Tag: starvation

The End Game for Gaza

I’ve taught military history “from Plato to NATO,” as we used to joke, but my expertise focused on technology and warfare. Along with “revolutions” and “transformations” in weaponry, I probably spent too much time focusing on “decisive battles” and “great captains” in history. When you look at the course of military history, most deaths from war didn’t come in battle. They came from hunger and disease, from famine and pestilence. Sometimes, mass starvation and pandemics were unintentional byproducts of chaos and societal disruption caused by war, and sometimes starvation and disease were intentional weapons and products of war.

You might call this apocalyptic war, from the Bible and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which included famine and pestilence among the death riders.

An apocalyptic fate seemingly awaits Palestinians in Gaza. I’ve written about Gaza as a genocide, the mass bombing by Israel, the mass killing, with the apparent goal of forcing Palestinians out of Gaza, but I haven’t given enough thought to the use of mass starvation and diseases as weapons in this genocide.

A reader, Dan White, brought this lesson home to me, and I’d like to quote his message to me at length:

I can’t think of a better word than the etiology of starvation. It hasn’t been adequately addressed by the snoozemedia. Starvation death rates have a funny shaped curve. During the first stages of starvation – can’t give any figures on a time period for this or any other part of the process/curve, due to there being varying levels of food deprivation – there are few deaths, generally (but not always) those persons with compromised health/preexisting health problems that make them more susceptible to death than others in the population. After some (varying length) period of starvation, people start to die in larger numbers, and then all of a sudden, everyone is dying, and then everyone is dead. This period of death is fairly short compared to the period of starvation. Again, due to varying levels of starvation and varying levels of preexisting health and varying levels of surplus consumable body tissue in the starved group, this period has no fixed length, but it happens all of a sudden, and it doesn’t take long for everyone to die once it starts – couple of weeks seems common.

The starving residents of Gaza haven’t reached the mass-death stage of starvation, but it could well start happening tomorrow. I can’t say because I don’t know the food reserves preexisting, the food delivery figures since the ‘war’ started, and nobody in the news biz has bothered to look for them, either. There really should have been some government or multi-state agency who has looked for them and published them, but nobody has.

When the mass-death stage hits, people in Gaza will be dying by the tens of thousands a week. Stopping the mass-death by all of a sudden providing food isn’t going to work very well, on account of logistical delivery problems and the medical problems of alleviating starvation at this advanced stage – folks’ digestive tracts may well not work well enough even if they get food. That will be the real genocide, and I’d bet money it happens, and bet more money that this is the real objective of Israel’s ‘war’ in Gaza. The notion of Israel’s war objective is displacement of Gazans is an absurdity – you want someone to leave, well they have to be able to walk, right? And they have to have a place to go. Israel is counting on the rest of the world to all of a sudden do a mass-evacuation of Gazans combined with a mass feeding and mass medical intervention all at the same time in order to prevent this mass death of Gazans from occurring? NFW – Israel’s leaders have accepted mass killing as an official state policy, and have commenced doing it, and do it as we speak. And Israeli hasbara [propaganda] will blame us for it, and a whole lot of whored-out American and European politicians, as well as Israel-worshiping American Jews, will go along with it.

What Dan White posits here is horrifying – and increasingly likely. Of course, as people are weakened through starvation, they become more susceptible to various diseases associated with famine and unsanitary conditions.

Keep reading

More Coverage of Gaza Starvation Did Not Necessarily Mean Deeper Coverage

International human rights organizations have pleaded with governments to oppose Israel’s blockade of aid into Gaza for the better part of the past year. But it wasn’t until late July, when dramatic images of emaciated children circulated widely, that corporate media and establishment politicians finally took notice. After 21 months of relentless bombing and even more decades of occupation, the news cycle gave extended attention to Palestinian starvation (FAIR.org, 7/29/25).

Quantity, however, does not always equal quality. To see if the content of reporting on the engineered Gaza famine matches the seriousness of the situation, FAIR surveyed coverage from nine different news outlets (New York Times, ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, BBC, NPR, Time and Politico) during the week after the initial proliferation of reportage (7/24–31/25) to assess how or whether they discussed the full scope of the crisis.

Apart from the acute, potentially fatal consequences of starvation, malnutrition comes with permanent, long-term side effects that could affect the population for generations. Though increased coverage pushed the immediate issue into the limelight, we found that media did not consistently report on the stakes and long-lasting impacts of starvation on Palestinians’ health.

The New York Times’ infamous addition of an “editor’s note,” explaining that a Gazan child depicted in a report as facing starvation should be re-interpreted as suffering from “pre-existing” conditions, highlighted the need for honest journalistic assessments of starvation’s impacts, as well as its causes.

Keep reading

Google pockets $45m to fuel Netanyahu’s propaganda denying Gaza famine

Google is executing a $45-million advertising contract with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to spread propaganda denying famine in Gaza, Drop Site News reported on 3 September.

The six-month campaign, launched in June, is run through Google’s YouTube and its Display & Video 360 service, and is described in the government contract as hasbara. 

The details were disclosed in official Israeli government contract filings from the state advertising bureau, Lapam, which reports directly to Netanyahu’s office.

A video produced by Israel’s Foreign Ministry declaring “There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie” was placed on YouTube in late August, gaining over six million views. 

Its wide reach was fueled by the ongoing ad campaign coordinated by Lapam.

Records show $3 million was also spent on ads with X, while the Israeli digital advertising company Outbrain (that recently acquired the French company Teads) is set to receive about $2.1 million. Other ads accuse the UN of “deliberate sabotage” of aid deliveries and promote the US-backed, deadly Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid scheme. 

Campaigns have also sought to discredit the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), which documents Israeli war crimes, labeling it tied to “extremist ideologies.”

The propaganda drive comes as famine spreads across Gaza. In late August, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially declared famine in Gaza City and its surrounding towns for the first time, and warned that Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis were next by the end of September. By then, a total of over 640,000 people will face “catastrophic levels” of food insecurity – classified as IPC Phase 5 – across the strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday that the strip faced “a descent into a massive famine.” The Health Ministry in Gaza reports at least 367 deaths from hunger and malnutrition, including 131 children, since October 2023.

Despite these figures, Israeli officials have openly called for starvation as policy. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender.” 

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu declared that Palestinians “need to starve” and should flee under an emigration plan.

Keep reading

Manufactured Famines in Gaza Began Almost Two Decades Ago, So Why Haven’t They Been Halted?

On Friday, August 22, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the global famine watchdog, declared widespread famine in Gaza. The IPC is regarded as the international gold standard in nutritional crises.

As international media was quick to point out, the declaration meant that a quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza are starving – more than 500,000 people – with that number expected to rise to more than 640,000 within six weeks.

What was most damning to most international media is that this outbreak of full famine as described by the IPC and UN agencies had been fully avoidable.

What should be far, far more damning is that several waves of famines have been widespread in Gaza for some 20 months and that precarious conditions of life and episodic famines have prevailed episodically in the Strip since 2007 – that is, for almost two decades.

The blockade since 2006   

In the 2006 Palestinian election, when Hamas won a clear majority in all occupied Palestinian territories, Israel and the Middle East Quartet—U.S., Russia, the UN and EU—launched economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’s parliamentarians and Palestinian territories. The sanctions were coupled with a blockade, Israel’s attempt to push the Gazan economy “to the brink of collapse,” according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks.

With the inception of its blockade in 2007, the Israeli government estimated how many daily calories were needed to prevent or to cause malnutrition in Gaza. The average daily calorie intake critical to survival is estimated at 2,100 kilocalories (kcal) per day. The Israeli “Red Line” document used a calculation of 2,279 calories per person.

During the 2008–2009 Gaza War, the Strip was subjected to a “Shoah” (Hebrew for Holocaust), as Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said. The idea was to “send Gaza decades into the past,” stated then commanding general Yoav Gallant.

Some 15 years later, Gallant was targeted by an International Criminal Court warrant “for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare.” But in 2009, he and other Israeli leaders complicit in the starvation games were ignored by international community.

Keep reading

Democratic senators say Israel barred their entry to Gaza

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) drew praise from the Council on American-Islamic Relations for their efforts to enter Gaza, and the group, which blamed Israel for being attacked shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, urged other U.S. lawmakers to attempt the same thing.

On Friday, Van Hollen used language that U.S. Jewish groups have said hearkens back to centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“Why have a State Department bureau on the Middle East if Trump and Sec. Marco Rubio are taking their orders from Netanyahu?” stated the Maryland Democrat. “We can save a lot of money by cutting out the middleman.” (Many American Jewish groups have said that suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu runs the U.S. government is Jew-hatred.)

“What will his next post be? The Jews who control our U.S. government?” stated Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Antisemitism, anyone?”

In nearly a dozen and a half statements posted to social media, the two senators criticized Israel and Netanyahu, including accusing the latter’s government of “weaponization of hunger.”

Keep reading

Washington stands alone at UN Security Council defending manmade famine in Gaza

All but one of the 15 members of the UN Security Council – the US – declared that the famine in Gaza is a “manmade crisis” and warned that using starvation as a weapon of war is prohibited under international law and constitutes a war crime, during a meeting on 27 August.

The 14 council members announced in a statement that they support an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, a significant surge of aid throughout Gaza, and for Israel to immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on relief deliveries.

“Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” the statement read. “Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has officially declared famine in Gaza for the first time in a report issued on 22 August, and warned it will likely spread. 

The assessment found that 514,000 Palestinians – nearly a quarter of the enclave’s population – are already experiencing famine, a figure projected to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.

Israel demanded that the IPC retract its findings, dismissing them as false and biased. Tel Aviv claimed the assessment relied on partial data from Hamas and failed to consider what it called a recent influx of food.

At the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, acting US Ambassador Dorothy Shea also attacked the IPC report, saying it “doesn’t pass the test on either.” 

She acknowledged that hunger is widespread and that humanitarian needs “must be met,” but framed addressing those needs as a US priority rather than endorsing the IPC’s declaration.

Since its creation in 2004, the IPC has declared famine only five times, most recently in Sudan last year. Its decision to apply the same classification to Gaza underscores the severity of the crisis.

Keep reading

More US lawmakers publicly blame Israel for starvation, deaths in Gaza

U.S. lawmakers who may have been silent for the last 22 months are now speaking out publicly and blaming Israel for the starvation and famine conditions in the Gaza Strip.

On CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and long-time Israel supporter, slammed Jerusalem for Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis, declaring that “Israel is starving Palestinians with impunity.” Gazans are “systematically being starved to death because Israel is refusing to allow in the humanitarian aid that people need to keep alive,” Shaheen said.

When Brennan asked whether Shaheen should have spoken out earlier she replied, “We should be doing more and we should have done more… not just democrats, but also Republicans.”

Going further than Shaheen, 14 U.S. lawmakers have called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide to date, including 13 Democrats and one Republican.

Those lawmakers are Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Al Green (D-Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).

To that end, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the first Republican to do so — has been front and center.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,” Greene said on X on Saturday. “And I will not be silent about it.”

While stopping short of calling Israel’s actions a “genocide,” others have also turned up the heat and have called for halting U.S. weapons aid to Jerusalem until it reverses course.

“Israel’s actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency,” Rep. Angus King (I-Maine) declared in a statement at the end of last month. He said he would no longer support aid to Israel, “until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.”

Keep reading

Israeli military uproots thousands of Palestinian olive trees in West Bank

The Israeli military has destroyed about 3,000 olive trees in a village near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the head of the local council says, as Palestinians face a continued wave of violence across the territory in the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza.

The Israeli military issued an order to uproot olive trees in a 0.27sq-km (0.1sq-mile) area in al-Mughayyir, a village of about 4,000 residents northeast of Ramallah.

The army justified the measure by saying the trees posed a “security threat” to a main Israeli settlement road that runs through the village’s lands.

The destruction was carried out as al-Mughayyir has been under lockdown since Thursday after an Israeli settler said he was shot at in the area.

Keep reading

Why it took Palestinians starving for many to finally admit Israel is committing genocide in Gaza 

As anyone who studies the crime of crimes knows, genocide is a process not an event. For some NGOs, politicians, and other public figures, concluding that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians has also been a “process.” It has taken months, at times nearly two years, for some to admit that Israel has violated the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

One factor has been decisive in prompting these admissions. That factor is “starvation,” namely, Israel’s deliberate starvation of 2.1 million Palestinians who inhabit this tiny, densely packed strip of land.

Israel intensified its long-standing use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza immediately following October 7, 2023. Nearly twenty-three months later, Israel’s starvation project has brought widespread and sustained famine to the Strip, with over 200 people, including over 100 children, dying of starvation since October 7. 61% of those deaths have occurred since July 20, 2025. Deaths related to malnutrition and malnutrition-related disease are significantly higher.

But why has starvation been so pivotal as compared to Israel’s other horrors, which have brought even more death and destruction to Gaza? Ironically, it is the dehumanization of the Palestinian people, which continues to prevent some from acknowledging the genocide even until now, that explains why starvation has played such a decisive role in naming Israel’s actions.

Keep reading

The Trump administration’s halt on medical evacuations from Gaza is a death sentence for Palestinian children

The U.S. State Department’s decision this weekend to halt all visitor visas for people from Gaza, which includes the medical-humanitarian visas that have brought injured children to American hospitals, will cost Palestinian lives. Officials say this process will be subject to a “full and thorough review”. For a child with infected burns or a deep trauma wound, a pause is a verdict on their life. The freeze did not arise from new intelligence or any novel identification of problems in the temporary visitor visa pathway. It followed a social-media panic with the circulation of mischaracterized videos of injured children arriving under the care of a U.S. nonprofit being labeled as a “security threat,” rhetoric amplified by political allies. The State Department then announced it was stopping visas while it re-examines procedures.

The racism and misinformation at the heart of that panic deserve naming. Some have labeled the process of evacuating children with amputations and burns as being potentially linked to terrorism and even characterized their joyful cries as “jihadi chants.” That is textbook dehumanization: take a population of wounded kids and code them as a threat to justify exclusion. Many have commented on the chain reaction from such posts to the administrative action. The line from a viral smear to a federal policy that blocks chemotherapy, skin grafts, or prosthetics for children should shame us, and the speed with which it occurred. 

It also wildly overstates the scale of what has actually happened. In total, many of the NGOs running these U.S. transfers report a few dozen total children to date, not a “flood”. Individual city stories have been about twos and threes: a pair treated in Dallas; several children welcomed in Boston. This is the opposite of a large-scale pipeline; it’s a narrow, highly vetted corridor that exists because Gaza’s health system has been shattered.

Keep reading