Video - The Starvation of Gaza

Palestinian child Hanan Hassan Al Zaanin (7)
reportedly died of malnutrition

I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink…
(Matthew 25:42-43)

In Gaza, the ever more intense tears of mothers and fathers,
clutching the lifeless bodies of their children,
rise up to heaven.
—POPE LEO XIV, May 28, 2025, La Crox

But if any one has the world’s goods
and sees his brother in need,
yet closes his heart against him,
how does God’s love abide in him?
(1 John 3:17)

Only 3 hours away from the survivors of the war in Gaza is a warehouse full of food, medicine and other aid. Mark Mallett caught up with Jason Jones, who is trying to get trucks of food to the starving in Gaza, in what he is openly calling a “genocide.”

Watch

Listen

Transcription

The following is an auto-generated transcription. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the text, spelling, grammar, etc.:

Mark Mallett
00:00 – 01:04
I wrote recently about what I called an ethnic cleansing in Gaza, starvation happening there. Some of you wrote back and you protested against that article. Fortunately, I have found a fellow Catholic who has had feet on the ground there and who’s willing to talk to us about what he’s heard, what he’s seen. That next on Countdown to the Kingdom. Project, and I want to welcome to the show Jason Jones. Hey, Jason, welcome.

Jason Jones
01:05 – 01:08
Mark, thanks for having me on your show, and thanks for your powerful article.

Mark Mallett
01:10 – 01:55
Yeah, I mean, it was a controversial article. I knew it would be because it’s such a hot topic, and in the fog of war, you know, there’s so much propaganda. There’s ideas from both sides being cast out. Mainstream media seems to have an agenda. Israel has an agenda. Some people think Palestine. Well, of course, Hamas does have an agenda. But you know what? It’s really great to have you on here because you’ve had feet on the ground. And before we talk any further, I want to share with the listeners right now just this short video that you just produced and put up on your website called the Vulnerable People Project. Let’s take a look at that now and we’ll talk about it. There

Jason Jones
01:55 – 03:24
are children in Gaza, they’re starving to death. We’ve seen the images of children. You can see their bones. Imagine your grandmother, your great-grandmother, frail and starving, spending the last days of her life surrounded by rubble, witnessing her own children and grandchildren dying. You judge a society by how it treats its youngest and its oldest and its most vulnerable. In Gaza, we’re looking at 5% of the population has been wounded or killed. Ninety percent of their homes have been destroyed. But we can solve the problem. Shelter and food and medicine is three hours away. As I walk through this warehouse, there are organizations from around the world, governments from around the world that have sent pallets of life-saving medication that are sitting here. And I pray that all of this food in this warehouse makes it into Gaza President Trump, I want to thank you for demanding that we open up the border. And as a Catholic, I also want to thank Pope Leo XIV. Among your very first words were to plead for a ceasefire in Gaza and to plead for a break of the blockade. I joined my president and I joined Pope Leo XIV in calling for an end to the blockade, calling for a ceasefire.

Mark Mallett
03:24 – 03:30
Okay, so Jason, where exactly were you standing when you recorded that video?

Jason Jones
03:31 – 05:37
I was in the Jayco warehouses. It’s the Jordanian Hashemite charitable organizations warehouses where the Vulnerable People Project, our organization, has been storing our food now for 90 days. We have two trucks. We’re prepared to go up to five trucks that we want to bring directly to the churches in Gaza. We’ve been supporting the churches in Gaza since the war began. October 19th, following the October 7th massacre, Israel dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on the oldest continuous church in the world. In fact, it was a church planted by St. James, as Scripture calls him, the brother of Jesus or the cousin of Jesus. And so the Christian community that he planted that has been there since the first century, two weeks into the war, Israel dropped the bomb right on the church. And when we evacuated wounded pregnant women and children to Egypt, in February, we were able to deliver thousands of hot meals, not only to the Christians, but we created a food distribution, a food distribution site in Northern Gaza for, for widows and for orphans. And there are tens of thousands of orphans. There are, I believe 20,000 children in Gaza right now with no other living relative. And so, you know, St. James says, pure religion is this, that you care for the widow and the orphan and the persecuted in the time of their affliction. And the Vulnerable People Project works around the world serving the persecuted church in Sudan and Nigeria and China and Hong Kong and India. But the most vulnerable Christian community in the world is the Christian community in Gaza. And sadly, it’s the oldest Christian community in the world. They’re actually the Palestinian Christians descend from the Jewish converts to Christianity. that were in the upper room. Their ancestors shared in the bread and fishes. They fixed their nets next to Peter. And so the descendants of the apostles’ families in the first century church’s families right now is facing annihilation at the hands of the IDF.

Mark Mallett
05:38 – 05:57
So what you’re saying is, and many people may not realize this, is that the Palestinian people in Gaza are not just, They’re not just Muslims, but there’s a Christian community. And it’s the ancient. It’s one of the first communities that were converted, you’re saying, after, you know, Pentecost.

Jason Jones
05:58 – 06:17
Yeah, it’s like you ask them, when did your family become Christian? Like, well, before the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in many cases, probably, I have to imagine most Palestinians, if you trace their lineage back, you would arrive at first century Christians. Jesus himself.

Mark Mallett
06:18 – 06:50
Many people, though, are questioning these images that we’re seeing on the news and so on. You had feet on the ground. So these are websites from mainstream websites. These are not artificial images. And people have said that it’s artificial intelligence. Tell me what you’re hearing. Is there starvation happening or is this Palestinian propaganda? Is it Hamas propaganda? are people actually starving in Gaza right now as we speak?

Jason Jones
06:51 – 11:07
You know, for people to deny that there’s starvation in Gaza, they’re being dishonest. Maybe they have to lie to themselves. I think many of them are lying to themselves. Others are gaslighting, trying to gaslight us. Mel Brooks famously said that a comedy is looking out your window and seeing someone fall through an empty manhole sewer and break their neck and die. And a tragedy is when you stub your own toe. The fact that people can look at a community of 2 million people and a place the size of Seattle that’s been under siege, where 90% of the buildings have been turned into rubble, where every church has been destroyed, where 90% of the Christians’ homes have been destroyed, where every Christian school and hospital and every hospital in Gaza has been destroyed. When food hasn’t been let in in 90 days. You know, I’m from Hawaii. and food insecurity within two weeks of shipping stops. So I think that this besieged community where they don’t have shelter, where they don’t have medicine, that they’re not starving, that these are somehow Hamas is waging some sort of sophisticated AI war. It’s utterly and absolutely unbelievable. The people of Gaza are starving and Christians in the West, specifically Christians in the United States, are culpable. Primarily the evangelical Christians, because they really have made this heresy, the heresy of Christian Zionism, which I believe is an apostasy. If you deny that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises of Abraham, I don’t see how you can call yourself a Christian. This new theology that was manufactured by a special interest in the late 19th century, and then promulgated through radio and televangelists and books. You know, you can see books like Jonathan the dragon prophecy where he claims the nonsense that the Palestinian people are the reincarnation of the Amalekites or the Philistines and must be eradicated for Israel to have peace. To hear someone who maybe grew up reading Francis Schaeffer or C.S. Lewis, an evangelical Christian that was orthodox in their faith, promulgates such New Age, Gnostic, vile mumbo jumbo. And, you know, when you look at all these strange Protestant evangelical associated with Christian Zionism–whether it’s John Hagee talking about blood moons or some nonsense about the Bible code treating Jewish scriptures in the New Testament, if somehow it’s the Kabbalah–you know that all of their bizarre theories end at the same conclusion, that the Palestinians have no right to life, and the state of Israel has a duty to annihilate them. You know they’ll in one breath say there’s no one that’s starving, And then the next breath they’ll say that Israel should starve them. They’ll say that there is no ethnic cleansing. And then the next breath they say we have to completely ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. And I really appreciated your article because you said the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Now 5% of Gaza has been wounded or injured or wounded or killed. And that’s greater than how many Americans were wounded or killed in the Civil War, which was our bloodiest war and we were dying on both sides. So they have a casualty rate higher than the American Civil War. war, much, much higher than obviously the Vietnam War, where I think it was less than one-tenth of one percent of Americans were killed or wounded. But we just shrug at the suffering of the Palestinian people. And I think what makes it possible for people to shrug is this bizarre ethno-nationalist heresy of Christian Zionism. But I want to go back. You call it an ethnic cleansing. We can get into the weeds. I believe it’s genocide. What is genocide is, I’ve been studying, I wrote, Two Books. My first book, The Race to Save Our Century, is on genocides and democides of the 20th century. I’ve been a student of genocides for 30 years. I founded my organization to serve communities facing ethnic cleansing and genocide almost 30 years ago. I believe this is a genocide, but we don’t need to get into the legal debate of is this a genocide or not.

Mark Mallett
11:07 – 11:08
No

Jason Jones
11:08 – 11:30
one can argue that this is a brutal ethnic cleansing. The intent of the state of Israel is ethnic cleansing. The Finance Minister Smutrich is always very honest. He speaks Hebrew, but it’s easy to find translations of his speeches. Their goal is to completely and permanently cleanse Gaza of the people who have lived there since before the time of Jesus.

Mark Mallett
11:31 – 13:17
So, Jason, I mean, we’re seeing the images as you’re speaking. Again, these are from major news sites, the United Nations, Western media, Eastern media, all the media are talking about it. But here’s the argument people say. And they’ve written me with it. And they say, oh, but you know, the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves. They’re God’s chosen ones. And whoever curses Israel will be cursed by God. And the argument they’re using is that the people there in Gaza are protecting Hamas. And Hamas has all these tunnels underneath the ground. We know, of course, that they’ve committed heinous terrorist attacks. And for the record, You and I outright, right now, we fully condemn the anti-Semitism we’ve seen on campuses. We’re random attacks on Jewish students. We just saw a couple from the Israeli embassy slaughtered who were due to be engaged. That is as outrageous and evil as any other kind of murder out there. So again, we outright condemn anti-Semitism. We love the Jewish people because they are the olive tree on which we, the wild, wild branches have been grafted. And as St. Paul says, those who’ve rejected Christ, the Jews, will eventually be grafted again onto the tree once the hardening of Israel has been and the full number of Gentiles comes in. So again, we reject that. But how do you answer that argument that, look, you know, Israel has no choice but to level Gaza, to destroy the place, to remove the people because of these terrorism acts, and the people there support it? What do you say to that, Jason? Yeah,

Jason Jones
13:17 – 17:05
I want to know where they get their information. You know, they’re spoon-fed propaganda and think that the people of Palestine or the people of Gaza have been propagandized in hate. We have been indoctrinated in the hatred of Arabs and Palestinians for decades, to the point when I tell people that there are a thousand Palestinian Christians starving in Gaza, they’ll say, well, but there are only a thousand, only a thousand Christians are starving. You’ll see under pictures of starving children, famous Zionist X pages with influential folks, you know, typing underneath FAFO, if you know what that means. You know, they’ll mock the starving children. They’ll mock the dead children. I didn’t see one person that’s been of any sort of that’s respectable that’s been advocating for the Palestinians make light of the hostages, make light of the death of that beautiful young couple. So who are the ones that are really indoctrinated in a vile hatred? It’s those evangelical Christians in the West and poorly formed Catholics that consume evangelical propaganda. Zionism is utterly and completely incompatible with Catholicism. Catholicism rejects religious Zionism. That doesn’t mean we don’t want a homeland for the Jewish people. That doesn’t mean we don’t want the Jewish people safe. It doesn’t mean we could even support the state of Israel. People say, If you support the state of Israel, you’re a Zionist. I would say it makes me a conservative that thinks that radical, inorganic changes to political communities leads to chaos and violence, like the founding of the state of Israel, led to the Nakba and the massacre of Palestinians. So as someone who’s thoughtful and conservative, I can look at all of the borders of the Middle East in the wake of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The borders were drawn in a way that at the time benefited France and the United Kingdom. people there. And so, you know, all of the borders in the Middle East are in a way artificial. And they were created to make it easy for France and Britain to control the Middle East. And we’ve seen how that’s gone. It’s just been war after war. We talk about the people of the Middle East as if they’re violent or they’re extremist. I’ve worked across the Middle East now for two decades plus. And I really see the Middle East as a very peaceful collection of sleepy hollows. But the war has been at war. The world has been at war across the Middle East. 2 million Arab civilians have died in our wars and our boycotts over the past 25 years. This is the reality. But when I, my work in Gaza, my work with people from Gaza, Muslims and Christians, my work with the Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank, I’ve never heard extremists or genocidal rhetoric, but I heard Congressman Fein of Florida just four days ago call for dropping atomic bombs in Gaza. He called for dropping two atomic bombs on Gaza. went to Israel and signed bombs saying, “Finish them.” So, you know, the genocidal rhetoric are from books like Jonathan Cahn’s, “The Dragon Prophecy.” We openly and regularly hear calls to exterminate Palestinians. Douglas Murray called them a people of death. He said, “They’re a people indoctrinated in hate. They’re a people of death. People called to annihilate them.” And I will say many people watching this have been inculcated and they’re bigots. And they really don’t care. I’ll say you really do not care that there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and women starving. And you don’t care because you’ve consumed Protestant media. You should listen to the Holy Father, Pope Leo.

Mark Mallett
17:05 – 18:32
He said, allow the entry of dignified humanitarian aid, put an end to the hostilities whose heartbreaking price is paid by the children, elderly, and the sick. But maybe let me just jump in for a moment. For those who aren’t familiar with what Christian Zionism is, it basically is the concept that the Israelites have a right to establish a state and that they can use force to do so and that anyone who stands in the way, violence is justified. But even if the promises of God are still meant to be, that God would have the people come back to their lands, It doesn’t override the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” That was given to the Jewish people, handed to them literally by God on the Ten Commandments. And this idea somehow in Christian Zionism that they are justified, the Israeli state, to wipe out anyone in any means possible, including starvation at this point, is justified because they’re the people of God. Actually, Jason, they’re quoting a sacred text to justify murder. Is that not exactly what the Islamist jihadists are doing, which is quoting their sacred texts to justify murder? The irony of this is stunning to me. You’re going to say

Jason Jones
18:32 – 18:48
what I was going to say. It’s nonsense. I hear no fanatic talk. I don’t understand it, actually, because it’s so scandalous to hear people use our religion the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the descendants of the Jews that accepted Jesus.

Mark Mallett
18:48 – 18:49
And for these people

Jason Jones
18:49 – 19:18
that justified by saying God will bless those who bless Israel. So they think by advocating ethnic cleansing and genocide, they’re in somehow blessing Israel. Well, they’re not. Netanyahu has done more to undermine the state of Israel’s security than anyone in history. In fact, the same cast of characters that gave us the invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Assad, the destruction of Libya, the war in Yemen, and the catastrophe in Gaza, these same neocons and neolibs, now want us to go to war with Iran.

Mark Mallett
19:18 – 19:59
You know, in my research on this, many people talk who live in Gaza, who live in Palestine, speak about the peace that exists between Muslims and Christians. When I was in Bethlehem, I went to a Catholic school, and, you know, half the students there were Muslims, and they’ve been doing this for decades, living side by side, peacefully coexisting. I did not feel when I was in Bethlehem that violence was about to break out between Christians and Muslims or that the Christians were hiding in fear. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen the Muslims and Christians in Gaza and other places coexisting peacefully and for a long time. Is that correct? I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Jason Jones
19:59 – 22:48
No, it’s 100% correct. And they even talk about they wish that they could have their, they talk about the times their neighborhoods were mixed with Christians and Jews when you talk to the elderly. And they tell these stories and they just smile. In fact, I have Jews Jewish friends, that their families, their Arab Jews, their families have been in the Holy Land for 2,000 years, and they remember fondly as well. And they share with me stories about how wonderful it was to live amongst Christians and Jews and Muslims living together in peace. For 750 years under the Ottomans, there were almost, I think there were 70 religious communities that thrived. Since colonialization and then the founding of the state of Israel, We’ve seen Christianity in the Middle East decimated. Not that there weren’t violent enthusiasms, especially in the 20th century with the genocide, the Armenian and Greek and the Syrian Chaldean genocide and others that suffered that catastrophe. And there were violent enthusiasms that erupted and religion has always been used to hurt people. But, you know, I’ll say this too about voting for Hamas. Only 6% of the people alive in Gaza voted for Hamas. for Hamas. Half of the population is under 18 adjusted for the percentage of the population that was old enough to vote in the last election, knowing that only 44% of the population voted and not everyone voted. So when you adjust to who voted as well, you’re left with now only 6% of Gaza voted for Hamas. They didn’t win a single district. Then what makes it even more startling is that we know, and this sounds unbelievable, but you can go see Netanyahu’s own word, and we know thanks to Doge. Netanyahu encouraged the support of Hamas because they didn’t want a secular, popular PLO that was appealing to the world. And they did not want a two-state solution. The goal was to always annex the West Bank and ethically cleanse Gaza. So they encouraged the funding of Hamas. The U.S. funded Hamas. We know this. We funded Hezbollah. We created the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen became the Taliban. and al-Qaeda. We now know we funded ISIS. This is absolutely unbelievable, but thanks to President Trump and his administration, it’s now been revealed to the world. Beyond that, we funded Boko Haram. So you have the people of Gaza being ruled by Islamists that were really funded from outside. You think that Palestinians, that you think it’s Palestinian money funding Hamas? No. And what Western is not covering, is that people of Gaza are right now having massive protests

Mark Mallett
22:48 – 22:51
against Hamas. Imagine a whole year of

Jason Jones
22:51 – 23:00
protest when you’ve been eating 250 calories for a year, and now you’re going to go protest. Like, why don’t they just throw off Hamas? They’re protesting that Hamas is killing them.

Mark Mallett
23:00 – 25:36
It’s women and children, the vulnerable always, who suffer like this. We just came through Lent, we just came through Easter, and how could we not remember the words that Jesus said? when Peter pulled out the sword. Now, you want to talk about what you think is just? Would it not have been just for Peter to pull out his sword to defend what they were doing against the Son of God, against God himself incarnate, Jesus Christ? And yet Jesus said to Peter, he said, put your sword away. He said, those who live by the sword die by the sword. And before he ascended into heaven, Jesus said to the apostles, in Matthew 25, we read about the judgment of the nations. And he said, When I was hungry, you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink. When I was a stranger, you welcomed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. Whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers, so you did unto me. And so, while I was there in Bethlehem and I walked into that school and I saw the Muslims and Christians living side by side, what I saw first and foremost was the gospel. And I’m not saying that we’re to set aside preaching the gospel to Muslims, to Jews. No, we have a mandate and a commission to make disciples of the nations. But that doesn’t mean that we suddenly ignore the needs of our brothers. You know, you Christians who have the goods of the world and you ignore the needs of others, you’re causing scandal. You’re not doing what the gospel says. As we heard from the beginning, says St. John, the commandment was to love one another. And as Jesus showed us in his own example, he loved the centurion. In fact, he raised the centurion saying to him whose servant he healed, saying, your faith is greater than anyone else. in Israel. He stopped at the well and spoke to the Samaritan woman, which was kind of a taboo that Jesus broke. He showed by his life, death, and resurrection what it meant to love, and it meant to love your enemies. That was the measure of Christ’s love, Jason, was not how you loved your friends, not how you loved your evangelical or Catholic buddies, but how you love your enemies. And what does Jesus say? Pray for those who mistreat you. Bless

Jason Jones
25:36 – 25:37
those who cursed

Mark Mallett
25:37 – 25:38
you. Forgive.

Jason Jones
25:39 – 28:23
You know, Mark, to that point, you know, I run a Catholic apostolate. I have a new book coming out July 15th from Sophia Press called Dispatches from the Front Lines. Sophia pitched me, they wanted to change the title, Dispatches from Behind Enemy Lines. I said, well, I run a Catholic apostolate. I’m no longer an infantryman. I have no enemies. When I’m on the field of battle, when VPP goes out to serve, we’re there to serve civilians, women and children, the persecuted church. Obviously, I can guarantee our aid, every dollar of our aid made it directly to the churches because we document the trucks being filled, the trucks driving, the trucks arriving at the churches, the trucks being unloaded, and the lines and the queues being set up and the people eating. We documented every single step of the way. So I was just notified 48 hours ago that to gear up and get ready to go, they’re going to let me take not only two trucks, but five trucks. So here’s the good news. I got five trucks. The bad news is, I only have the funding for two trucks. So we’re working on getting a quick loan from our credit card processing company and been doing a lot of shows like yours. And if people want to support the most vulnerable Christians in the world to partner with us to deliver food to the descendants of the apostles, I don’t care. They’re baptized or circumcised. There’s 2.2 million people made in the image and likeness of God under siege, starving, living in rubble. with no access to the most basic healthcare. And I believe my vocation as a Christian is to love God and love my neighbor. I think it’s just pretty simple. And who is my neighbor? My neighbor is who my life touches. And unfortunately, our lives as American Christians have touched the people of Gaza, because the 2000 pound bombs that fell on those churches from American built and paid for planes. That was us touching them. Our website is vulnerable people project.com vulnerable people project. It’s $40,000 for a truck. I know some of you can do $40,000. Some of you can do $400,000. And we document our aid. If you go to our website, you can see our projects all over the world. We document what we do. Because a lot of times it’s hard for people to believe we’re getting trucks in and people out. You can go to our website and see everything we do. We were told that the trucks are going to get in this week or next. I plan on being there to join the trucks. And last time our trucks were held up, In January and February, I went there and said, I’m not leaving until our trucks get in. Our trucks got in. And again, I would still be there. I came home from my daughter’s ballet recital a couple of days ago. I returned and I’m getting ready to hop on a plane Sunday morning.

Mark Mallett
28:24 – 28:37
Okay. All right. Thank you, Jason, for everything that you’re doing for these people and for getting their truth out there. I really appreciate it. We’ll keep you in your prayers. And I really encourage my viewers to please donate. Please donate to this project. God bless you.

So grateful for your prayers and support.
Thank you!