Lee Smith is the author of several books including, most recently, Disappearing the President
Trump, Truth Social, and the Fight for the Republic, published by Encounter Books. Lee’s current Tablet column is “The Anti-Israel Right Joins the Pro-Iran Left” (subhead: “MAGA influencers replace the mainstream media as vehicles for traditional information campaigns targeting Israel—and Trump.”) It is difficult to excerpt and should be read in its entirety. Here he takes up one prong of the left-right campaign that is the subject of the column (below the break, links omitted).
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Famine, starvation, and genocide are simply keywords in an information campaign whose goal is to generate enough outrage among the public and policymakers to ensure Hamas’ survival through Western aid packages, and thereby to ensure that Israel loses its war in Gaza. For instance, a few weeks ago, Iran regime lobbyist Trita Parsi posted a picture of what he claimed was a young Gazan girl who had died of starvation. In fact, it was a photo of a child who was being treated at a UAE hospital for a rare disease that left her emaciated. The veracity of the picture was irrelevant. The point was to advance the famine op.
It was with Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute, a think tank started by George Soros and Charles Koch, that the Gaza famine hoax jumped the rails from the left to the right. Quincy’s Republican and Democrat donors share the view that Israel is the destabilizing force in the Middle East and thus that an Iranian bomb will bring balance to the world’s most volatile region. Despite the president’s warnings to keep Koch associates out of the administration—the Koch network opposed Trump’s candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2016, 2020, and 2024—Trump officials continue to tap them for senior-level positions. An article from Quincy’s in-house publication reinforced Parsi’s claims of famine, quoting Cindy McCain, the director of the World Food Program, and widow of the late Arizona senator and dedicated Trump foe John McCain. She said in May 2024 that there was a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza and that it was “moving its way south.”
Parsi’s tweet was relayed by Darryl Cooper, a social media influencer and revisionist historian of National Socialism credentialed by top-shelf MAGA podcasters Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. “Gaza Holodomor,” Cooper posted over Parsi’s tweet, referring to Stalin’s forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians. Podcaster Theo Von then posted a video on X, claiming there is a “genocide” in Gaza and that the United States is “complicit.” His post went viral, as millions absorbed the accusation from an entertainer who recently opened for Trump when he spoke to U.S. troops based in Qatar. Quincy’s X account tweeted approvingly of Von’s charges, as did influencer Candace Owens. “Well done, Theo,” she posted over Von’s tweet. “God will have his vengeance on those that defend what is happening in Gaza.”
