John Oliver‘s jokes were secondary this evening as the host began Last Week Tonight by delivering an impassioned plea to stop the U.S. government’s complicity in Israel‘s blockade of the Gaza strip, where roughly 2 million residents face imminent starvation and death.
The late-night host singled out Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for claiming there is “no starvation” crisis in Gaza despite all evidence to the contrary, saying the leader was doing so with the “skill of a sh—y magician.”
Of note, Oliver added, was that president Donald Trump also recently questioned Netanyahu’s claims.
“Describing starving children as looking ‘very hungry’ is a massive understatement, right up there with: ‘We were just friends,’” Oliver remarked, flashing an image of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein onscreen, adding that it was a “rare moment of Trump expressing something resembling empathy.”
Zeroing in on some figureheads who “pounced on” a New York Times report that added an addendum about a starving child’s pre-existing health conditions, Oliver slammed media personality Megyn Kelly, who denied the legitimacy of the images coming out of Gaza.
“I kind of hoped we were done with Megyn Kelly as a society,” he began to audience whoops, “and collectively, you actually don’t have to litigate this case one photo at a time,” he said, citing reports from the United Nations, numerous aid organizations and Israeli human rights groups, including conclusions reached by Israel’s oldest daily newspaper and multiple first-hand accounts.
“What’s happening in Gaza right now is a famine. All the information we have points to that, except for this f—ing guy [Netanyahu] and a few adult junior detectives squinting at each photo of a skeletal child to figure out if they’re the right kind of dying,” Oliver stated.
Referring to a 2024 CNN article in which Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “it may be just and moral” to starve 2 million Gazans, but “no one in the world would let us,” Oliver concluded that the official is “basically complaining that the world is c—blocking him from committing genocide better. And that is the argument for sustained international pressure here, and that country best positioned to apply it is this one [the U.S.], the one that gave Israel nearly $18 billion in military aid during the first year of this war alone. Look, ‘Gaza is starving,’ is a sentence that’s objectively true, but it’s also slightly misleading because it’s too passive. Gaza is being starved by Israel.”
According to leading humanitarian groups and experts — such as the UN Special Committee, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and international law scholars — Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. A May 2025 IPC analysis projected catastrophic levels of food insecurity for the entire population of Gaza by September, meaning at least half a million people are expected to be in IPC Phase 5 — the highest phase, known as catastrophe — which is marked by acute malnutrition and mortality.
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