"A Famine By Design: The Engineered Starvation and Killing Fields of Gaza"
“It was like a battlefield full of blood and injured — everyone was lying on the ground, everyone screaming and everyone shouting.”
— Jamal Azzam, nurse, Red Cross Hospital in Rafah
On Tuesday morning, Israeli soldiers opened fire near a food distribution site in Rafah, southern Gaza, killing at least 27 Palestinians. It was the second such massacre in just three days. Only two days prior, 23 more were gunned down at the same location — a place that should have offered hope, not horror.
The victims? Not militants. Not armed men. But starving civilians, many of them walking miles in the dark hoping to secure a single box of food. Their only crime was approaching aid, too hungry to wait.
This is not war. This is calculated cruelty.
🔻 A System Designed to Fail — and to Kill
The killings are the latest bloodshed under a new, deeply controversial food distribution system, jointly managed by Israel and American private contractors. Replacing the former United Nations-run effort that operated over 400 sites, this system offers just four — and most days, they don't even function.
The U.N. has slammed it as “engineered scarcity.” Aid workers call it “dangerous and dehumanizing.” Palestinians call it something more basic: a trap.
People walk miles past Israeli checkpoints, into areas filled with warning shots and live ammunition. They return with corpses.
⚰️ Aid in a Cardboard Box, Death in a Bullet
The Israeli military claims some people “strayed from the designated route” and posed a “threat.” But no evidence has been offered. No explanation. No remorse.
Even as scenes of carnage unfold — bodies carried on animal carts, hospitals running out of gauze — the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a shadowy new group funded by U.S. contractors, insists that Tuesday’s site “operated safely.”
Tell that to the families burying their loved ones.
⚠️ A Broader Plan of Displacement?
Why were the U.N. and international humanitarian groups sidelined? Why are all four new aid sites located in the southern parts of Gaza?
The answer is chilling: this may not just be about food. It may be part of a broader Israeli plan to permanently displace Gaza’s northern population, forcing them into the south — away from their homes, history, and rights.
Claire Manera of Doctors Without Borders said it clearly:
“This new system of aid delivery is dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective. It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented.”
💔 We Must Not Look Away
As the world debates ceasefires and political roadmaps, Gaza is bleeding out in real time. Children are starving. Civilians are shot for seeking food. Hospitals are crippled.
This isn’t collateral damage. It’s a policy.
If the world still believes in humanitarian law, in the sanctity of civilian life, in the basic idea that food should never be fatal — now is the time to act.
Because in Gaza today, hunger walks hand-in-hand with death.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-site-shooting-israel.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
Comments