Gaza’s Famine: The World Watches Starvation as a Weapon of War

By Vivian Yee, The New York Times (Aug. 22, 2025) — Reflections and Analysis

It is now official: Gaza City and its surrounding areas are in famine.
Not “at risk of famine.” Not “approaching famine.” But famine itself — starvation, acute malnutrition, and death.

At least half a million people in Gaza Governorate are enduring the most extreme conditions that the world’s top hunger monitoring group — the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (I.P.C.) — measures. With rare exceptions, the other two million residents of Gaza are also suffering severe hunger.

The report is unambiguous: famine in Gaza is entirely man-made.
It is not drought. It is not nature. It is the direct result of Israel’s blockade of food and aid, relentless bombardment, and the collapse of healthcare, water, and agriculture.

“The time for debate and hesitation has passed. Starvation is present and is rapidly spreading.” — I.P.C. Report

By September, famine is expected to engulf two more regions — Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. Northern Gaza, too dangerous for monitors to assess, is likely already worse.

A Manufactured Famine

Israel has denied the severity of hunger in Gaza for nearly two years, insisting there is “no starvation.” On Friday, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office went further, calling the famine report “an outright lie” (NYT).

The hunger monitors, however, based their conclusions on robust data: surveys from Gaza’s Health Ministry, WHO, Doctors Without Borders, in-person screenings of children, and aid organizations. They also considered Israeli data.

And the evidence is damning:

Households reporting extreme hunger tripled in Gaza City since May (IPC).
1.1 million children are now at risk, many visibly wasted from acute malnutrition (UNICEF).
Death rates from hunger-related causes have already crossed the famine threshold (NYT).

Even aid groups admit: the food exists. It sits stockpiled at Gaza’s borders — enough to feed every person in the Strip for months. What is missing is not logistics or capacity, but political will.

“We are not facing a logistics, capacity or resource problem. What’s missing is not the ability to respond, but the political will to allow it.” — Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Mercy Corps

Starvation as a Weapon of War

Top U.N. humanitarian official Tom Fletcher was blunt:

“It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.” — UN OCHA

The numbers are horrifying. But numbers alone cannot capture what famine looks like:

Parents skipping meals for days to let children eat.
Aid trucks swarmed by desperate civilians who must choose between dignity and survival.
A man in Gaza City, Alaa Haddad, 29, recalling the last time he tasted fruit: eight months ago (NYT).

“You become an animal in search of food,” Haddad confessed. “When I go home, I think to myself, ‘What did I just do?’”

This is not just hunger. It is the dehumanization of an entire people.

Global Outrage, Local Obstruction

The I.P.C. declaration is rare. Since 2004, only three other famines have been confirmed: Somalia (2011), South Sudan (2017), and Sudan (2024) (IPC Global History). In Somalia, 100,000 died before famine was officially declared.

Yet even as Gaza’s famine is declared, Israel dismisses the findings as propaganda. Officials accuse the monitors of manipulating methodology, ignoring deaths, and serving Hamas’s narrative.

But the evidence is overwhelming: starvation is not an accident of war — it is being engineered.

What Must Happen Now

The famine in Gaza is not inevitable. It can still be stopped. But that requires:

An immediate cease-fire to allow safe distribution of aid (UN calls).
Unrestricted humanitarian access through borders Israel currently controls.
Political pressure on those enabling this siege to end the weaponization of food.

The world cannot feign ignorance. Gaza’s famine is unfolding in real time — livestreamed on our screens, recorded by international monitors, and confirmed by U.N. experts.

History will not ask whether the world knew.
It will ask: why did the world do nothing while children starved?

👉 For further reading and updates, visit ainnbeen.blogspot.com

Comments

Delivering the Dead: How the World Watches Gaza Bleed.

Delivering the Dead: How the World Watches Gaza Bleed “ I delivered a beheaded woman who was nine months pregnant. ” That’s not a horror-film script. That’s not medieval history. That is the testimony of an Australian medic standing in a Gaza hospital in 2025, describing what it means to “ practice medicine ” under Israeli bombardment. A nine-months-pregnant woman , decapitated , her body torn open so that the child she carried could be pulled out lifeless — and somehow this is still not enough to shake the comfortable democracies of the West into anything resembling a conscience. We should probably give the Nobel Prize for Creative Euphemism to the politicians who still call this “self-defense.” After all, there’s nothing quite as defensive as severing the head of an expectant mother and forcing foreign doctors to deliver her dead child in the rubble of what used to be a hospital . Bravo, civilization . The tragedy is not just the atrocity itself. It’s the smug perfo...

Docu Drama. The voice of Hind Rajab.

The Red Phone Rings, but the World Hits Mute The world just gave a 23-minute standing ovation —yes, twenty-three full minutes of clapping —for The Voice of Hind Rajab at the Venice Film Festival . Applause so long it could’ve filled Hind’s final desperate phone call to the Red Crescent. Bravo, humanity. We couldn’t save her when it mattered, but at least we can applaud her ghost. This is the new morality play: a five-year-old Palestinian child, trapped in a bullet-riddled car , whispering “please come, I’m scared ,” while surrounded by the corpses of her family. The Red Crescent tried . Paramedics drove toward her and were killed too . Israel buried them in silence . And the “ civilized world ”? It buried her in its news cycle . But now—don’t worry— we have a movie . Starring Hind’s voice. Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania. Produced by an ensemble of Hollywood conscience-bearers : Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuarón, Jonathan Glazer, Jemima Khan , and others. ...

The End of Zionism? Welcome to the Funeral Nobody Wants to Admit Is Overdue

Of course. Haaretz recently published an opinion piece by Ithamar Handelman -Smith titled “ Some Say It’s the End of Zionism, and I Say That’s All Right .” And what impeccable timing: as Israel carries out a near-two-year campaign of siege, famine, and bombardment in Gaza — slaughtering families, burying aid workers with their ambulances, and literally starving children to death — someone in Israel finally whispers the unspeakable: maybe Zionism, that 20th-century project of “ Jewish salvation ,” has outlived its moral shelf life. Bravo. The house is burning, bodies are scattered in the street, and the philosopher shows up with a garden hose . Zionism: Success Story or Crime Scene? Handelman-Smith argues that Zionism achieved its success : a Jewish state, a safe haven, a fortress against the ghosts of Europe’s crimes . But like every “ success story ” drenched in other people’s blood , it didn’t age well. What began as refuge turned into domination; what was called “ ...

Dockers of Conscience: Italy’s Brave Guardians of Gaza

At a time when most governments avert their eyes , when institutions choose silence over principle, it is often the hands hardened by real work — the hands of dockworkers— that lift the banner of humanity. In Genoa , those hands belong to the members of the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) and the dockworkers’ collective CALP ( Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali ) . These are not new voices. For years they have stood where conscience demands —on the cold concrete of the docks , blocking ships laden with weapons destined for wars , refusing to let Italy’s ports be complicit in bloodshed. USB , born in 2010 out of grassroots struggles , has carried a proud history of international solidarity. Its members have consistently placed labor at the service of justice, from strikes against austerity to protests against militarism . CALP , forged in Genoa’s port , has a more direct history with Palestine: blocking Israeli-bound weapons , organizing boycotts, and declaring, time ...

Britain’s Recognition of Palestine: A Century of Complicity in Disguise.

So we’ve reached this moment: Keir Starmer’s UK “ recognises the State of Palestine. ” Applause lines up. Speeches made. Headlines dazzled. But behind the pomp, the guns, the exports, the intelligence, the training — history rings out in mocking laughter. Because Britain has been complicit since day one. This recognition is not redemption . It’s theatre. 1. The Original Sin: Balfour Declaration Let’s go back. Because if you don’t know your history, you’ll be fooled by the future. On 2 November 1917 , Arthur James Balfour (Britain’s Foreign Secretary) wrote to Lord Rothschild, and officially declared: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object , it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine , or the rights and political sta...

Ainnbeen

Search This Blog