Facing an anti-war heckler on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance bragged about the Trump administration’s role in implementing a ceasefire agreement in Gaza — a “ceasefire” that human rights groups said this week is an overwhelming failure, as Israel continues to bomb Palestinians on a near-daily basis.
As the vice president absurdly warned Pope Leo XIV to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” a heckler in the crowd began yelling. Vance was speaking at a Turning Point USA event.
“Jesus Christ does not support genocide,” the heckler yelled. “You’re killing children! You’re bombing children!” a voice cried out, and apparently mentioned the genocide in Gaza.
In response, Vance claimed that the Trump administration was solely responsible for the ceasefire agreement. This is misleading at best; the original pause in hostilities that began just before Trump took office for the second time was negotiated with Trump and Biden administration officials in coordination.
Further, the Trump administration allowed Israel to unilaterally break that ceasefire agreement in March 2025.
“If you want, sir, to complain about what happened in Gaza, why don’t you complain about Joe Biden?” Vance said, ignoring the mass anti-genocide protests that happened under Biden, as well as the Trump administration’s dystopic plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza. “We’re the administration that solved that problem.”
“Right now, you see more humanitarian aid coming into Gaza than it has at any time in the past five years,” Vance claimed.
This assertion is also patently untrue. The Israeli government claimsthat there are 600 to 800 aid trucks entering Gaza each day, but this is a lie.
The vast majority of the trucks entering are carrying commercial goods, and the true amount of UN-coordinated humanitarian aid entering Gaza each day averages fewer than 100. Even this is higher than the amount actually reaching the people of Gaza, due to widespread seizures and delays by Israeli authorities, humanitarian groups say.
Commercial goods are out of reach for many Palestinians, who report that Israel’s heavy-handed restrictions on currency in Gaza have made it nearly impossible to access cash to buy goods, even if they have money saved in the bank.
Israel’s continued restrictions on aid entry, as well as Israel’s blanket bans on aid groups like the UN Refugee and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), earned the ceasefire a “failing” grade in a scorecard by humanitarian groups this week.
The report, led by Danish Refugee Council, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International, and Save the Children, noted that Israel is still effectively closing aid crossings and maintaining “severe restrictions” on the entry of aid.
Critical infrastructure like hospitals and shelters have not been restored at all, and the equipment necessary to rebuild them are still banned.
Global food experts have said that the entirety of the Gaza Strip remains in a food insecurity crisis, with millions experiencing acute food insecurity and hundreds of thousands facing critical levels of malnutrition.
The scorecard gave the ceasefire an overall failing grade, with progress on provisions of the ceasefire agreement insufficient or nonexistent for the vast majority of areas analyzed by the groups.
This lines up with analyses by other groups and by Palestinians, who say that Israel has continued its genocide and that the “ceasefire” is not actually a ceasefire at all.
Israeli forces have continued striking Gaza on a near-daily basis, and have killed at least 757 Palestinians since the agreement went into effect on October 10, 2025.
“Six months into the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, we are seeing a continuation of the designed deprivation that we saw throughout the hostilities,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International. “Palestinians are experiencing severe malnutrition and preventable deaths every day because many cannot reliably access basic food or services.”
This article was originally published on Truthout and republished here under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.