Starvation
Overview
Israel is intentionally starving the entire civilian population of Gaza - including 1 million children. While families starve, the food they need sits in miles of trucks stuck at the border. Children are arriving at hospitals, skeletal, unconscious, near death, too weak even to cry. Countless have already perished.
Numerous humanitarian organizations and independent experts say Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war - a war crime in its own right, and a key element of Israel's genocide in Gaza.
In January 2024, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food proclaimed, “We’ve never seen 2.2 million civilians made to go hungry within weeks. We have never seen this degree of hunger used as a weapon so quickly and so completely, ever.”
Israel has enacted this policy of forced starvation in a cruel and calculated fashion.
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First, Israel deliberately blocks humanitarian aid from entering Gaza – including food, clean water, fuel, medical supplies, and tents for temporary shelters. For weeks and months at a time, Israel has completely blocked all aid into the Gaza Strip. When it has allow aid in, it is "a teaspoon," "a drop in the ocean," "a trickle" - far below what is needed, and a fraction of what entered Gaza before October 7. In this way, Israel keeps the people of Gaza always on the brink of starvation and famine. It has even blocked baby formula, creating a crisis of infants who face slow and painful deaths.
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Second, Israel has deliberately destroyed Gaza's ability to feed itself. It has systematically razed agricultural fields (over 95% are unusable), crops, orchards, and greenhouses across Gaza, while blowing up the vast majority of water and sanitation infrastructure, and bombing bakeries. Israel even bans people from fishing in the sea - under threat of death.
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Third, Israel has carried out unprecedented attacks on aid workers, aid trucks, food distribution centers and community kitchens - while also massacring starving civilians seeking food.
Most recently, Israel has been committing daily massacres of starving Palestinians as they seek food aid, while using that food as “bait” to lure Palestinians into concentration camps in the far southwest corner of Gaza. Israeli soldiers have told Ha'aretz there is no threat, no return fire, no reason to shoot. Instead, Israeli soldiers are shooting at starving civilians lined up for food, opening fire with machine guns, dropping grenades with drones, and even firing artillery shells from tanks as “standard practice.”
The result is that “levels of hunger and desperation in Gaza are reaching catastrophic levels,” as the World Health Organization declared in December 2023. “The scale and swiftness of this crisis is unprecedented in modern times,” said a World Food Program spokesperson. By July 2025, the situation had gotten unimaginably worse, as the IPC declared that “The worst case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza.” Each day, Palestinians in Gaza - including children and babies - are starving to death, as the world sits idly by. Each day, the destruction of all traces of life and Palestinian society in Gaza continues under an Israeli genocide.
The Starvation of Gaza: A Roadmap to This Page
This page starts by explaining how Israel has deliberately starved Gaza and its children, including:
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Using Starvation as a Weapon of War - Numerous international humanitarian and human rights organizations, as well as independent experts, say Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against civilians in Gaza, a categorical war crime. This includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'tselem, Oxfam, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
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Blocking Humanitarian Aid - For weeks and months at a time, Israel has blocked all aid from entering Gaza, cutting off supplies of food and clean water. Most recently, it blocked all aid for nearly three full months - from March 2 through the end of May 2025 - pushing Gaza to the brink of famine. The rest of the time, it slows aid to a trickle, far below what is needed (and readily available and waiting to enter Gaza) so that people are perpetually malnourished and on the brink of starvation.
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Intentionally Destroying Food Sources in Gaza – Israel has systematically razed agricultural fields, crops, orchards, and greenhouses. It has even banned fishing. This makes the people of Gaza totally dependent on external humanitarian aid, which - as mentioned above - Israel shuts off entirely or reduces to a trickle.
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Killing Humanitarian Aid Workers and Palestinians Aid Seekers - Israel has slaughtered hundreds of aid workers who try to deliver food and other supplies for international aid agencies, killed Palestinian chefs at makeshift community soup kitchens, and targeted the police who protect aid trucks from looting. Israel has also massacred Palestinian civilians seeking aid throughout this genocidal war, including numerous massacres at aid sites in early 2024 (such as the infamous Flour Massacre), while routinely killing people who simply venture out in search of food or dare to fish in the sea.
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“Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”: Massacring Starving Civilians - After 3 months of not letting a drop of food or water into Gaza, in May 2025 Israel unilaterally banned the UN-led aid distribution system (with 400 sites and numerous experienced nonprofit organizations), and replaced it with a newly-created, shadowy organization of American military contractors and Israeli soldiers operating only 4 sites for over 2 million people. The GHF commits daily massacres of starving civilians at aid sites, while distributing a paltry amount of food, as images of starving children attest. Over 170 charities have called for an immediate end to these “death traps” masquerading as “aid.”
Next, this page explores the catastrophe Israel has created through its policy of starvation, including:
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Catastrophic Levels of Starvation Across Gaza - with 1 in 3 people in Gaza (over 600,000 people) going multiple days without food, roughly 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition (the harshest diagnosis), and the IPC announcing that the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently unfolding in Gaza.” As of early August 2025, 180 people having died from malnutrition, including 93 children.
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Lack of Milk and Formula for Newborns - As mothers have become too malnourished to breastfeed, Israel has systematically blocked the entry of baby formula into Gaza, even confiscating it from American doctors who arrive to volunteer at hospitals, and leaving doctors to ration what little they have amongst their tiniest patients.
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Starving Children - Approximately half of all deaths from starvation are children, while the UN declares that all children under 5 in Gaza – 320,000 – are at risk of acute malnutrition. Parents, the sole caregivers of these emaciated children, are forced to risk their lives at militarized food distribution sites. The choice – to go and potentially die in search of food, or to stay and be unable to feed your children – is dystopian and cruel.
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The Lack of Water - Israel has systematically and deliberately destroyed sources of clean water, rendering 96% of water undrinkable, and leading to disease, dehydration, and death. In December 2024, Human Rights Watch issued a long and detailed report concluding that Israel was using water as a weapon of war.
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The Effects of Starvation - The effects of starvation go beyond wasting and even death. Those who survive face a lifetime of physical harm, as well as emotional trauma. Mass starvation also leads to the destruction of social bonds and communities as individuals are forced to look out for themselves first in the struggle to survive.
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Stories of Families Seeking Food
Finally, this pages addresses two key Israeli claims:
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The Unbelievable Claim that No One is Gaza is Starving - While images of starving children and heartbreaking testimonies come out of Gaza on a daily basis, the Israeli Prime Minister continues to claim that “there is no starvation in Gaza.” This is an example of “The Big Lie,” where people are urged not to believe their own lying eyes, a lie so colossal one struggles to imagine how someone could tell it. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote, “Denying Gaza's starvation is no less vile than denying the Holocaust.”
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The Lie that Hamas is Stealing Aid - There is simply no evidence that Hamas is stealing aid - this despite extensive Israeli surveillance over a destroyed Gaza. Every humanitarian organization working in Gaza, the U.S. government, and even Israeli security officials have all confirmed this. On the contrary, it is Israel that has been arming criminal gangs - as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted in June 2025 - and encouraging them to loot aid. As is so often is the case with Israel, every accusation is a confession.
John Oliver sums up the overwhelming evidence that Israel is deliberately starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Starvation as a Weapon of War
Overview
Numerous humanitarian organizations and independent experts say Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'tselem, the UN, and even the European Union. Using starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime. In this case, it is also a key element of Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
It's important to remember that even before October 7, 2023, Israel had imposed a 17-year blockade on Gaza. This blockade destroyed Gaza's economy, making 80% of people dependent on external humanitarian aid. As part of this blockade, Israel “calorie counted” the food coming into Gaza to keep it at a “humanitarian minimum,” deliberately maintaining Gaza on the brink of humanitarian collapse. This made the population of Gaza particularly vulnerable to the starvation campaign Israel enacted after October 7th.
Starvation as a War Crime and an Act of Genocide
Using starvation as a method of warfare is a war crime under international law, and is specifically prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. This includes depriving civilians of access to essential, life-sustaining supplies, including by:
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Destroying or damaging agricultural areas, crops, livestock, and other food sources.
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Damaging drinking water installations and supplies.
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Attacking irrigation works essential for food production.
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Purposefully impeding humanitarian relief supplies intended for civilians in need.
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Restricting the freedom of movement of humanitarian personnel.
Israel has done each and every one of these things in a calculated effort to starve the people of Gaza, as explained in detail below.
Starvation of a civilian population is also a key element of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group of people, including through starvation or denial of medical care, is an act of genocide under international law.
Numerous Humanitarian Organizations and Independent Experts Say Israel is Using Starvation as a Weapon of War
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Oxfam - In late October 2023, as Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza, Oxfam accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. It noted that only 2% of usual food deliveries were entering Gaza and that clean water had virtually run out. The situation has gotten catastrophically worse since then.
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Human Rights Watch - In December 2023, Human Rights Watch said Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war, deliberately depriving civilians of food and water.
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B'tselem - In January 2024, the Israeli human rights organization stated in no uncertain terms that the entire population of Gaza was going hungry “not [as] a byproduct of war but a direct result of Israel’s declared policy, which denies them food.” It continued:
“Gazans now depend entirely on supplies from outside, as they can no longer produce almost any food themselves. Most cultivated fields have been destroyed, and accessing open areas during the war is dangerous in any case. Bakeries, factories and food warehouses have been bombed or shut down due to lack of basic supplies, fuel and electricity; stockpiles in private homes, stores and warehouses have long since run out.
“Instead of allowing enough food into Gaza, Israel is letting in only a fraction of the amount entering before the war. The result is inconceivable: images of children begging for food, people waiting in long lines for paltry handouts and hungry residents charging at aid trucks. The horror is growing by the minute and the danger of famine is real, yet Israel persists in its policy.”
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U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food - In January 2024, Michael Fakhri stated, “We’ve never seen 2.2 million civilians made to go hungry within weeks. We have never seen this degree of hunger used as a weapon so quickly and so completely, ever.” He continued: “There was a 16-year blockade before this. So even before the war, half of the people in Gaza were food insecure and 80 percent depended on aid. Then [Israel] imposes a siege during the war. Then it destroys civilian infrastructure. So Israel has destroyed hospitals, homes, roads, making everyday life impossible. And finally, what I’m receiving reports of is the destruction of the food system itself.”
“There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza – other than to deny people access to food,” he told The Guardian.
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U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights - In March 2024, Volker Turk said that “hunger, starvation, and famine” in Gaza are the result of Israel’s policies of blocking humanitarian aid, displacing civilians, and destroying civilian infrastructure.
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U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded in June 2024 that Israel was committing the crime of extermination, including starvation as a weapon of war.
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E.U. Foreign Policy Chief - Josep Borrell said in March 2024 that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, creating a “manmade disaster.”
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International Criminal Court - In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, including for the crimes of extermination and using starvation as a weapon of war.
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Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said “This is extermination by starvation” in April 2025 as Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza once more.
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Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a prominent scholar of famine, Alex de Waal stated that he had never seen the war crime of starvation perpetrated in such scale over the 40 years of his career, and that “The rigor, scale, and speed of the destruction of the structures necessary for survival, and enforcement of the siege, surpasses any other case of man-made famine in the last 75 years.” Alex de Waal is a professor at Tufts University and author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.”
Blocking Humanitarian Aid
Overview
Israel is deliberately starving the entire civilian population of Gaza, creating catastrophic hunger and starvation. This, in itself, constitutes a war crime and act of genocide. Israel enacts its starvation of Gaza in a systematic and calculated fashion.
First, it deliberately blocks humanitarian aid – including the entry of food, clean water, fuel, medical supplies, and tents for temporary shelters. For weeks and months at a time, Israel has entirely blocked all humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. When it does allow aid in, it is “a teaspoon,” “a drop in the ocean,” far below what is needed, and a fraction of what entered Gaza before October 7.
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Second, it destroys agricultural fields, crops, orchards, and greenhouses across Gaza, while blowing up water and sanitation infrastructure and bombing bakeries. It even bans people from fishing in the sea.
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Third, it attacks the aid workers and trucks it lets in – killing an unprecedented number of humanitarian aid workers - while also massacring starving people trying to get aid.
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In short, there is no path to survival. Every route is blocked. As The New York Times' Nicholas Kristoff has said, “What is unusual about Gaza is this hunger crisis is unfolding in a small, accessible area where 3,000 to 7,000 trucks are reportedly waiting at the border with food.” Food is close by, in enormous quantities, rotting at the border because Israel is blocking it.
This section focuses on Israel’s deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
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At times, Israel has completely blocked humanitarian aid for weeks and months at a time, including in October 2023 and March - May 2025.
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At other times, Israel deliberately limits and obstructs the entry of humanitarian aid far below levels before October 7, 2023 - even though the people of Gaza need far more aid now as they are being relentlessly displaced, killed, injured, and bombed.
Completely Blocking All Aid in October 2023
“Never in post-war history has a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
On October 9, 2023, Israel announced its starvation campaign against Gaza. By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80% of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger.”
~ Open Letter by 45 American doctors who served in Gaza
On October 9, 2023, Israel announced a “total blockade” on the Gaza Strip, halting the entry of all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity. Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, did not mince words: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.” From October 9 - 31, virtually no humanitarian aid entered Gaza.
“A Drop in the Ocean”: Obstructing Aid from November 2023 - February 2025
Humanitarian aid organizations say that “not a single day” since October 7, 2023 has enough aid entered Gaza. By December 3, 2023, the World Food Program warned of a “high risk of famine.” At that time, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which uses a 1-5 scale, found the entire population of Gaza was in Phases 3-5, crisis to catastrophe.
The entry of humanitarian aid was slashed: from an average of 500 trucks a day before October 7 to approximately 60. It subsequently increased to ~150, still less than a third of pre-war levels. Even though these numbers are disturbing, they mask a reality that is even more dire, since, according to the U.N., Israel required trucks to be only half-full. On some days, often for several days in a row, nothing entered.
Israel has deliberately obstructed the entry of humanitarian aid throughout this time - first and foremost by simply denying entry.
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In February 2024, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council said that “Tens of thousands of trucks have been denied” and there was no other way to put it except that “Israel is preventing aid to starving children.”
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A spokesperson for the U.N. Humanitarian Office said that, “Aid convoys have come under fire and are systematically denied access to people in need.”
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Despite the chorus of humanitarian aid organizations saying that Israel was systematically and continuously denying the entry of aid, the U.S. Secretary of State tried to claim the opposite - until leaked reports by both USAID and the State Department revealed that both agencies had concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking aid. The U.S. National Security Advisor had also previously confirmed that Israel was blocking the entry of flour into Gaza.
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This situation worsened after Israel took over the Rafah border and sealed it shut in May 2024,. As a result of Israel's blockade, the UN announced that its Gaza warehouses were empty, and it had run out of food and tents to distribute.
Israel also blocks aid in other ways, by creating what the UN calls “overwhelming obstacles”:
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Creating “opaque and absurd” rules of what is and is not allowed, so that entry is subject to the whims of Israeli soldiers. The Washington Post reported that six months into the war, the list of forbidden items remained unclear, and at times included chocolate croissants, maternity kits, anesthetics, animal feed, crutches, and generators for hospitals. Rejected items mean the entire truck is turned away. One humanitarian organization told the Post “I think it's unprecedented. It's just nothing aid agencies have ever had to deal with.”
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Attacking aid convoys and killing aid workers, even when their movements are coordinated with Israeli authorities. As discussed below, Israel's killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff is perhaps the most notorious example, but it is far from the only one. Israel has killed over 400 aid workers, including staff from the UN, Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, ANERA, World Central Kitchen, Save the Children, and Project Hope.
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Allowing - and even encouraging - Israeli citizens to vandalize and destroy aid waiting to enter Gaza. On numerous occasions, Israeli settlers destroyed aid meant for starving Palestinians while Israeli soldiers simply looked on and did nothing to stop them. The Guardian reported that Israel’s security forces were even tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks, enabling the groups to block and vandalize the convoys, spilling flour meant for starving Palestinians onto the ground.
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Attacking and Killing Civilian Police who Safeguard Aid Trucks and Keep Order. On numerous occasions Israel has attacked and killed civilian police who protected aid trucks from criminal looters and desperately hungry civilians. In February 2024, Israel attacked several police cars and openly announced it would systematically target civilian police. Police withdrew from protecting aid trucks, and ten days later, the UN World Food Program stopped aid delivery because of the collapse of civil order. When the U.S. and UN asked Israel to stop targeting civilian police to prevent “a total breakdown of law and order.”
In March 2024, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to allow food aid to enter Gaza unimpeded. Israel responded by curtailing aid even more. Both Oxfam and Human Rights Watch said Israel was not complying with the court's order. Despite some reports that aid deliveries briefly increased in April, a UN official said that Israel turned down more than 40% of the U.N.’s requests to deliver aid for Palestinians to northern Gaza in the previous week. “We’re dealing with this dance where we do one step forward, two steps backward, or two steps forward, one step backward, which leaves us basically always at the same point.” It also became evident that, although the number of trucks entering were modestly increased (though still far below what was necessary to alleviate the humanitarian crisis Israel had created), Israel required that trucks be only half full.
Israel subsequently banned UNRWA (the U.N. Relief and Works Agency) from operating in Gaza, even though it is the most important and largest aid organization there, further crippling aid distribution to people in Gaza. Just hours following the ICJ decision, Israel leveled unsubstantiated charges that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 staff in Gaza (less than .1%) had participated in the October 7 attacks as part of a smear campaign to delegitimize Gaza's most important aid agency. Despite there being no evidence whatsoever for these claims, UNRWA immediately fired those staff so as to ensure that there could be no credible claim against UNRWA's impartiality as an aid organization. Nonetheless, Israel convinced numerous countries to immediately pull all funding, and then subsequently banned the organization entirely. In light of UNRWA's central role in providing humanitarian support to Gaza, a UNICEF spokesman condemned Israeli decision, saying “a new way has been found to kill children.” Attacking and dismantling UNRWA has long been a goal of the Israeli right-wing. Due to the lack of evidence, all countries except the United States later restored funding to UNRWA. However, even U.S. intelligence has admitted it has “low confidence” in the Israeli claims. As one analyst put it: “Parroting baseless, sensationalist claims of 'terrorism' and conspiracy-mongering against the most essential aid organization serving a besieged population is incitement to genocide in effect, if not intent.”
By November, the U.N. reported that 2 million people were trapped with little food and no safe water. “Food is scarce, and famine is imminent.”
Siege of Northern Gaza: Blocking Aid from October 2024 - January 2025
On October 6, 2024, the Israeli military commenced a massive siege on northern Gaza, designating the entire area a combat zone (i.e., a kill zone) and issuing forced evacuation orders to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This lasted for months - until the temporary ceasefire started on January 19, 2025.
Even before this siege, Israel had purposefully sought to strangle the north of Gaza in an effort to ethnically cleanse it. In February 2024, Reuters reported that one in six children in northern Gaza were wasting from malnutrition. In April, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator explained that food convoys to the north were three times as likely to be denied than other humanitarian convoys with other types of material. Almost 70% of Gaza's population was starving. Oxfam reported that since January, people in the north were forced to survive on an average of 245 calories per day. By comparison, in 1941, under the Hunger Plan, the Nazis put the Jewish inhabitants of the Soviet Union on a “ration” of no more than 420 calories a day.
By May, the head of the U.N. World Food Program said that northern Gaza had been plunged into a full-blown famine. In June, independent experts confirmed that the north was possibly - if not likely - experiencing a famine. It's uncertainty was due only to Israel's restrictions on access.
Israel placed even more draconian limits on the entry of humanitarian under the siege, all while pummeling the north of Gaza with industrial bombs and relentless killing, including attacks on hospitals. The U.N. reported that: “Out of 91 attempts the UN has made to deliver aid to the besieged north Gaza between October 6 and November 25, 82 have been denied and 9 impeded.”
Completely Blocking Aid: March 2 - May 26, 2025
On March 2, 2025, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza - a flagrant war crime. On March 18, after sabotaging the ceasefire deal, it conducted a brutal 2am bombing of Gaza, killing over 400 people, including 174 children, in what was later called “the Dawn Massacre.”
For nearly 3 months, Israel starved Gaza - including infants, banning even baby formula. On April 4, World Food Program bakeries were forced to shut down due to a lack of fuel and flour. By May, the World Health Organization announced that 75% of Gaza's population was suffering “Emergency” or “Catastrophic” food deprivation, the most extreme classification on the five level scale - while over 116,000 metric tons of food were sitting on the other side of the border in lines of trucks.
The UN announced that hundreds of thousands of people were surviving on one meal every 2-3 days. Children were eating rancid food that would cause them to throw up. The U.N. Secretary General said Israel had opened up “the floodgates of horror.” Images of starving children on the brink of death, and children in pain due to extreme hunger, began to emerge yet again.
The “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”: May 26, 2025 - Present
Under mounting pressure from Western governments, Israel agreed to allow in a “minimum” amount of aid, buying it time to continue the genocide and acting as a kind of symbolic cover. However, Israel banned independent international humanitarian aid organizations with decades of experience and over 400 aid sites across Gaza, replacing them with the newly-created, U.S. and Israel-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), with only 4 sites. Tellingly, three of these were concentrated in the far southern corner of the Strip. Not only did this make clear its goal of weaponizing the starvation of Palestinians to ethnically cleanse Gaza, it also made reaching the aid points extraordinarily difficult for the already weak and malnourished people of Gaza. What's more, GHF hired military contractors (i.e., mercenaries) with no background in humanitarian aid.
Since it launched, GHF has distributed very little food - far less than what is needed to provide basic sustenance to the people of Gaza. At full capacity, GHF is only capable of delivering the equivalent of 60 trucks a day - 1/10th of what is needed. People are desperately starving, community soup kitchens are without any ingredients, and babies are withering and dying without formula, while their mothers are so malnourished they cannot produce milk.
At the same time, every single day it has operated, Israeli soldiers and GHF mercenaries have massacred the starving civilians they are supposedly giving aid to. Every single day.
Israeli Society Supports the Starvation of Gaza
It's hard to imagine how a state can carry out the deliberate starvation of an entire civilian population - half of whom are children - and yet, polls show that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis support the starvation of Gaza, not just extremist settlers. For example, a February 2024 poll found that over two-thirds of Jewish Israelis were opposed to allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, even if there was no link whatsoever to Hamas. The deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset claimed he blocked aid trucks with his private car. Israel's Finance Minister called letting 2 million Palestinians die of hunger “justified and moral,” while another member of the Israeli government Moshe Saada exclaimed unabashedly, “I will starve Gazans! Yes absolutely. It is our duty to expel Gazans.” Israeli members of parliament shouted down a doctor who made a remark about the duty to treat every woman and child.
Destroying Food Sources in Gaza
Israel has also destroyed Gazans’ ability to feed themselves. It has systematically razed agricultural fields, crops, orchards, and greenhouses across Gaza, while blowing up water and sanitation infrastructure, and bombing bakeries. It even bans people from fishing in the sea.
In this way, it forces people to depend almost entirely on aid from the outside – which it then blocks.
As a result, 100% of people in Gaza are now facing “crisis” to “catastrophe” levels of hunger due to Israeli-imposed starvation.
Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza's food sources
In May 2025, the U.N. reported that 95% of Gaza's agricultural fields, crop lands, and orchards were unusable due to Israeli attracks. 83% of agricultural wells were destroyed and 71% of greenhouses had been laid to waste. In some areas, every greenhouse is gone. Over 90% of Gaza's chickens and livestock have been killed.
Already in March 2024, The Guardian asked whether Israel was committing “ecocide” in Gaza. By May, The Washington Post reported that Israel was destroying Gaza's ability to grow its own food, pushing an already vulnerable agricultural system to the brink of collapse. An expert told The Post,
“In 30 years of working as a specialist in food and farming systems under conflict, I have never dealt with this level of devastation.”
As of May 30, 2025, 89% of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure has been partially or completely destroyed, including all 6 main wastewater treatment plants. Oxfam reports that Israel has destroyed 1,025 miles of water and sanitation networks, leaving less than 7% of pre-war water levels in Rafah and North Gaza.
The sheer scale and expanse of devastation is itself proof that it is deliberate. Human Rights Watch analyzed satellite imagery and verified photographs and videos captured from the beginning of hostilities to August 2024, finding extensive damage and destruction to water and sanitation infrastructure, including the apparently deliberate, systematic razing of the solar panels that powered four of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants, by Israeli ground forces. Israeli soldiers even filmed themselves demolishing a key water reservoir.
Israel is even repeatedly bombing bakeries throughout Gaza. Just a few weeks after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza, the U.N. reported that 10 out of the 50 bakeries it supplied with flour had been bombed. In November 2023, Al Jazeera published photos of bakeries that were targeted and destroyed by Israeli air strikes. Reuters reported in February 2024 that in northern Gaza, most bakeries were destroyed by Israeli bombings and aid deliveries of flour were rare. Those that were still operational were often forced to shutter due to a lack of fuel and flour - blocked at the border by Israel. In October 2024, Israel bombed the only flour store in northern Gaza, engulfing it in flames.
Still, for many Israeli leaders, this is not enough. When Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the U.S. in April 2025, he boasted that Republicans expressed support for his “very clear position” that “the food and aid depots should be bombed.” A month earlier, Deputy Israeli Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi had urged airstrikes on food storage facilities in Gaza.
Israel has even banned fishing and access to the sea. Under this draconian ban, dozens of civilians have been shot dead while trying to cool off, fish, or wash themselves, transforming Gaza’s last refuge from the deadly heat into a killing zone and deepening the starvation crisis by obliterating the fishing industry. By October 2024, Israel had killed 150 fishermen and destroyed 87% of fishing boats. Ha'aretz reported that the quantity of fish being caught had declined by 93%.
Israel is also systematically killing people who try to access the agricultural areas in the perimeter of Gaza. The Guardian reported that Israel banned access to a wide perimeter, creating a “kill zone” over 15% of the Gaza Strip. This area also contains 35% of Gaza's agricultural land. An Israeli soldier said their unit was told to shoot anyone in the perimeter area on sight.
The mentality in their unit, they said, was that there was no such thing as a “civilian” and everyone who walked into the perimeter would be considered a “terrorist.”
Despite shoot-to-kill orders, a warrant officer stationed in northern Gaza said Palestinians kept going back to the area “again and again after we fired at them.”
The officer said the Palestinians appeared to want to pick edible plants growing in the area. “There was hubeiza [mallow] there because no one went near there. People are hungry, so they come with bags to pick hubeiza, I think.”
Killing Aid Workers & Palestinians Seeking Aid
Overview
From the outset of Israel's genocidal war, it has mercilessly attacked both humanitarian aid workers as well as Palestinians desperately seeking aid.
Israel's attacks on aid trucks and aid workers is unprecedented.
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By June 2025, Israel had killed 452 aid workers, including targeted strikes on civil defense, ambulance workers, and soup kitchen workers, MSF clinics and vehicles, as well as those delivering food aid. The slain aid workers belonged to the U.N., Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, ANERA, World Central Kitchen, Save the Children, Project Hope, and other organizations.
Israel has also mercilessly slaughtered civilians seeking aid.
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Testimonies of Israeli soldiers from as early as November 2023 - corroborated by video and photo evidence - reveal that Israeli forces systematically targeted Palestinians in unmarked “kill zones,” even if they were unarmed and simply looking for food.
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In January - March of 2024, Israel committed back-to-back massacres of starving civilians seeking food aid. The most infamous incident occurred on February 29, when Israeli soldiers killed at least 118 people, wounding hundreds more, in what became known as “The Flour Massacre.” Save the Children proclaimed: “While children are dying from lack of food, their parents are dying trying to get it.”
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More recently, Israel has “weaponized aid” with its launch of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israeli soldiers have committed daily massacres on every single day of its operations. For a detailed description of the GHF and how Israel has used food as “bait” to lure starving civilians into guarded compounds where it shoots at them daily, see the next section.
Unprecedented Killing of Humanitarian Aid Workers
In mid-November 2023, the U.N. announced that more United Nations aid workers had been killed in 40 days in Gaza than in any other single conflict in the organization’s 78-year history. Israel's brutal siege, bombing, and killing turned Gaza into the deadliest place to be an aid worker in the world - by far. By April 2024, NBC News announced: “The IDF is supposed to protect aid workers. Aid agencies say the Israeli military has been attacking them for months.” A top Doctors Without Borders official said, “This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.”
Israeli forces carried out numerous deadly strikes on food aid workers in particular.
On February 5, 2024, just over a week after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to allow urgent humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel fired on a UN convoy taking food to the most starved northern areas of the Gaza Strip. It did so despite the convoy taking a route approved by the Israeli military.
On April 1, 2024 - in perhaps the most well-known attack - Israel killed seven workers of the international NGO World Central Kitchen while traveling in clearly marked vehicles on routes coordinated in advance with the Israeli army. After the first vehicle was bombed, the surviving aid workers evacuated to a second vehicle, immediately notifying the Israeli army. Despite this, the second vehicle was bombed as well. The survivors evacuated to a third vehicle that was also bombed, killing them all. Chef Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, said that Israel seemed to be fighting “a war against humanity itself.”
Images of the WCK vehicles attacked by the Israeli army and the locations where they were hit.
These were not isolated incidents. Israeli soldiers continued firing on clearly marked aid vehicles whose routes were approved in advance by the Israeli military. In July it once again fired on a UN convoy, and in August it shot at a World Food Program vehicle and killed 5 people from Anera (a U.S. humanitarian group) delivering medical supplies to a hospital.
Israeli soldiers also specifically targeted Palestinians who sought to help feed each other. On November 30, 2024, Israeli forces assassinated Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun of Gaza Soup Kitchen.
Almadhoun and his family opened the first soup kitchen in Beit Lahia in early 2024 and served traditional vegetable stews in order to combat Israel’s deliberate starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had chosen to remain in north Gaza. He worked tirelessly and against all odds to feed over 3,000 people a day. As Israel blocked food aid, he would personally forage seasonable vegetables, as well as work alongside local farmers harvesting their crops.
His family wrote: “He had barely stepped outside when he was targeted and assassinated. We believe he was killed because of his unwavering dedication to solving problems for Kamal Adwan Hospital and ensuring they had whatever they needed.” (At the time of his killing, Kamal Adwan Hospital was under a brutal siege by Israeli forces.) Snipers fired on those who tried to rescue him.
Chef Mahmoud's killing was tragic - but not unique. In that same 48 hour period, Israel had targeted and killed numerous other aid workers.
A month before, Israel killed a young farmer, Yousef Abu Rabee, as he was reportedly distributing seedlings. Yousef grew food in the ruins of his farm, distributed it to his neighbors and gave away seedlings, teaching people how to cultivate and care for plants.
In March 2025, Israel killed 6 humanitarian aid workers and 3 journalists. The following week the UN reported that a 20-year staffer was executed with a blow to the skull while wearing a UN vest and driving a clearly marked vehicle.
Although Israel is quick to blame Hamas for supposedly hiding amongst civilians, it almost never provides any evidence of this. A report by an independent UN commission found that in many Israeli attacks on aid convoys, organizations and refuge sites, Israel did not even bother to verify the presence of military targets. Even when targets may have been present, Israel’s attacks, the report said, were often careless and disproportionate. The simple fact is: Israel is conducted a systematic and unprecedented killing campaign against aid workers in Gaza, and has yet to provide a shred of evidence for its claims that Hamas militants are to blame.
Killing Palestinians Seeking Food
Israel has also repeatedly and relentlessly targeted aid seekers. It has shot on sight countless unarmed civilians in unmarked kill zones simply for going in search of food.
According to soldiers' testimony to the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, the military created a “kill zone” in one of the main agricultural areas of Gaza as early as November - December 2023. According to these soldiers, everyone who entered one of these unmarked areas was shot on sight and then labeled a terrorist. (See Targeting Civilians - Kill Zones.) According to one officer, Palestinians appeared to want to pick edible plants growing in the area.
“There was hubeiza [mallow] there because no one went near there. People are hungry, so they come with bags to pick hubeiza, I think.”
Who shot them?, he was asked. “A tank. At around 800 meters.”
In Gaza City, 3-year-old Imad Abu al-Qura was shot outside his home as he went to buy clementines with his cousin, Hadeel, a 20-year-old medical student, who was also killed. The family said they were targeted by an Israeli sniper. A 3 year old – killed by Israeli snipers. Hadeel lost her life immediately, but according to her cousin, Imad was still alive. Neighbors tried to extend a wooden plank to reach him, but were shot at. When Imad tried to move, he was shot and killed.
In January - March 2024, Israel carried out a series of massacres of starving people seeking food. This was around the same time that Israel began systematically attacking and killing civilian police who until then had been responsible for guarding the aid trucks. Israeli soldiers started guarding the trucks themselves - and firing on those who clamored for food.
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January 25, 2024 - Israel killed at least 20 Palestinians and injured 150 when an Israeli tank fired artillery shells at people lining up for humanitarian supplies.
A Twitter thread of 9 incidents of Israeli soldiers firing on aid trucks and aid seekers in February 2024.
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February 29, 2024 - Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians waiting for food aid, killing 119 and injuring over 750, in what became known as the “Flour Massacre”. They massacred people seeking bread for their families. Save the Children declared: “While children are dying from lack of food, their parents are dying trying to get it.”
The name Flour Massacre arose after victims were found soaked in both flour and blood, symbolizing the humanitarian crisis and the deadly consequences of seeking basic sustenance in Gaza under Israel's genocide. Videos and photos published in the aftermath showed aid food boxes strewn on the ground and splattered with blood. This occurred around the same time as Israeli settlers were vandalizing and blocking aid en route to Gaza.
This took place only a day after the World Food Program announced that more than 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza were at risk of famine. UN experts issued a joint statement: “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys. Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.”
Israel initially tried to claim that heavily armed soldiers felt under threat by unarmed, starving Palestinians and fired warning shots in the air, leading to a stampede that killed the majority of victims. A CNN investigation based on videos, eyewitness testimonies, and forensic and ballistic experts cast doubt on Israel's version, indicating “that automatic gunfire began before the IDF said the convoy had started crossing through the checkpoint and that shots were fired within close range of crowds that had gathered for food. The IDF did not answer CNN’s questions regarding its findings.” It also reported that the Israeli military's publicized drone footage edited out the moment capturing what caused the crowds to disperse, and that Israel had rejected its requests for the full unedited footage. An officer with Amnesty International said Israel's claims contradicted the evidence.
The New York Times reported that, “The video, which does not include audio, was edited by the Israeli military with multiple clips spliced together, leaving out a key moment before many in the crowd start running away from the trucks, with some people crawling behind walls, appearing to take cover.” Following a break, the video shows “at least a dozen bodies are visible on the ground at the scene,” which includes aid trucks and two Israeli military vehicles. The New York Times said that “Israeli officials declined to provide unedited footage.”
International condemnation following the Flour Massacre did little to stem the tide of Israeli forces killing starving Palestinians awaiting aid.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Massacring Starving Civilians
Overview
After not letting a single ounce of food or water into Gaza for nearly 3 months, on May 27, 2025 Israel dismantled the independent, UN-led humanitarian aid system in Gaza - with over 400 aid sites and decades of experience - and replaced it with the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), a mysterious start-up run by mercenaries with no humanitarian experience and only 4 aid sites for 2 million people. Three of the four sites are located in the far southwest corner of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt.
Israel has not only deliberately starved Palestinians, but it has used their desperate hunger to lure them to crowded “aid” sites in the far south of Gaza as a way of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. There, it distributes meager quantities of food - far below what is necessary to actually feed the people of Gaza - while massacring them on a daily basis. Doctors Without Borders condemned the system as “a slaughterhouse masquerading as humanitarian aid” and “orchestrated killing.”
There are several key points to understand about the U.S. and Israel-backed GHF, which will be discussed in greater detail below:
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There was a functioning and highly respected aid system in place, led by the U.N. and supported by numerous independent international charities.
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GHF is a militarized operation where starving civilians are massacred on a daily basis by Israeli soldiers - leading Israeli soldiers to call it a “killing field,” Palestinians to call it a sinister and frightening “Hunger Games,” and the world's largest humanitarian organizations to call it a “death trap.” Over 170 charities have called for its shut down, saying this is not humanitarian aid.
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The amount of food is not nearly enough to fend off starvation. At most, it amounts to .7 meals per person per day, and likely far less. The Gaza Health Ministry has begun announcing deaths by starvation each day.
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Israel's own leaders have all but admitted that GHF is a symbolic cover to continue their war of annihilation and stave off pressure from western leaders. It is also part and parcel of their plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.
This section explores in detail:
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GHF's role in Israel's Final Solution for Gaza
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What is GHF?
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Why GHF is not humanitarian aid - including the paltry amount of food and daily massacres at “aid sites”
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Admissions by both Israeli soldiers and American contractors of routine killing of unarmed, starving civilians
GHF is part of Israel's Final Solution for Palestinians in Gaza
On October 10, 2023, Palestinian-American analyst Youssef Munayyer reminded the world that Israel had long been searching for a "solution" to the problem of Gaza.
October 7 has apparently provided Israel's far-right government for the pretext to enact Rabin's dream.
Israel's Final Solution starts, as Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport recently described, with the GHF - using food as bait to lure Palestinians into crowded, enclosed, and guarded “concentration camps” located primarily in the far southwest corner of Gaza. Of course, Israel doesn't say this openly. It cloaks its actions - as all genocidal regimes do - in sanitized language. Rapoport reports in +972 Magazine that as early as March 2025:
[T[he right-wing Israeli journalist Yinon Magal posted the following on X: “This time, the IDF intends to evacuate all residents of the Gaza Strip to a new humanitarian zone that will be arranged for long-term stay, will be enclosed, and anyone entering it will first be checked to ensure they are not a terrorist. The IDF will not allow a rogue population to refuse evacuation this time. Anyone remaining outside the humanitarian zone will be implicated. This plan has American backing.”
The very same day, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz released a video statement hinting at something similar. “Residents of Gaza, this is your final warning,” he said. “The Air Force’s attack on Hamas terrorists was just the first step. The next phase will be far harsher, and you will pay the full price. Soon, the evacuation of the population from combat zones will resume.
“If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not removed from Gaza, Israel will act with unprecedented force,” Katz continued. “Take the advice of the U.S. president: return the hostages and remove Hamas, and other options will open for you — including relocation to other countries for those who wish. The alternative is complete destruction and devastation.”
This statement is replete with propaganda: Israel's assault on Gaza has been anything but limited to so-called “Hamas terrorists” (see the Mass Killings and Targeting Civilians pages for details). The population isn't being “evacuated,” it is being ethnically cleansed. And, what's worse, Israel's threat to the displaced, starving people of Gaza to somehow themselves defeat Hamas and release hostages (which Israel, one of the most powerful militaries in the world, has been unable to do) or face annihilation, is not only patently absurd, it's openly broadcasting Israel's intent to commit flagrant war crimes against civilians.
Even so, despite the propaganda and sanitized language, Israel is basically revealing the full horror of what it plans to do. As Rapoport says, “[c]onnecting all these dots leads to a one clear conclusion: Israel is preparing to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza — through a combination of evacuation orders and intense bombardment — into an enclosed and possibly fenced-off area. Anyone caught outside its boundaries would be killed, and buildings throughout the rest of the enclave would likely be razed to the ground.” Journalist Owen Jones summarizes: “Israel is planning to concentrate the Palestinian population in a camp, where they will be forbidden from leaving. Those who do not oblige will be regarded as legitimate military targets. This is a concentration camp.”
But this is not all. As Israel's Defense Minister himself says, the best the Palestinians in this concentration camp can hope for is “relocation” - that is, ethnic cleansing. The alternative is annihilation.
Who is pushing who into the sea?
This plan is so egregious that one of the lawyers who defended Israel before the International Court of Justice against South Africa’s charge of genocide, wrote that this plan was a “manifest war crime” and “crime against humanity.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - hardly a dove - called the plan to build a “humanitarian city” and forcibly relocate 2 million Palestinians there, “a concentration camp” and “ethnic cleansing.”
Ever since this plan was initiated, so-called aid distribution sites have turned into “killing fields,” where Israeli soldiers and officers say they are ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians. Massacres occur daily.
Is this more or less cruel than Nazi gas chambers? Is it really any different?
Israel openly states its ultimate goal is to conquer the Gaza Strip and cleanse it of its Palestinians inhabitants, embracing Trump's “relocation” plan. It will use starvation to do it – luring desperate people to leave with the promise of food and safety elsewhere (perhaps Libya, perhaps Sudan, whatever impoverished country it can bribe and strong-arm into submission). The choice for Palestinians is simple: Leave or Die. Israel chillingly calls this choice “voluntary,” even “humanitarian.” (Israel reportedly has already been forcing people who try to leave Gaza for urgent medical treatment to waive their right to return.) In the meantime, it continues with daily massacres of starving Palestinians seeking aid.
This is the “final solution” Israel has devised for Gaza and its 2 million people - people who, it must be remembered, are mostly refugees and their descendants of Israel's prior ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, when the Israeli army wiped 500 Palestinian towns and villages off the face of the earth, displacing and dispossessing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled to Gaza. Israel stole their land and gave it to Jewish settlers. Now, Israel intends to “finish the job” it started in 1948. Never again is now.
The Nazi parallels have become unavoidable. As former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has written: “Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.”
What is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?
After 3 months of blocking all aid and pushing Gaza to the brink of famine, Israel launched the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - a startup run by mercenaries with no relevant experience - to replace the experienced, independent aid organizations it had banned (including the World Food Program, Oxfam, and UNICEF). Backed by Israel and the United States, GHF is a privatized, militarized operation with only 3-4 sites for 2 million people, almost all concentrated in the far southernmost corner of Gaza.
Netanyahu has openly said that the aid will be “minimal,” and that population transfer (that is, ethnic cleansing) is a “key goal” of Israel's “forceful operation.” GHF forms part of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” whose express goals are the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the displacement of Gaza’s population into ever smaller, heavily guarded spaces – or “concentration camps” –and ultimately their transfer to other countries.
While the GHF's origins are murky, including the precise circumstances of its establishment and its funding, there is significant evidence it is a military, mercenary operation set up by Israel to advance its stated goals of conquest and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip - not a genuine humanitarian organization. For example:
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An Israeli politician has alleged that Israel's Mossad and Defense Ministry are funding GHF. Despite Israeli government denials, Israel's public broadcasting corporation reported that the government was in fact funding GHF. By August, the Israeli government openly approved $473 million in so-called humanitarian aid for Gaza (and most likely the GHF), with the Finance Minister saying that funding for “humanitarian aid” would not be used for humanitarian purposes, but to achieve total victory.
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On the eve of its launch, Jake Wood - the ex-Marine sniper leading the GHF - resigned, saying “It’s not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” To spell it out, said journalist Jasper Nathaniel, “a War on Terror sniper who now runs a team of mercenaries says the plan is too corrupt and inhumane even for him.”
In short, the GHF was designed as a dystopian way to ethnically cleanse the people of Gaza under the guise of aid distribution, using the promise of food to crowd Palestinians into ever smaller, more densely populated concentration camps. The name itself is a euphemism so cynical it recalls Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Israel will take over the land people are forced to leave behind in search of food, gathering biometric data on every single individual in exchange for keeping them on the brink of starvation. The goal is to push Gaza's population into a tiny corner in the southernmost part of the Strip - something Israel has otherwise failed to do - to facilitate their eventual deportation. In the meantime, Israeli snipers and tanks will massacre Palestinians who seek aid, while famine kills untold thousands more and rips apart the social fabric of Palestinian life in Gaza.
GHF is Not Humanitarian Aid
Calling on starving civilians to walk miles to pick up food aid then firing at them with heavy machine guns and tanks – is not aid.
Distributing small parcels of meagre food supplies using armed foreign contractors with no background in humanitarian work - is not aid.
Requiring civilians to relocate to the far south of Gaza in order to receive these parcels, and not allowing them to return to their homes, keeping them in guarded camps - is not aid.
GHF is not humanitarian for numerous reasons, as UNICEF's Executive Director detailed in a piece in The New York Times.
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There is not nearly enough food - failing to stave off famine.
Nor is the food provided nutritious - lacking baby formula, fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy, or even the clean water to be able to actually cook the food.
Nor does it reach those most in need - including women and children, the elderly and disabled, who cannot walk miles and get through the scrum of people to the few boxes of aid, which are gone in as little as 8 minutes.
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There are not nearly enough distribution sites - a deliberate decision to use the manufactured starvation of Palestinians to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of the population to a small corner of Gaza (and eventually outside of the Strip entirely).
This is by design. Whereas the prior independent aid system had 400 sites across Gaza, GHF has only 4, 3 of which are intentionally located in the far southwest corner of Gaza, between Egypt and the sea.
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GHF is militarized - not humanitarian - resulting in daily massacres at so-called “aid” sites.
In two months, Palestinians have been killed every day of GHF's operations. Israeli soldiers have told Ha'aretz that they have been ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians who posed no threat with machine guns, grenades, and even tank fire. American contractors have confirmed this. World Food Program Executive Director, Cindy McCain, described Israeli tanks and soldiers shooting at starving civilians running toward aid convoys. By mid August, the UN reported that 1,857 Palestinians have been killed in less than three months while trying to access food in Gaza—1,021 near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites and 836 along supply truck routes.
Below we describe these key elements of the GHF in greater detail.
GHF: “Minimal” Food as Symbolic Cover for Genocide
It quickly became clear that the true intent of the GHF was not to provide real aid to Palestinians. Israeli leaders said it themselves. As Drop Site News reported, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that the decision to allow “minimal humanitarian aid” into Gaza was a calculated move to deflect international criticism over Israel’s starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza and to allow for the conquering and seizing of the Gaza Strip. Alex de Waal, a leading scholar of famine, wrote in The Guardian, “Israel’s food points are not just death traps – they’re an alibi for the starvation of Gaza.” Israel, he explained, “wants to avoid the stigma of being accused of starvation and genocide, and the GHF is its current alibi. Let’s not be fooled.” Over 100 humanitarian organizations called the symbolic “aid" effort a “smokescreen for inaction.”
Still, Israeli leaders have been remarkably open with their own people about their true intentions. When explaining the GHF, Netanyahu told Israelis: “Our best friends in the world—senators I know as strong supporters of Israel—have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge.” To continue the war of annihilation, he asserted, “We need to do it in a way that they won’t stop us.”
Israel's Finance Minister emphasized that the aid amounted to little more than symbolic gestures—just enough food to create the appearance of humanitarian concern.
His language was stark and brutal, saying that Gaza would be “entirely destroyed” and Israel would “conquer, cleanse, remain.”
Israel's Defense Minister issued a message to the people of Gaza: “Soon you will lose more and more land. The plans are prepared and approved.” He later issued a clear threat of collective punishment against Gaza's civilian population:
In other words, the best the people of Gaza can hope for is to be allowed to “leave” - ethnic cleansing. The alternative is “complete destruction” - genocide. Leave or Die.
This aligns with Israeli leaders’ stated intention to implement the so-called “Trump Plan” to takeover Gaza and expel Palestinians.
In short, according to Israeli leaders themselves, GHF is meant to create the “veneer of aid” to counter images of starving Palestinians. Israel has brought in mercenaries, and lures Palestinians with the promise of aid, trapping them in the south of Gaza where they will be killed or shipped off to another country.
As former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, Chris Hedges put it, “The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.”
The goal has always been to exploit what happened on October 7 to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from historic Palestine. (As early as October 13, 2023, the Israeli Intelligence Ministry recommended expelling Palestinians from Gaza, and Netanyahu convinced US Secretary of State Blinken to try to get Egypt and Jordan to open their borders in the hopes of a “second Nakba.”) Now, it is open and clear.
While some Israelis still couch their goals in sanitized, Orwellian language - “humanitarian zones” (read: concentration camps), “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (read: mercenaries and Israeli soldiers who massacre starving civilians on a daily basis), and “voluntary migration” (read: ethnic cleansing) - others are more explicit. As one member of the Israeli government from Netanyahu's ruling party said on May 7, 2025: “I will starve Gazans! Yes absolutely. It is our duty to expel Gazans.”
2. GHF: A “Teaspoon,” A “Trickle,” A “Mirage” of Food
From the outset, every independent humanitarian organization working in Gaza denounced the GHF as a violation of humanitarian principles. They saw it clearly for what it was: the militarization of “aid” - in service of military goals - and a spectacle of dehumanization, an empty facade, and a deeply dangerous plan for innocent civilians. Various humanitarian organizations have called the GHF the “weaponization of starvation,” a “veneer of aid,” the “militarization of aid,” a “death trap,” “engineered scarcity,” and “surveillance based rationing that legitimates a policy of deprivation by design.” What it is not is humanitarian aid. They all refused to be involved with it.
Indeed, the facade of “aid” is so transparent, so meagre, that famine scholar Alex de Waal has called Israel's starvation of Gaza “genocidal humanitarianism.” It is so intentional and calculated that never in his 40-year career has he seen a case of “such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population” as what is happening in Gaza today. The facade of aid is just enough to lie to the world and say that Israel is not starving civilians in Gaza, while continuing to starve civilians en masse in Gaza.
On the first day of allowing aid into Gaza after nearly 3 months of total deprivation, Israel let in just 5 trucks - 3 carried food, 2 carried shrouds for burying the dead. Its intentions could not be more clear.
The amount of aid allowed in since the GHF began operating in late May is paltry by any standard.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “All the aid authorized until now amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required.” In both quantity and quality, the food aid allowed by Israel falls short of meeting even the most basic needs of people in Gaza.
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Paltry amount of food. The total amount of this aid delivered - if one believes GHF's own claims - at most amounts to .7 meals per person per day. The Guardian reported that by July 22, even if GHF's numbers were to be believed and all its meals equally distributed, it had only brought in enough food over nearly 60 days to feed people for 14 days. Still, even these numbers are dubious, and have been called into question by numerous aid organizations, with Oxfam calling them “a joke.” As a result, on July 18, 2025, the World Food Program warned that 1 in 3 people in Gaza is “not eating for days at a time.” On July 23, 100 aid groups warned of mass starvation in Gaza, as the death rate from malnutrition surged. 15 people - including 4 children - died of starvation in 24 hours alone. 21 children died of starvation over 72 hours.
The Famine Review Committee, an independent group of experts, confirmed that these were only starvation rations. "Our analysis of the food packages supplied by the GHF shows that their distribution plan would lead to mass starvation, even if it was able to function without the appalling levels of violence that have been reported." In short, GHF was never intended to ease the starvation crisis - but only Israel's ability to mislead the world about its starvation of Palestinians.
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Aid sites are scarce and highly militarized. Israel replaced the UN-led system - with 400 sites throughout Gaza and decades of experience in delivering humanitarian aid - with only 4 sites for 2 million people run by inexperienced private contractors. Three of these sites are bunched together in the southwest corner of Gaza in a transparent attempt to ethnically cleanse the majority of the Strip. In place of the dignified and respectful UN system which welcomed women, children, and those most in need, Israel put in place a militarized, dystopian, Hunger Games - where people are made to run for a pile of boxes left on the dirt, fighting for scraps of food, while being shot at by Israeli soldiers and American mercenaries with machine guns and tank fire.
The shortage of aid sites requires starving people, who are already weak, to walk long distances and excludes many, including women and children, the elderly, wounded, and disabled. As a UNICEF spokesman stated, “This was never designed to work.” “They come, place some boxes there, and then tell us to go and run for it,” said a Palestinian mother who was unable to get one of the coveted aid boxes. “They’re treating us like dogs, running to be able to eat.” The food runs out in 15 minutes. Meanwhile, every day, dozens of people are killed - usually by Israeli soldiers - at these “aid sites.”
3. GHF: Daily Massacres in Gaza's Hunger Games
Worse still, from its very first day, Palestinians have been subjected to daily massacres at GHF food distribution sites. These chaotic, dystopian scenes have been likened to the “Hunger Games” - people scrambling for a few boxes of food while being shot at by Israeli sniper and tank fire. Former UN Humanitarian Aid Chief Martin Griffiths stated: “Food has become an opportunity for killing. I never heard of such a thing in the past.” The very idea is sinister: starve people, lure them with food, then massacre them. And still, every day they come back – they have no choice. As a result, over 170 charities, including Oxfam, Amnesty, and Save the Children, have demanded the immediate shutdown of the GHF.
Israel carried out its first aid massacres in early 2024 - including what became known as the Flour Massacre - when Israeli soldiers opened fire on crowds of people seeking food aid. It was an atrocity that shocked the world.
Now, these massacres are happening at GHF sites on a daily basis.
The UN says over 1,000 people have killed by Israeli forces at “aid sites” in the first two months since GHF opened. Over 6,000 more have been injured. Israeli soldiers have fired on starving civilians with tank shells, machine guns, and drones. “Aid” had been used as a guise for killing.
Indeed, within hours of the first site opening, Israeli drones and tanks sprayed aid-seekers with bullets, killing 31 people and wounding hundreds more. As journalist Jasper Nathaniel described:
For example:
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On June 1, 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire on starving Palestinians at an aid distribution site in Rafah, killing at least 31 and injuring more than 170. An Australian doctor who received the victims said most were dead “as a result of being shot in the head and chest.” The IDF, unbelievably, said it was unaware of the incident.
Doctors have reported a disturbing pattern of patients flooding hospitals after GHF sites open each day. Their injuries suggest Israeli soldiers are using Palestinians as target practice. British doctor Nick Maynard told CNN:
The result is a daily tally of carnage that exceeds 100 Palestinians killed a day. A father weeping over his son, “my beloved son" he cries, as he cradles his lifeless body, crouched in the sand as bullets continue to whistle around him from Israeli soldiers who fire on people waiting for a flour truck. A child injured after being run over by a trailer while trying to collect a bag of flour from a humanitarian aid truck. Two women killed and others pepper-sprayed and beaten after being encouraged to go to a women-only distribution day. A cruel and unnecessary desperation - calculated and engineered by Israel - as every day Palestinians must choose between risking execution at a militarized “aid” site or starving to death.
A Palestinian father held the lifeless body of his son Ibrahim in his arms today, after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians waiting for flour trucks in Zikim, northern Gaza.
Israeli Soldiers and American Contractors Admit Routinely Killing Unarmed Civilians at “Aid” Sites
As is typical with Israel, it initially claimed the shots were not fired by Israeli soldiers, trying to shift the blame Palestinian militants. (For an explanation of the Israeli “playbook” of denial and deflection, see journalist Jasper Nathaniel's excellent piece, “The Investigation is Ongoing.”)
However, this was proven - yet again - to be a lie. Not only are the aid sites located in Israeli-controlled zones where each person who enters is vetted, investigations by CNN and Ha'aretz based on videos, expert analysis, and eyewitness testimonies found that the Israeli army was responsible for the lethal gunfire. Since then, numerous Israeli and American whistleblowers have come forward - confirming that Israeli soldiers are firing on unarmed Palestinian civilians seeking food with machine guns, grenades, and even tank shells.
Israeli soldiers and officers told Ha'aretz that they were ordered to fire on unarmed civilians at GHF sites, even when no threat was present. One soldier called it “a killing field,” with Israeli soldiers using ‘live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.” He continued: “I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons.”
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had been reporting for weeks about this systematic killing.
Israeli soldiers and officers told Ha'aretz that they fire on starving Palestinian civilians simply for getting in line too early. They also routinely shoot at them to disperse people once the food is gone. Another said firing tank shells at unarmed civilians had become “standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders.” Another commented, “This thing called killing innocent people - it's been normalized. We were constantly told there are no noncombatants in Gaza, and apparently that message sank in among the troops.”
In late July, American “security contractors” spoke to Israel's Channel 12 and the BBC, describing war crimes, including Israeli tanks firing on unarmed civilians at “aid” sites. An army veteran deployed to four wars said he had never seen such use of force against unarmed civilians, describing military contractors throwing a stun grenade at a woman, causing her to drop lifeless to the ground, and spraying an entire can of pepper spray - which is lethal - at a man picking up noodles one by one off the ground.
He described the story of a young boy, Amir. Barefoot and dressed in tattered clothes, Amir approached a GHF aid distribution point in Gaza desperate for help. He had walked 12km (7.5 miles) to collect food. Moments after the frail boy received his small packets of aid, he “thanked us for the remnants and the small crumbs that he got. He sets them down on the ground, he sets his food down, and he places his hands on the side of my face, on my cheeks, these frail, skeletal, emaciated hands, and he put them on my face and he kissed my hand. And he said thank you. He collected his items and walked back to the group. And then he was shot at with pepper spray and tear gas and stun grenades and bullets, and he runs away, scared. The IDF were shooting at the crowd.” Amir died.
The People Who Israel Killed Simply for Seeking Food
Behind each of these massacres are stories of people - mothers, children, fathers, grandparents - desperately seeking food. People with full hearts, exhausted by a genocide, traumatised, and desperate for peace, freedom, and a normal life. The Guardian reported on a mother who walked six hours with her children through rubble to a food hub in Gaza before being shot in the forehead while rehearsing with her family what to do if they got separated; her 20-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son crouched beside her corpse for hours as Israeli gunfire rained down. A young boy, beloved by his family, was killed waiting in line for food. Over and over again, fathers are killed simply trying to find food for their hungry children.
These are the innocent people whose lives are being violently cut short and daily traumatized by a genocide the world won't stop.
Mass Starvation in Gaza
“Some moments break us. Like when a child tells us they haven’t eaten in three days – And still doesn’t make it to the front of the line.”
~ Hani Almadhoun, co-founder of Gaza Soup Kitchen
Mass Starvation in Gaza
The impact of “drip feeding Gaza” has been to keep civilians perpetually on the brink of starvation and famine for over a year, suffering a kind of “slow death.” With Israel’s 3-month-long blockade earlier this year, and the tiny “trickle” of food it has allowed in since, deaths from starvation started to soar in late July 2025. Community soup kitchens that had managed to somehow get by were forced to shut down. There simply was no food.
The situation is fast evolving - and Israel's ban on journalists only complicates this. But what is clear, as of July 31, 2025, is that after nearly two years of relentless and indiscriminate bombing, the besieged civilian population of Gaza – half of which is children - is in the grips of a man-made famine that has been deliberately engineered by Israel and funded by the U.S. The images of children’s emaciated little bodies that have emerged are heartbreaking.
In July, over 100 humanitarian organizations announced that mass starvation was imminent in Gaza. The Guardian reported: “For months Israel kept food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations. Now the death toll is rising rapidly.” On July 28, Ha'aretz reported that Israeli-imposed starvation had killed at least 147 people in Gaza, including 88 children—79 of them in July alone, and 14 in the last 24 hours. Experts warn the crisis has reached a tipping point, with deaths likely to rise exponentially, something performative aid drops will not stop. Air drops deliver ~.4% of the minimum daily aid needed (the equivalent of only 1-2 trucks), are 100 times as costly as trucks, and are themselves dangerous, killing over 20 people. Video shows a starving child killed when an aid airdrop fell on him.
As of late July:
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1 in 3 people in Gaza – over 600,000 people - go multiple days in a row without food.
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According to the World Food Program, a quarter of the population is experiencing “famine-like conditions,” and roughly 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, the harshest diagnosis.
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Ross Smith, of the World Food Program, told reporters: “The hunger crisis in Gaza has reached new and astonishing levels of desperation.”
The impact is harshest on children. Images of skeletal children - so exhausted they can barely move or cry - have filled social media, while adults are so weak they are collapsing in the streets.
The situation is so dire, and so widespread, that the BBC, Reuters, AFP, and AP warned that their journalists in Gaza are at risk of dying of starvation. AFP said that for the first time in the news agency’s history it risks losing a colleague to starvation because of Israel’s siege. BBC journalists in Gaza say they can barely do one story because they feel dizzy from lack of food.
The UN also says its staff are fainting from hunger. Even doctors and nurses are starving. Weak and dizzy, medics are passing out in the wards. They are running out of the special intravenous drips used to feed depleted patients. In all four hospitals interviewed by The New York Times, doctors described how they are increasingly unable to save malnourished babies and are instead forced to simply manage their decline. “There are no nutritional supplements, no vitamins, no premature infant formula, no amino acid intravenous solutions — nothing,” said Dr. Abu Salmiya from Al-Shifa Hospital. “Their bodies need these basics, and without them they will die.” Doctors also say that many have likely died from conditions and injuries that could have been cured or healed if the victims had not been so weakened by malnourishment.
Engineered Famine
All the while, millions of dollars worth of aid is waiting nearby to come in, but Israel continues to block it. This humanitarian catastrophe was predicted – even foretold – by humanitarian organizations. But Israel and its western backers would not listen, still won't listen. As a result, every day, the desperation deepens.
This is not an accident. It is not an unfortunate byproduct of war. Leading famine scholar Alex de Waal has called Israel’s starvation of Gaza a “minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation” campaign the severity of which we haven't seen since World War II.
The CEO of Oxfam Ireland said, “we’ve never seen anything like this because the occupying power is intentionally starving the population” while bombing them and displacing them. “There is no intent whatsoever to allow any aid to properly flow.”
The severe and intentional nature of this mass starvation campaign invites comparisons to the Nazi's starvation of Jews in the 1940s - including by Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
This is why, as de Waal points out, “The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza today is unique ... in that the situation can be remedied overnight if Israel chooses to do so.”
Starving Babies in Gaza
Israel is also blocking the entry of baby formula to Gaza,
while mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed.
As The Guardian reports, Israel has kept “food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations.” According to the World Health Organization, 90% of pregnant and nursing mothers in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition that undermines their ability to produce breast milk. It also causes premature births and spontaneous abortions.
Doctors say Israel is blocking deliveries of formula urgently needed as mothers are either dead or too malnourished to feed their babies. UN agencies say Gaza needs at least 500 trucks a day to meet basic needs, but often less than 50 are admitted. Food aid that comes in through GHF does not include baby formula. This has led to a “severe shortage of baby formula.”
Israel claims it has allowed in 2,500 tons of baby formula and enriched food over the last 2 months, but this is misleading. As Ha'aretz explains, a large portion of this food gets stuck just inside the border because the Israeli army doesn’t let the trucks move any further. In this way it can claim it has let the food in, without actually distributing it to people. Requests from the UN and other international organizations to transfer goods from the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza for distribution are denied. In other cases they are looted - often by Israeli-armed criminal gangs, on their way to distribution warehouses.
Whatever the details, the simple fact is: Babies are starving and Israel is blocking aid, depriving infants of a chance at life. They have even confiscated cans of specialized formula for premature babies that American volunteer doctors brought in their personal luggage. An American critical care nurse volunteering at Nasser Hospital said that she had witnessed the Israeli military throw away baby formula brought in by the international aid workers, doctors, and nurses from her medical charity.
The Result of Israel's Blockade: Babies are Suffering, Emaciated, and Dying
In May through July a spate of newspaper headlines testified to the desperate situation of Gaza's youngest children. Notably, the only paper that actually identifies Israel's role in blocking baby formula in the headline itself is an Israeli newspaper.
May 23: Babies in Gaza are skin and bone after 11-week blockade (Sky News)
June 28: Without baby formula, some infants in Gaza are facing a slow death (NBC)
July 11: Aid Groups: Infants are dying in Gaza because Israel impedes import of baby formula (Ha'aretz)
July 23: A baby boy dies as starvation spreads across Gaza (NBC)
July 25: No formula, no food: Mothers and babies starve together in Gaza (NBC)
July 30: On Gaza malnutrition ward, a child’s arm is as wide as mother’s thumb (Reuters)
Doctors in Gaza have been pleading with the world for months, saying their supplies of specialized formula for premature babies were depleted and supplies of regular formula were running low, forcing them to give smaller and smaller amounts to infants each day. But those pleas fell on deaf ears.
The result has been images of suffering and emaciated babies in Gaza, skeletal infants, and babies dying because hospitals lack the fluids necessary to keep them alive. An American surgeon told The New York Times that many infants arrived starving and malnourished, and “they haven’t been able to get them back from the brink” despite intensive care. These children are facing a slow death, one pediatrician said.
At 11 months old, Sela should weigh around 20 pounds, but weighs only 8. Her mother was unable to produce milk since she herself is malnourished. A 5-month-old girl was born weighing 6 pounds – and still does. They are two out of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip suffering from acute malnutrition as Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entry of baby formula. Many newborns are in a state of crisis. At least 20 babies have died within 24 hours of birth.
Adham al-Safadi carries the body of his son, 6-week-old Youssef, who he said died of malnutrition, in Gaza City on Tuesday. Khamis Al-Rifi / Reuters
By late July, Israeli-imposed starvation had killed at least 88 children in 2025 alone. The majority of people who have starved to death perished in July, suggesting a surge of deaths due to starvation. 21 children died of starvation in a single hospital in Gaza over 72 hours, as the UN warned the “last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing.” One baby was only 6 weeks old.
Starving Children in Gaza
Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a 1-year-old child in Gaza City, faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, on July 21, 2025. Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini
After nearly three full months of not letting a single ounce of food or water into Gaza, followed by the ongoing restrictions of food and even baby formula, the starvation crisis in Gaza has become acute. In July 2025, numerous reports and images from Gaza emerged of emaciated, skeletal children. Hospital wards were crowded by malnourished children - so much so that many thousands more outside the hospitals could not be treated.
The utter cruelty of deliberately starving children - babies - is a hallmark of Israel's dehumanization of Palestinians. Israel has openly declared all along that “no one in Gaza is innocent.” Israeli society and the Israeli military have embraced this genocidal fervor. (See the Genocidal Intent section of the Overview page). For example:
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Former Israeli Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin went on Israeli television and declared: “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy. The enemy is not Hamas ... We need to conquer Gaza and colonize it and not leave a single Gazan child there. There is no other victory.” He was not alone.
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Knesset Member Moshe Saada boasted: “I will starve Gazans! Yes absolutely. It is our duty to expel Gazans.”
6 year old Osama Al Raqab, suffering starvation under Israel's genocide.
UNICEF reported that in Gaza, 80% of all reported deaths by starvation are children. All children under 5 in Gaza – 320,000 – are at risk of acute malnutrition. In April 2025, only one month into Israel's brutal siege, 53 children had already died of malnutrition, most children were eating less than one meal a day, and thousands more were barely surviving. On July 22, 21 children died of starvation in one hospital in 72 hours.
While the statistics are harrowing, the images are heartbreaking. They are difficult to look at - but must be seen in order to understand. To understand what it means for these children to so needlessly suffer, to understand what it means for a 3 year old to weigh only 10 pounds when she should weigh 33, and to understand that this is a hallmark of genocide - with no regard for the innocent. As of September 16, 2025, at least 428 people have died of starvation, including at least 146 children.
The damage goes far beyond the tragic deaths of these individuals - children who deserved to live. As the UN expert on the right to food stated, “Israel is not just targeting civilians, it is trying to damn the future of the Palestinian people by harming their children.”
Israel also seeks to sow psychological trauma and societal collapse. Parents – the sole caregivers of these starving children – are forced to risk their lives at militarized food distribution sites. The choice – to go and potentially die in search of food, or to stay and be unable to feed your children – is dystopian and cruel.
The experience for children is not only traumatizing, it is physically painful. The consequences are potentially permanent. Children cry from hunger and gnaw at their own skin as their body eats away at itself. Malnutrition as a child can stunt physical growth and brain development. Their developing brains stall, stunting cognitive growth. Many will never regain the ability to learn, focus, or grow properly. Without zinc, they can’t gain weight; without iron, they lose energy and mental clarity; without vitamin A, they risk going blind. Their immune systems collapse, leaving them defenseless against pneumonia, fevers, and diarrhea. “At the simplest level,” said one pediatrician, “your brain stops growing.” In the words of another doctor, these are “executions carried out in slow motion.”
Malnutrition is also linked to health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease as an adult. The earlier the malnutrition occurs, the greater the health risks. It can even harm the next generation, making them more vulnerable to disease and shorter lifespans.
The situation is the most acute it has ever been, but children have been suffering for almost two years. Not only have over 18,500 children died, and tens of thousands been wounded, Gaza now has the largest concentration of child amputees in the world. Children have lost multiple members of their families, watched their parents struggle and waste away, all while enduring the relentless terror of massive bombs raining down upon them nearly every day and gun-equipped drones and snipers killing innocent people in the streets. They have lost years of schooling, and suffered trauma that cannot be understood.
They have also been suffering from prolonged starvation. In February 2024, UNICEF stated that over 90% of children under the age of 5 in Gaza were facing “severe food poverty” and suffering from infectious diseases. 70% experienced diarrhea in the preceding two weeks. The UN reported that 1 in 3 children in north Gaza were acutely malnourished. That same month, numerous children died from malnutrition. Newborns froze to death, in part because they were so weakened from a lack of food.
In May 2024, A WHO spokesperson said that 85% of children “did not eat for a whole day at least once in the [past] three days. Are the supplies getting through? No, children are starving.” In August 2024, the WHO announced that 15,000 children were “acutely malnourished.” Children, in short, have not only been suffering for nearly two years, their bodies are weakened and exhausted by extended periods of malnutrition – not to mention the ravages of war and the trauma of enduring a genocide.
Israeli Claims:
The Lie that No One is Starving
The Lie that No One is Starving in Gaza
Unbelievably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that “there is no starvation in Gaza.” Indeed, he said so once again on July 28, 2025, as deaths from starvation surged and dozens of children perished. The Israeli army reiterated this shocking claim on Instagram, claiming airdrops and a couple hundred trucks of aid over a period of two months (the UN says 500-600/day are needed to meet basic needs) was somehow sufficient to feed 2 million people.
To believe Israel one would have to disbelieve:
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Their own eyes and the countless images and videos of widespread starvation, of thin, emaciated and exhausted Palestinians, and of dead children, published in news reports across the world, including The New York Times, the Associated Press, and The Guardian.
Palestinians struggling to receive meals from a charity in Gaza City in July. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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Doctors on the ground in Gaza - both Palestinian and international. For example, Dr. Tarek Loubani, the Gaza-based medical director of Glia, an organization providing supplies and medical care, told reporters during a July 29 media briefing that all of his patients are malnourished. “Every single one of them is starving,” Loubani said. “There is a famine everywhere and it is affecting all of us, myself included. I’ve lost probably 20 kilos in the two months that I’ve been here. … There is no food to have. Yesterday, all I had was a small handful of rice because that’s all that was available for the doctors.” The United Nations also reported that staff in the region were “fainting from hunger and exhaustion.
Israel's Pattern of Lying
One would also have to forget that Israel has been caught lying and doctoring evidence countless times since October 7 (not to mention before). From a fake video of a nurse inside al-Shifa hospital denouncing Hamas shared on official Israeli social media, to doctored “Hamas phone intercepts,” to lying about a sprawling Hamas command center under al-Shifa Hospital, to claiming a paper on the wall in the al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital was a list of Hamas hostage-takers when it was just the days of the week on a calendar in Arabic, to the IDF boosting false rumors of “40 beheaded babies,” to denying Israel blocks aid from coming into Gaza, to denying Palestinian death tolls (despite the fact that Israeli intelligence relies on them and most experts say they are severe undercounts), to claiming Israeli tanks were not in the vicinity of the car carrying 6-year-old Hind Rajab and her family (punctured by 353 bullets that killed all inside), to claiming 15 Palestinian medics in 4 ambulances were advancing suspiciously with lights off to justify their murder until video surfaced showing this to be a brazen lie, to leaking forged documents claiming Hamas planned to use the Philadelphi corridor to smuggle Israeli captives out of Gaza, to fabricating the discovery of a Hamas “tunnel” in the Philadelphi corridor to justify Israel's insistence on holding the area until it was shown to be a shallow canal that Israel's own former Defense Minister said “was not a tunnel, but rather an attempt to prevent a ceasefire agreement.” These are just a few examples; there are many, many more.
Journalist Jasper Nathaniel's “The Investigation is Ongoing” analyzes Israel's pattern of lying, cataloguing numerous examples of brazen deception, and concluding:
The basic pattern is the same: An atrocity is reported in Gaza; Israel denies responsibility and/or blames Hamas, and expresses outrage at the accusation. If international pressure mounts, Israeli officials promise an investigation—one that finds no wrongdoing, admits to a lesser violation, or quietly stalls without ever concluding—exactly what the system is designed to do. The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din found that of the 573 reviews (Fact-Finding Assessments) with known outcomes filed during three major military operations in Gaza over the past decade, only one resulted in a criminal indictment via the official process (.17%). The data raised “heavy suspicions that the military law enforcement mechanism’s main role … is to maintain an appearance of a functional system in order to evade properly investigating suspected war crimes.” Meanwhile, new atrocities pile up before the last ones can be reckoned with, lie upon lie, until the sheer volume overwhelms any effort at accountability. It’s the classic “flood the zone” strategy, straight from the Trump playbook.
Of course, if Israel was telling the truth, there would be an easy way to prove it: Allow international journalists into Gaza, as famine scholar Alex de Waal points out in his article, “How to Hide a Famine.” But Israel has not permitted this a single day since October 7, 2023. While Palestinian journalists have done excellent reporting in harrowing conditions - and suffered incredible losses with over 200 killed by Israeli forces - western biases are strong, and western newspapers tend to report events as a kind of “he-said, she-said,” creating just enough doubt to enable the genocide to continue.
The Big Lie
This type of brazen lie - so obviously contradicted by voluminous evidence and common sense - is a propaganda tactic known as “the big lie.” The term was coined by Hitler in Mein Kampf to describe how people could be led to believe a colossal lie - the bigger the better. “It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
The concept is often described as follows: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Of course, the profound irony of the leader of the “Jewish state” embracing “The Big Lie” in service of a genocide and mass starvation of innocents should not be lost on anyone - and should lead us all to question what Israel has become, and perhaps what it always was.
Journalist Gideon Levy penned an article in Ha'aretz on July 27 pointing out this horrifying irony. “Denying Gaza's Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust,” he wrote. Holocaust deniers, after all, claimed that the gas chambers couldn't be real - they were too big to be effective. Today, Israelis shift between denying that Palestinians are starving - and openly proclaiming their joy in it.
Israeli Claims:
The Lie that Hamas is Looting Aid
Overview
Israel has also claimed that if Palestinians are starving it is because Hamas is looting aid. It also uses this claim to justify its blocking of aid into Gaza.
This is nothing but a disinformation campaign. Every humanitarian organization working in Gaza, as well as U.S. officials and even senior Israeli security officials, say there is no evidence that Hamas is stealing aid. Indeed, Israel has never provided any evidence for this claim.
Instead, as Israel has itself admitted, the Israeli army has armed a criminal gang – an ISIS-affiliated gang of drug dealers, murderers, and convicted criminals known as Abu Shabab – who it encourages to loot aid in Gaza.
As described below, the Israeli army first started targeting the civilian police who guarded and secured aid trucks in February 2024, which led to significant looting. In this way, Israel aimed to not only accelerate the breakdown of Palestinian civilian governance and society, but also hasten the mass starvation and suffering of Palestinians. In November 2024, numerous humanitarian organizations and news organizations reported that armed criminal gangs were looting aid trucks in Israeli-controlled and surveilled areas. Finally, in June 2025, it was revealed - and Netanyahu was forced to admit - that the Israeli military had been arming a criminal gang led by Abu Shabab for over a year. Humanitarians report the Israeli army stands by as they loot aid, and sometimes shoot civilian police who try to stop the looting.
In short, Israel accuses Hamas of looting aid while arming and supporting the real looters. For Israel, every accusation is a confession.
Israel is Intentionally Starving Gaza
When international pressure mounts, Israel conveniently trots out the claim that Hamas is looting aid as justification for starving Palestinians. However, in other moments - and indeed from the outset of Israel's genocide in Gaza - Israel has openly declared and boasted of its desire to starve civilians in Gaza.
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On October 9, 2023, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s then-Defense Minister, stated: “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 are acting accordingly.”
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Major General Ghassan Alian, Coordinator of COGAT, the IDF’s civilian wing, charged with humanitarian affairs and coordinating aid with international agencies, said: “Human animals are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
- These are not one-off, isolated views. They are supported by the vast majority of Israeli society. A February 2024 poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 68% of Jewish Israelis opposed allowing humanitarian aid for Gaza's residents, even if there was no link to Hamas. A host of a popular Israeli podcast recently said of Israelis, “People enjoy knowing that [Gazans] are suffering.” A July 2025 poll found that 79% of Israeli Jews are “not so troubled” or “not troubled at all” by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.
Israel acted on this by systematically starving the people of Gaza.
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Israel's own allies confirmed it was blocking aid. Both the U.S. and U.K. governments accused Israel of deliberately blocking aid to Gaza.
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The ICC arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused him of a deliberate campaign of starvation.
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At the same time, Israel systematically destroyed all food sources in Gaza and perpetrated a war on aid agencies and workers, killing over 400 aid workers and waging a smear campaign against the largest aid agency in Gaza, UNRWA.
Still, when international pressure mounted, Israel tried to deflect by blaming Hamas.
No Evidence that Hamas is Stealing Aid
There is simply no evidence that Hamas is stealing aid - despite Israel having drone surveillance nearly everywhere in Gaza.
Moreover, every single charity and aid agency working in Gaza confirms that aid is not being stolen by Hamas. UNICEF spokesman James Elder said he's seen no such evidence. Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the World Food Program, and wife of one of the most pro-Israeli politicians, said she had seen no evidence either: “No, not at all.” Israeli human rights organization B'tselem has likewise said that Israel is starving Gaza and that Israel's claims that Hamas is diverting aid "have been refuted by the agencies delivering assistances. Two US government bodies confirmed that Israel is deliberately obstructing aid and bears primary responsibility for the widespread hunger in Gaza."
The European Union likewise confirmed it had received no reports of Hamas stealing aid.
Even the United States, Israel's biggest ally and supporter, has said on multiple occasions that this isn't true. David Satterfield, the Biden administration’s humanitarian envoy, said that Israel doesn’t even privately make the claim or offer evidence that Hamas is stealing aid. In February 2024, Satterfield, who also served George W. Bush and Donald Trump in various different roles, said that with the departure of civilian police escorts after Israeli strikes targeting them, criminal gangs increasingly targeted the truck convoys carrying badly needed aid. At the time, Satterfield said that Israeli officials had not presented “specific evidence of diversion or theft” of U.N. assistance by Hamas. He later added that Israeli officials did not even allege theft in confidential briefings with the United States.
In July 2025, an internal U.S. government analysis “found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies.” It examined 156 incidents of theft or loss of U.S.-funded supplies reported by U.S. aid partner organisations between October 2023 and May 2025. They found “no reports alleging Hamas” benefited from these supplies. Instead, it identified the Israeli military as directly or indirectly responsible for 44 theft or loss incidents.
Even senior Israeli security officials admitted to The New York Times that “the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war.” They acknowledged that the UN-led aid system had been largely effective in reaching Gaza’s starving population. A month earlier, Israel's Channel 12, citing an Israeli military meeting, reported that of 110 aid truck looting incidents over a week in Gaza, none were carried out by Hamas. Instead, the report stated that the looting was carried out by Israeli-backed armed gangs and organized clans operating with the full protection of Israeli forces.
Thus the pretext Israel used to systematically block aid and then dismantle the UN system, replacing it with GHF's deadly and dehumanizing “hunger games,” was - and has always been - a lie.
Israel is Arming Criminal Gangs who Loot Aid
Not only is there no evidence that Hamas is stealing aid, but the evidence shows that it is Israel that is arming and protecting criminal gangs who loot aid. As is so often the case with Israel: Every accusation is a confession.
In February 2024, Israel began systematically targeting and killing the civilian police who guarded aid convoys. David Satterfield, the Biden administration’s special Middle East envoy for humanitarian issues, said that Israel’s targeted killings of Gaza police commanders safeguarding truck convoys have made it “virtually impossible” to distribute the goods safely, leading to increasing attacks and looting by criminal gangs. The World Food Program stopped food deliveries in north Gaza as a result of “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order,” leading the Biden administration to ask Israel to stop targeting civilian policemen. (Notably, activists and experts believe the Israeli government is using a similar tactic in Palestinian communities inside Israel - deliberately allowing gang violence to go unpoliced as a way of encouraging Palestinians living in Israel to leave.)
By November 2024, there were numerous reports of widespread looting in Israeli-controlled areas, while Israeli forces looked on without intervening.
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A group of 29 international NGOs, including Oxfam and Save the Children, said in a report that humanitarian aid entering Gaza had fallen to an all-time low due to looting as “a consequence of Israel's targeting of the remaining police forces in Gaza,” as well as Israel blocking aid. It continued: “According to media reports, Israeli forces are failing to prevent aid trucks from being looted and armed gangs from extorting aid organizations for protection money. In some cases, the remaining members of local police forces tried to take action against the looters but were attacked by Israeli troops. Many incidents are taking place close by or in full view of Israeli forces, without them intervening, even when truck drivers asked for assistance.”
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A Washington Post investigation showed that looting of aid happened by armed gangs in areas controlled by the Israeli army. The UN and humanitarian organizations reported that these gangs set up compounds in tightly-controlled Israeli areas, with Israeli snipers nearby.
A Palestinian political analyst concluded: “Israel is facilitating the rise of criminal armed gangs in Gaza to prevent the entry of vital humanitarian aid and engineer lawlessness.” He continued: “While refusing to intervene against these armed criminals, Israeli forces are opening fire against local policemen attempting to prevent the looting. Sources in Gaza say the rise of organised gangs is Israel’s latest pretext to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid and cause societal collapse, all while blaming Palestinians for their own suffering.”
In June 2025, Israel admitted that it was arming and supporting criminal gangs who were looting aid. In early June, former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused the Netanyahu government of supplying weapons to ISIS-linked criminal gangs in Gaza. Initially, the Prime Minister's office did not deny the allegations. It later confirmed them, saying “What's wrong with that?”
The Times of Israel reported that the plan to start arming the Abu Shabab gang was created when Israel invaded Rafah in May 2024, “and has its roots in looting aid trucks.” The Israeli army provided guns and allowed it to operate in areas under Israeli control. According to a UN memo, gang leaders established a “military-like compound” in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by Israel’s military. As the gang looted convoys, kidnapped drivers, and hiked food prices through black market resales to starving civilians, the Israeli army provided it with safe passage and protection.
Netanyahu justified this as a strategic move to help defeat Hamas—a perfect echo of Israel’s decades-long policy of propping up Hamas to undercut the Palestinian Authority and prevent unity between Gaza and the West Bank. Who is Netanyahu's partner? Prior to October 7, Abu Shabab was in jail for drug smuggling. Members of his gang reportedly have ties to the Islamic State. Abu Shabab himself has been disowned by his family for collaborating with Israel and looting aid. The group has issued videos online urging Palestinians to move to tent camps in Rafah, openly promoting Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign.
In short, aid is being looted by Israeli-armed and supported criminal gangs in Gaza - not by Hamas. An internal UN memo identifies Yasser Abu Shabab as the warlord responsible for the systematic looting of aid in Rafah, an area tightly controlled by Israel, where any Palestinian who enters is killed, but where Abu Shabab's gang acts with freedom and impunity. Aid officials and Gaza residents told the International Crisis Group that the Abu Shabab gang, armed and protected by Israel, has been the single most prolific looter since the war began. This organised looting, with weapons and heavy machinery, as UN and Israeli military assessments confirm, occurs at the hands of these armed gangs, with the “active or passive protection” of the Israeli army.
Indeed, Israel seems to actively encourage the looting in multiple ways. First, Israeli troops fire on civilian police who try to stop the looting. According to the Associated Press:
The head of the association in Gaza that provides trucks and drivers for aid groups said their members’ vehicles have been attacked many times by Abu Shabab’s fighters.
Nahed Sheheiber said the group has been active in Israeli-controlled eastern parts of Rafah and Khan Younis, targeting trucks as they enter Gaza from the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. Troops nearby “did nothing” to stop attacks, he said.
Sheheiber said that when Hamas policemen have tried to confront gangs or guard truck convoys, they were attacked by Israeli troops.
One driver, Issam Abu Awda, told the AP he was attacked by Abu Shabab fighters last July. The fighters stopped his truck, blindfolded and handcuffed him and his assistant, then loaded the supplies off the vehicle, he said. Abu Awda said nearby Israeli troops didn’t intervene.
“Those who have blocked and violently ransacked aid trucks seem to have been protected” by Israeli forces, said Whittall, head of OCHA’s office for the occupied Palestinian territories. And, he added, they have now become the “protectors of the goods being distributed through Israel’s new militarized hubs,” referring to the GHF-run sites.
The Israeli military did not reply when asked for comment on allegations it has allowed armed groups to loot trucks.
The Israeli army also facilitates the looting by forcing UN trucks to travel through areas so notorious for looting that they have been called the “looting valley.” The UN has said that little of the supplies it is allowed to bring in actually reach the hands of Palestinians “because of Israeli military restrictions, including requiring its trucks to use roads where looters are known to operate.” For example, in early June, the Israeli military claimed that it allowed 760 trucks into Gaza. But only 238 were allowed to be actually be driven in for distribution by the UN and other aid groups. And half of these were looted along the way. The other 522 truckloads remained at Israel’s Karem Shalom crossing, undistributed. “What Israeli officials don’t mention, however, is how they refuse to allow aid convoys to drive through safe routes and instead force trucks to go through “red zones” and the infamous “looting valley.” This made truck drivers fearful for their lives; after several were kidnapped, killed, maimed, or beaten up by the Israel-backed gangs.”
Third, the Israeli army allows these gangs to hoard the aid from GHF sites. El Pais reported on testimonies, both from Palestinian civilians and a U.N. worker who do not know each other, that those receiving GHF food boxes are often not “ordinary Gazans.”
Their testimonies and others reported on social media maintain that criminal gangs are hoarding the food with the complicity of Israel and the U.S. mercenary companies that monitor the distribution sites. The U.N. aid worker argues that these criminals then sell the food outside of these centers.
Mohamed Zeidan, whose wife died at the Rafah distribution site ... recounts how “a thug” held a gun to his 20-year-old daughter’s head to steal some food she had managed to stuff into a bag. The incident occurred inside the “closed military zone” of the GHF site in Rafah.
Conclusion
For Israel, every accusation is a confession. While it accuses Hamas of diverting aid, it is Israel that is actively encouraging and arming criminal gangs to loot aid in order to hasten the genocide. This is the end point of a long and calculated process. Israel first stopped UN aid from reaching Gaza, claiming the world body lets Hamas steal aid, as part of a smear campaign. (Israeli security officials later told The New York Times that the UN system was effective, and that aid was not being looted to any significant extent). At the same time, Israeli forces systematically attacked civilian police who safeguarded the aid convoys, leading to increased looting by criminal gangs that Israel secretly arms and protects. In June, Netanyahu was eventually forced to admit that Israel has been arming these gangs in Gaza. Those gangs use their Israeli-supplied guns to loot aid trucks and steal food from soup kitchens and starving civilians and run a food extortion racket. Meanwhile, Israeli forces protect them, and fire at civilian police who try to stop them.
The inhumanity and sheer cruelty of Israel starving Palestinian children and society en masse is stark. It is also deeply ironic. Israel has long blamed Hamas - who it has successfully demonized - for the suffering of the Palestinian people. It has also claimed over and over again that there are no innocents in Gaza. And yet, in reality, for anyone who looks at what is happening, the humanity of Palestinians has been on full display, while Israeli cruelty and barbarity reaches astonishing new levels. Middle East historian Jean-Pierre Filiu visited Gaza in December 2024 and reported on what he witnessed.