A deliberate, engineered, and thus entirely preventable famine is killing Palestinians in Gaza.
In May 2025, it was reported that roughly 85% of Gaza’s population had entered the 5th stage of malnutrition (also referred to as IPC Phase 5). This is the most critical and dangerous phase of food insecurity, characterized by extreme food deprivation, starvation, and a high risk of death, where the effects of malnutrition become irreversible for some.
In a joint statement, the BBC, Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and the Associated Press (AP) warned that their journalists are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Children make up nearly half of Gaza’s population and are particularly vulnerable due to impacts that include the stunted growth of bodies and minds, muscle wasting, and lethal medical complications. Moreover, the effects of starvation are also long-term, as it destroys the fabric of society and turns people against each other, forcing them to succumb to humiliating and sometimes violent acts. Survivors are forced to live with the consequences of the trauma of having to choose between which child to feed, and selling their bodies and family members in exchange for food.
Gaza is not starving because of a natural disaster or catastrophe. The famine in Gaza is man-made. According to Alex de Waal, a leading authority on famines, the current situation in Gaza is the most severe and “minutely engineered” act of deliberate starvation since World War II, at every stage of which Israel could have taken action to prevent what is happening. Since March 2, 2025, Israel has completely sealed Gaza’s borders, blocking the entry of all food, water, medicine, and fuel.
The limited aid that has trickled in has been tightly controlled and sporadic through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a Delaware-based American organization established in February 2025 to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza.
The GHF is currently led by Johnnie Moore Jr., an American Evangelical leader and former adviser to Donald Trump, who was appointed as its Executive Chairman, succeeding Jake Wood, a US military veteran who resigned in late May 2025 citing that the organization couldn’t uphold humanitarian principles like neutrality and impartiality. The fact that the GHF employs mercenaries and private security contractors, and not professional humanitarian workers, shows how it has securitized and weaponized aid.
The United Nations and numerous humanitarian groups began criticizing the GHF soon after it began operations for politicizing aid distribution and how they designed aid distribution sites, corralling Palestinians into restricted corridors where they became easy targets for dehumanization, abuse, and deadly violence. UN agencies, including the World Food Program and international NGOS such as Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross, refuse to cooperate with the GHF and accuse them of weaponizing aid and delivering it in a manner that is unsafe and degrading to the Palestinian people.
Since GHF began operating, it has been reported that Israeli forces and private contractors have killed over 1,000 Palestinians as they simply attempt to get food. Two former contractors leaked a video to the Associated Press, taken at the aid sites, that shows how hundreds of Palestinians crowded between metal gates, jostling for aid amid the sound of bullets. Other videos include conversations about dispersing crowds and encouraging one another after bursts of gunfire.
The desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the failure of governments to act to put an end to these preventable deaths have led some private groups and individuals to take matters into their own hands, in an attempt to break the illegal blockade on Gaza.
On June 1, 2025, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, named Madleen, an aid vessel organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to break the Israeli blockage of the Gaza Strip, departed from Catania, Sicily. On June 9th, Israeli forces intercepted the vessel and prevented it from reaching the Gaza Strip. The 12 activists on board, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and French MEP Rima Hassan, were arrested and detained, and eventually all were deported from Israel.
Around the same time, the Global March to Gaza, a civilian-led, international initiative to march from Arish, Egypt, to the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, to peacefully break the Israeli blockade, was initiated. The organizers eventually canceled the march after hundreds of activists were detained in Cairo and deported. Some had their hotel rooms raided, and their passports seized. In addition, there were reports of clashes between activists and Egyptian authorities near Isma’ilia.
On 13 July 2025, in another mission organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the ship Handala departed from Syracuse, Italy, again to break the Israeli blockade. The ship is still sailing towards the Gaza Strip. Private, people-led missions such as these would not be necessary if the world’s governments were taking the lead on breaking this siege. It is truly unconscionable that even such peaceful efforts have been sabotaged by Israel and the Egyptian government.
The tragedy is that food and other vital aids are available. According to UNRWA, they have enough food and supplies to feed Gaza’s starving population for the next three months, but are unable to deliver that aid due to Israel’s blockade.
Instead of putting an end to this mass starvation, instead of pressuring Israel to allow in humanitarian relief, instead of sanctioning the state of Israel, imposing an arms embargo, or demanding an immediate and complete ceasefire, some governments are choosing to punish those speaking out against these atrocities.
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration announced that it is issuing sanctions against Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The announcement came following the publication of Albanese’s latest report, which examines the corporate machinery behind Israel’s occupation and names specific corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide. The Trump administration had also sought to sanction judges of the International Criminal Court, in response to the ICC’s indictments of key Israeli officials responsible for war crimes in Gaza.
Domestically, the US government has put increasing pressure on universities to put an end to student protests and encampments that have called for universities to divest from companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza, with many students facing suspensions and having diplomas withheld. Student activists who are not U.S. citizens, including Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi have been arrested, detained by ICE (though both are currently released), and have been placed in deportation proceedings over their campus activism, which the US has claimed is a threat to US national security interests.
As the US government punishes any form of solidarity and activism in protest of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Prime Minister Netanyahu, an indicted war criminal, continues to visit the US Congress, and the US has not stopped its constant supply of military aid and political support to Israel.
The United States is not alone in repressing activism and protest in solidarity with Palestinians. Germany, the second largest supplier of weapons to Israel after the U.S. has also punished individuals expressing solidarity and protesting Israeli violence. In April of 2024, Germany police shut down a conference in Berlin on the ongoing genocide. Germany has also barred well-known critics of Israel’s military operations from entering the country, including Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis as well as British-Palestinian medical doctor and academic Ghassan Abu Sitta. More recently, police in Berlin also clashed with and violently suppressed protestors demanding an end to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, in the city of Berlin.
In the meantime, as countries punish expressions of solidarity with Palestine, the starvation of Gaza’s population continues. Every day the world does not act, more people simply collapse and die.
This is unacceptable! It is beyond comprehension that twenty-one months into this brutal war on the people of Palestine, after more than 60,000 deaths (by conservative estimates) and now mass and intentional starvation, Israel continues to act with such impunity.
The Israeli government must immediately allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
The U.S. and the other states backing and supporting Israel must impose an arms embargo on Israel and demand an immediate end to this cruelty and inhumanity.
There needs to be pressure for an immediate and complete ceasefire, as the minimal first step to address the longstanding, deep issues of injustice against the Palestinians, whose resolution is the only way to achieve peace.