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ISRAEL’S FOOD POINTS ARE NOT JUST DEATH TRAPS – THEY’RE AN
ALIBI FOR THE STARVATION OF GAZA  
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Alex de Waal
July 26, 2025
The Guardian
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_ We saw famine in Biafra and Ethiopia. In the Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation’s ‘aid distribution system’ we see an attempt to
destroy a whole society _

Palestinians at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis,
Gaza, 22 July 2025., AFP/Getty Images

 

When mass starvation grips a community, something rare and terrible
occurs. Starvation is not only the biological phenomenon of the body
wasting away. It’s also the death rattle of society. Famine is the
sight of people scavenging for food in a garbage heap. It’s a woman
cooking in secret, hiding food from her starving cousins. It’s a
family selling its grandmother’s jewellery for a single meal, their
faces blank and emotionless, their eyes glazed. This is the
degradation, the humiliation, the shame – and, yes, the
dehumanisation – that happens when human beings scrabble for food
like animals.

This is a reality that no statistics can capture. And the methods for
measuring food emergencies and assigning them grades – “famine”
being the worst – break down when society breaks down in this way.

But just as an experienced physician can diagnose a fever without
having to send blood samples to the laboratory, veteran humanitarian
workers, who witnessed the depths of human suffering in Biafra in 1969
or in Ethiopia in 1984, recognise these symptoms when they see them.

And they see it in Gaza
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Turn to the statements of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – the US
and Israel-backed organisation that began operating in May – and you
enter a different world. The GHF presents itself as a professional,
compassionate operation designed for the 21st century. You will see
images of order and efficiency, and a proud announcement
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it delivered more than 2m meals yesterday from its four “secure
distribution sites”.

And alongside the pictures of those starving children, of women
collapsing from hunger, there are also pictures of healthy young men.
In contrast to the footage, filmed by Palestinian journalists, of the
desperate scramble for the little aid still provided through the UN,
the GHF has images of orderly distributions [[link removed]], of
its own workers holding the hands of Palestinian children.

Israeli spokespeople insist
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Nations has hundreds of trucks of food inside the Gaza perimeter that
it refuses to distribute.

But that rosy picture doesn’t stand even the simplest scrutiny.
There are four reasons why it’s at best an improvisation by amateurs
and at worst a cover for the crime of ongoing mass starvation.

First, the numbers just don’t add up. In April, the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the UN calculated the food stocks
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in Gaza, after 18 months of siege and war, and two months of total
Israeli blockade. It estimated that food availability would fall to
only half what’s needed to sustain life at some point between May
and July. That means that the aid effort needs to cover the entirety
of Gaza’s food needs. Two million meals a day is less than half of
what’s needed. The GHF rations may have slowed the march of
starvation, but not by much.

Second, you can’t relieve famine by numbers alone. The GHF system is
like standing at the edge of a big pond and feeding the fish by
throwing breadcrumbs. Who gets to eat its rations?

Starvation strikes the vulnerable minority. The metric used by the UN
for determining when acute food insecurity is at famine levels
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facing extreme food shortage. Starvation strikes the weakest, not the
strongest.

Over the decades, humanitarian programmes have worked out how best to
target the poorest, such as women without their husbands, looking
after several children and perhaps elderly parents as well. It’s the
last mile of aid delivery that counts.

The GHF runs four ration stations. Three are in the far south of Gaza
in the ruins of Rafah, one in central Gaza. They’re all in military
zones. They open for short periods and short notice. To get these
rations, people must camp out in the rubble – ready to rush to the
gates at a moment’s notice, and running the gauntlet of the Israel
Defense Forces’ military posts. They know that the only means IDF
soldiers have for crowd control is firing live ammunition – even
when they’re not shooting to kill.

When the GHF speaks of “secure distribution sites”, it’s
referring to how it controls its packages up to the point of handing
them over, not to how it safely delivers them to the neediest. Dozens
of aid seekers are killed each day trying to reach these sites.

How will the overstressed mother of hungry children, or elderly or
disabled people, join this stampede? How would they run the gauntlet
not only of those military posts but also of the gangsters keen to
steal the most valuable foodstuffs for themselves, or to sell in the
market? The GHF has no idea who is eating the rations. Theirs isn’t
a formula for feeding the poorest. It’s the law of the jungle.

Third, the assistance must be designed for what people really need.
Top of the list are specialised foods to care for malnourished
children who cannot consume regular meals, such as Plumpy’Nut, a
ready-to-use therapeutic food.

The GHF ration box typically contains 
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pasta, tahini, cooking oil, rice and chickpeas or lentils. No baby
food. No Plumpy’Nut. And it has no trained nurses or nutritionists
in the community to actually provide therapeutic care to starving
children.

Consider the desperate mother who’s literally at the end of the food
chain: how will she cook the rations she gets? How does she find clean
water? Israel has reduced water availability
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a small fraction of need, and is bombing the remaining desalination
plants
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What can she use to make a fire? Without electricity or cooking gas,
she may burn garbage to heat food.

And last and most tellingly, a truly humanitarian operation supports
the afflicted people, respecting the dignity of those in need, working
with the communities. The GHF, essentially, does the opposite: it
humiliates and undermines.

The social breakdown that we are witnessing, the degrading of human
beings, is not a byproduct of the harm that Israel is inflicting.
That’s the central element of the crime: destroying Palestinian
society. The government of Israel shows no indication that it cares in
the slightest whether Palestinians live or die. It wants to avoid the
stigma of being accused of starvation and genocide, and the GHF is its
current alibi. Let’s not be fo

RELATED ARTICLE: 

Murder Not Crisis - Why Israel's Starvation of Gaza Is Exceptional in
a Global Context.
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Adam Tooze
Chartbook
Jul 27, 2025

For many months, it has been beyond reasonable doubt that the Israeli
government, the Israeli military, sections of Israeli politics and
society as well as their aiders and abetters abroad, have been
deliberately starving the population of Gaza with a view to forcing
the population either to flee or to face intensifying misery and
ultimately an agonizing death. There is clear evidence of deliberate
intent going back to 2023. This clearly warrants charges of genocide.

Those who style themselves “defenders of Israel” will be quick to
insist that, in fact, there is a feeding operation in Gaza. But, as
the famine historian and aid expert Alex de Waal
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powerful piece in the _Guardian
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“Israel’s food points are not just death traps – they’re an
alibi … The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation system is like standing at
the edge of a big pond and feeding the (starving) fish by throwing
breadcrumbs. Who gets to eat its rations?” Air drops of food, are
simply more of the same.

Ethnic cleansing by means of starvation is the actual policy.

Anyone interested in the history of famine as a political weapon would
do well to consult de Waal’s harrowing history on the the topic.

As he shows, deliberate starvation, which was at the heart of Raphael
Lemkin’s original discussion of genocide, born out of the Nazi
occupation of Poland in the 1940s, was subsequently marginalized in
our understanding of 20th-century horror.

When I resolved to tear myself out of my Asian cocoon and write this
piece, I first had in mind to write something “historical” based
on de Waal’s book. I soon realized that I don’t have the stomach
for that kind of history right now. This is not a moment for
chin-stroking arguments over the politics of historical comparison etc
etc.

Let us stay with the violence in the here and now.

To anticipate another objection commonly made in Israel’s
“defense”. Obviously, Gaza is not the only place in the world
where people are suffering and starving in the summer of 2025. Nor is
it the only place where hunger is being used as a political weapon.

If you have been in these conversations, you will have heard the
retort: “Don’t criticize Israel, don’t even mention the criminal
policy of its government, unless you are also willing to discuss
horrors being inflicted elsewhere.”

This is confusing because Israel also frequently claims exceptional
status, especially on the basis of its origins in the aftermath of the
Holocaust, whose exceptionality is also emphatically asserted. But,
let us side-step that rabbit hole of confusion and bad faith and take
up the challenge of generalizing the critique. Let us place the
policies of Israel’s government in Gaza against the global panorama
of misery, war and starvation at this moment.

Anyone who is seriously interested in this question and is not simply
engaged in obfuscation is invited to consult the overview of “hunger
hot spots” around the world helpfully compiled for us by the UN FAO
and the World Food Programme
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Here is the map of acute hunger worldwide expected for the summer of
2025. And here is the horrifying thing. There are roughly 152 million
people worldwide at serious risk of hunger and famine this summer,
outside Gaza. The majority, by far, are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Myanmar
is the only major hot spot in Asia.

The common denominator of all of these zones of suffering, is armed
violence.

As the FAO/WFP put it:

The Sudan, Palestine, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali remain at the
highest concern level, necessitating the most urgent attention. Yemen,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Nigeria are
classified as hotspots of very high concern and require urgent
attention to save lives and livelihoods and for preventing further
deteriorations. Other hotspots are Burkina Faso, Chad, Somalia and the
Syrian Arab Republic. Armed violence remains the primary driver of
acute food insecurity in 12 of the 13 hotspots. In all the hotspots of
highest concern, widespread and escalating armed violence is a major
driver of the deterioration in food security, contributing to
Catastrophe (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification /Cadre
Harmonisé Phase 5) outcomes in affected areas. In the Sudan,
Famine-like conditions (IPC Phase 5) may persist due to the ongoing
conflict and the approaching lean season.* In the Gaza Strip, the
risk of Famine is becoming increasingly likely due to the protracted
and large-scale military operations and the fact that humanitarian
agencies are unable to provide adequate assistance. In South Sudan,
subnational violence and political tensions are compounding
macroeconomic challenges and flood risks. In Haiti, record levels of
gang violence and insecurity are forcing mass displacement and
obstructing humanitarian operations, perpetuating catastrophic food
insecurity among displaced populations in the Port-au-Prince
metropolitan area. In Mali, persistent conflict and very high access
constraints in northern and central regions continue to disrupt food
systems and limit assistance.

This is, to say the least, politely phrased.

Sudan, South Sudan, Myanmar, DRC are all in civil war. In Haiti there
is anarchy. All of these situations might be reasonably described
either as zones of zones of polycrisis, or as regions of chronic
poverty (Northern Nigeria, for instance) - which itself demands a
deeper explanation.

By contrast, “the protracted and large-scale military operations”
in Gaza that are responsible for the famine there, are not
manifestations of a crisis. They are being conducted with full
deliberation by Israel, a rich and fully sovereign state. Food
supplies to Gaza, which are fully within Israel’s grip, are being
deliberately “regulated” to a totally inadequate level. Meanwhile,
water desalination facilities have been targeted by smart bombs. There
is no fuel for cooking. In waging its campaign in Gaza, Israel has had
the unstinting and highly public support of the mainstream of US
politics and that of many countries in Europe. These are not deniable
operations, as for instance the UAE’s engagement in Sudan, but
publicly celebrated multi-billion dollar “aid packages”.

In recent months, the political establishment in both Europe and the
US has become “troubled” by images of Palestinian children dying
of hunger. In reaction, they resort to grotesque euphemism to avoid
the obvious fact that what is happening in Gaza is the result not of
“crisis” but of deliberate Israeli policy.

Witnessing the catastrophic hunger and suffering of civilians,
especially children, women, the sick and elderly, in Gaza has been
heartbreaking. The crisis in Gaza must be met with an immediate and
drastic surge in life-saving resources, such as desperately needed
food, water,…

— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) July 26, 2025
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Politicians in the USA and in Europe dare not say out loud what the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz
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every day in its headlines:

Death by starvation in Gaza is not the collateral, unintended
consequence of an obscure, anonymous, amorphous crisis. It is the
results of deliberate policy on the part of the Israeli government,
bent on using the resources of a highly sophisticated state to render
Palestinian life in Gaza impossible.

Around the world there are eleven places where more people are at
serious risk of hunger than in Gaza, but what this wider view of
global famine reveals is not that Gaza is “normal”, but precisely
the opposite. Being the result of deliberate policy by a powerful
state, commonly regarded as belonging to the exclusive club of
“advanced economies”, the mass starvation in Gaza in the summer of
2025 is quite unlike that anywhere else in the world.

This exceptional quality is further emphasized if we ask simply, what
percentage of the Palestinian population in Gaza is affected.

In any assessment of the deliberateness of mass killing this is a key
index. It is often cited to demonstrate, for instance, the difference
between the killing by the Nazi occupiers of Poland of Jews and
non-Jewish Poles. Both projects of mass murder were intense, but the
Nazi extermination of Jews in Poland clearly aimed, from the outset,
at total extermination.

Across the hunger hot spots of the world in 2025, what is the
percentage of the population that is at risk?

In Nigeria - mainly in the North - it is one sixth of the population.
In Myanmar and the DRC it is roughly a quarter of the population. In
Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan and Haiti - the places most commonly cited
in arguments about the application of “special standards” to
Israel - the share of the population at risk is between 49 and 57
percent. In Gaza, the share is 100 percent. The risk of famine is
total.

As the FAO and WFP put it:

According to the IPC analysis released in May 2025, the entire
population of the Gaza Strip (around 2.1 million people) were
projected to face Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above) levels of
acute food insecurity between May and September 2025. This includes
470 000 people in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and over one million in
Emergency (IPC Phase 4).267 Even if essential supplies are permitted
to enter, the quantity, distribution mechanism and timing may be
inadequate to prevent a rapid and uncontrollable collapse into
famine.268 Concerns remain extremely high, as the key drivers of food
insecurity continue to deteriorate. Households are increasingly
resorting to extreme coping strategies, including collecting garbage
to sell for food. Observations reveal that social order is breaking
down.

A condition of total, all-inclusive starvation is highly unusual. No
doubt, the reality on the ground continues to exhibit gradations of
inequality and hierarchy not captured by the UN statistics. But this
finding points once again to the exceptional circumstance of Gaza,
which are those of a siege, a prison or a ghetto. And within that
space a horrifying pressure is being applied. As de Waal remarks:

“When mass starvation grips a community, something rare and terrible
occurs. Starvation is not only the biological phenomenon of the body
wasting away. It’s also the death rattle of society. Famine is the
sight of people scavenging for food in a garbage heap. It’s a woman
cooking in secret, hiding food from her starving cousins. It’s a
family selling its grandmother’s jewellery for a single meal, their
faces blank and emotionless, their eyes glazed. This is the
degradation, the humiliation, the shame – and, yes, the
dehumanisation – that happens when human beings scrabble for food
like animals. This is a reality that no statistics can capture. ,,,
The social breakdown that we are witnessing, the degrading of human
beings, is not a byproduct of the harm that Israel is inflicting.
That’s the central element of the crime: destroying Palestinian
society.”

Anyone deflecting from the clear responsibility of the Israeli state
for this mass starvation of two million people, anyone resorting to
euphemisms about “crises” makes themselves complicit in this
historic crime.

ALEX DE WAAL is executive director of the World Peace Foundation at
Tufts University in Massachusetts. He has been a humanitarian worker
and written on famine and related issues for 40 years

About Guardian US

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JOHN ADAM TOOZE  is an English historian who is a professor at
Columbia University, Director of the European Institute and
nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe.

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* Gaza
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* starvation
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* famine
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* war crimes
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* Palestine
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