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

Never Attack a Revolution—Unless It’s Gaza

By Malik Mukhtar There is a peculiar confidence that comes with being wrong for decades and still being invited back to explain the world. Yossi Alpher—former Mossad official, veteran intelligence analyst, and institutional voice of Israeli “realism”—offers us precisely that confidence in his January 12, 2026 reflections on Iran. His message, distilled, is simple: things are complicated, revolutions are unpredictable, and humility is required . This is sound advice. It just arrives from the wrong mouth, at the wrong time, over the wrong bodies. Because while Alpher warns us—correctly—not to “attack a revolution, ” Israel has spent the last two years doing something far more obscene : attacking a trapped civilian population with no revolution , no army , no air force, no escape —and calling it self-defense . Intelligence: A Sacred Failure, Repeated Faithfully Alpher recalls, with admirable candor, the catastrophic ignorance of Western and Israeli intelligence during...

Gaza Beyond the Alibi of Hamas: Genocide as Method, Silence as Accomplice.( From Chris Hedges report )

We are the most informed generation in human history—and perhaps the least disturbed by what we know. From the first missiles that struck Gaza’s residential blocks to the slow starvation that followed, everything was visible. Every destroyed home. Every burned hospital. Every child pulled from rubble. And yet, the global emotional temperature barely rose. In an age of total visibility, feeling itself has become scarce. Watching has replaced witnessing. Knowing has replaced responsibility. This moral numbness is not accidental. It is cultivated . And at the center of this cultivation stands a single word, endlessly repeated, ritually invoked, and strategically deployed: Hamas . Hamas has functioned not as an explanation, but as an alibi. The Choice Was Announcedk From Day One From the earliest days of Israel’s assault, the policy was articulated with chilling clarity: Gaza’s population would be given two options— stay and starve, or leave . This was not the language of counte...

Ras ‘Ein al-‘Auja: How Ethnic Cleansing Happens Without a Declaration

Ethnic cleansing rarely announces itself with sirens or official decrees. More often, it arrives quietly—through sleepless nights, smashed water tanks, stolen sheep, armed men grazing livestock on stolen land, and the slow realization that survival itself has become impossible. On 8 January 2026 , Israel completed what it had been methodically engineering for months: the forcible transfer of 26 Palestinian families from the shepherding community of Ras ‘Ein al-‘Auja in the southern Jordan Valley. That is 124 people , including 59 children , pushed from homes their families had lived in for decades—not by a single evacuation order, but by sustained terror. This is not a humanitarian crisis caused by “clashes.” It is not a byproduct of war. It is a deliberate policy outcome . Violence as Policy, Militias as Instruments Ras ‘Ein al-‘Auja lies about ten kilometers north of Jericho. It is the last remaining shepherding community in the southern Jordan Valley , and the largest sti...

Ana Kasparian: The Voice That Won’t Be Silent — A Call for Truth in an Age of Power

Ana Kasparian is one of the most recognized and outspoken voices in contemporary political media. As a co-host of The Young Turks — a trailblazing online news and commentary program — she has spent nearly two decades dissecting U.S. politics, media, power, and foreign policy with unapologetic clarity and fierce conviction. She is not just a commentator — she is a truth-seeker who challenges power at every turn , refusing to soften her words for comfort. Schooled in journalism and political science, Ana’s commentary continues to mobilize millions, especially younger generations who feel unheard in mainstream discourse. A Voice Against the Status Quo Ana’s rhetoric can be bold, controversial, and deeply passionate — because she refuses to accept narratives that obscure the underlying truth about power and influence. On American democracy and foreign policy, she strikes at the heart of what many hesitate to articulate: “ We don’t actually live in a true democracy here in t...

Dr. Randa Abdel Fattah. De-Invited by Association: When Grief Becomes a Pretext and Palestinian Identity a Liability

How Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah Was Silenced in the Name of “Sensitivity” In a remarkable feat of moral gymnastics, Australia’s literary establishment has once again demonstrated how grief can be weaponised, principles suspended, and Palestinian identity rendered dangerously “inappropriate ” —all in the name of cultural sensitivity. Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah , a respected author, academic, and public intellectual, was quietly de-invited from Adelaide Writers’ Week following the Bondi Junction massacre. Not because she had any connection—real, implied, or imagined—to the atrocity. Not because she endorsed violence. Not because she violated any law or ethical standard. But because, apparently, the mere presence of a Palestinian Muslim woman who speaks about justice is now considered culturally unsafe during national mourning . One wonders: unsafe for whom? The Logic of the Absurd Festival organisers were careful—almost impressively so—to state that Dr. Abdel-Fattah had nothing to do wi...

Ainnbeen

Search This Blog