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View all search resultsStarvation in Gaza and our global shame
There is a growing consensus that Israel is committing the most serious of crimes in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare.
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Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen on Aug. 15, 2025, in Gaza City. (Reuters/Dawoud Abu Alkas)
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tarvation is the slow, silent unmaking of the body. As reserves are depleted, the heart loses its strength, the immune system surrenders and the mind begins to fade. The skin tightens over the bones and breathing grows faint. Organs begin to fail in succession, vision fails and the body, now empty, slips away. It is a prolonged, agonizing way to die.
We have all seen the images of emaciated Palestinian babies and children withering away from starvation in their mothers’ arms. Yet now that Israel is intensifying its war, embarking on a new campaign to “conquer” Gaza City, thousands more Palestinian civilians may be killed, either by bombs or by starvation.
“This is no longer a looming hunger crisis,” Ramesh Rajasingham, a senior United Nations humanitarian official, told the UN Security Council on Aug. 10. “This is starvation, pure and simple.” Alex de Waal, an expert on famine, estimates that thousands of Gazan children are now too weak to eat, even if they had access to food.
There is a growing consensus that Israel is committing the most serious of crimes in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Palestinian and international human-rights groups raised the alarm about this risk within months of the start of the war, and it has since been echoed by states on every continent, as well as by many in Israel. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has decried what he describes as war crimes in Gaza, and leading Israeli human-rights groups say Israel’s actions in the territory amount to genocide.
On Oct, 9, 2023, two days after Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages – itself a serious war crime – then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.” The population of Gaza was dehumanized, and no distinction was made between civilians and combatants; a violation of a cardinal rule of international humanitarian law.
This first siege was eased only slightly when Israel allowed supplies to trickle into Gaza in early 2024. By that April, Samantha Power, then the head of USAID, was already warning of famine in parts of Gaza. The following month, Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Programme, announced “a full-blown famine” in northern Gaza.
International law prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon of war. As the occupying power in Gaza, Israel must ensure that the civilian population receives adequate food, water, medical supplies and other essentials. If those supplies cannot be located within Gaza itself, they must be sourced externally, including from Israel.
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