forty tons of material or 20 tons from Jordan sounds like a lot of supplies and a big life-saving operation. It appears that these countries are confronting the Israeli /U.S. starvation policy. This is a cynical and criminal ploy.
The 40 tons of material airdropped by France is less than two truckloads of supplies. It is a teardrop of aid in a howling desert of need. Gaza needs at least 500 trucks of supplies a day to feed its destitute population of 2 million people.
*Featured Image: This whole airdrop from Germany doesn’t equal two truckloads of supplies