Palestinians Are Not “Starving.” Israel is Deliberately Starving Palestinians.
For more than 20 months, Israel has deployed forced starvation as a weapon in its genocide of Palestinians, made possible by its 17-year blockade on aid, food, medicine, and all other necessities entering Gaza. In every case where famine appears — in a world where more food is produced than there are hungry mouths to feed — the “crisis” is man-made. But more particularly, Israel’s deliberate starving of Palestinians, in fact its power to choose that they would starve at all, lays bare brutal disparity.
Last week, 26 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israel’s man-made famine in the span of 24 hours; meanwhile, bags of flour, gallons of water, and pallets of fresh fruits and vegetables have been waiting right outside of Gaza for months. Israel routinely chooses to withhold humanitarian aid from Palestinians who rely on the sustenance for immediate survival. For many Palestinians in Gaza, finding even one meal a day has become an insurmountable task.
To imagine even one of those conditions imposed on a population of over 2.1 million people is impossible, abominable. Still, the quietude of the media, the complicity of our University, and the unequivocal support of the U.S. government for Israel are not intractable conditions. For decades, the world has turned a blind eye to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and now, we are all witnesses complicit in its weaponization for the ongoing genocide. Starvation in Palestine is not natural nor inevitable. It is a calculated, deliberate action on the part of Israel. More than 9,000 children in Gaza have already been admitted to hospitals for treatment of severe malnutrition since January 2025. This figure is predicted to reach 71,000 in the next year. Malnutrition in childhood exponentially increases the chance of early mortality, slows down growth and development, and can wreak irreversible cognitive and physical damage. Israel’s genocide seeks to destroy Palestine in the most cruel ways, robbing children of their future and generations of the strength to carry on.
Malnutrition throughout Gaza’s population is exacerbated by astronomically high prices, a direct consequence of the scarce availability of food products under Israel’s blockade. In October, a kilogram of tomatoes cost $180 in North Gaza. This year, the cost of a bag of flour, 25 kg, varies from $300 to $500, and it has risen 3,000 percent since February.
Netanyahu’s recent announcement that Israel would lift the blockade to “allow a basic amount of food” is an act of cruel theater and an optical trick. In reality, the Zionist regime maintains its chokehold on Gaza, permitting aid to cross the border irregularly and insufficiently. Aid groups predict that a minimum of 600 trucks must enter Gaza daily to address the current level of malnutrition and starvation. Yet, only 100 trucks have been entering per day in the eleven days since Netanyahu’s announcement. Moreover, Israel imposes further inhumane restrictions, disallowing the trucks from being unloaded and their contents delivered to food kitchens and warehouses. In effect, Israel has isolated North Gaza almost entirely from these vital resources. As always, Netanyahu openly proclaims genocidal intent: He permits the minimal possible amount of aid to avoid famine explicitly to further his diplomatic image and to quell public backlash.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other western media outlets refuse to call the genocide anything aside from the “Israel-Hamas War” or “the conflict in the Middle East.” They readily report on famine, however, which they construct to be an “apolitical” humanitarian crisis. The media describes famine as happening to Palestinians, but names no culprit and identifies no avenues for accountability or change. Their photographers capture children’s malnourished bodies, the tears of the elderly, crowds begging for food. Yet the reason that Palestinians began to experience chronic hunger — let alone why this has progressed into a widespread state of starvation — is glaringly absent.
The reality is, instead, that it is entirely possible to feed Gaza’s population. Many humanitarian agencies have the means to distribute sufficient food; Israel refuses to permit their entry. The only Israel-approved agency operating is the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an organization assessed not to have enough supplies to tackle the scope of starvation and criticized for violating the independence and impartiality of humanitarian aid. Abominably but unsurprisingly, GHF distribution sites are being used to detain Palestinians. We’ve witnessed the GHF firing ammunition at the crowd of Palestinians coming to get food. This is not humanitarian aid, but a weak excuse for it, a decoy, constructed by the U.S. and Israel as a pretense of humanity.
This scope of death is man-made. It has a culprit. Thousands of trucks are waiting in Egypt, leaving tons of supplies stuck outside of Gaza. There is no reason for this suffering, apart from Israel’s cruelty, backed by American dollars and diplomacy.