“Starvation Is The Weapon”: A Manufactured Famine, Suppressed Aid, And The Killing Of A People.

Gaza Strip – As the war in Gaza drags into its 656th day, a chilling picture has emerged: Israel’s military campaign, once justified in the name of security, now reveals the systematic use of starvation as a weapon of war, the deliberate targeting of aid infrastructure, and a spiralling death toll that suggests nothing short of intentional extermination of a besieged population.

While Israeli tanks bulldoze homes in Rafah and Khan Yunis, and warplanes hammer densely packed refugee camps, more than 100 international NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Save the Children, Amnesty International, and Oxfam, have declared the situation in Gaza a man-made famine, not a humanitarian failure, but a policy choice.

“This is not a natural disaster,” said MSF’s Dr. Natalie Thibault. “This is engineered. These children didn’t starve because food wasn’t available in the world. They starved because that food was denied to them.”

The Quiet Genocide: How Starvation Was Weaponised.

On July 24, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued an unprecedented statement: 90% of Gaza’s population lacks access to clean water. Malnutrition has now reached catastrophic levels, with more than 115 confirmed deaths from famine, 80 of them children.

Eyewitnesses on the ground describe scenes of horror. Dr. Fadel Naim, director of Al-Ahli Hospital, told Al Jazeera:

“Children arrive with sunken eyes, weak pulses. Some are so emaciated that they cannot cry. We are watching children die for lack of bread.”

In a hospital tent outside the ruins of Shifa Hospital, a young mother clutched her skeletal child, whispering, “He doesn’t cry anymore. He just stares.” Her child weighed just 4 kg, half the normal weight for his age.

“I beg for formula every day,” she said. “We used to fear bombs. Now we fear hunger more.”

The Gaza Government Media Office stated on Wednesday that the enclave requires at least 500,000 bags of flour per week to avert collapse. Aid trickling in is barely a tenth of what’s needed. The same office accused media outlets and Israeli authorities of deliberately spreading disinformation about so-called “massive” aid deliveries.

“We categorically deny claims that hundreds of trucks are entering Gaza,” the statement read. “This is a lie that conceals the ongoing starvation of 2.4 million people.”

Aid Zones Turned Killing Fields:

The deadly targeting of aid distribution points compounds the humanitarian catastrophe. Since May, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food, mostly in Israeli strikes near the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a parallel aid channel created by Israel to bypass the UN.

“These food lines have become execution zones,” said UN OCHA field officer Lamis Ayyash. “People approach aid trucks knowing they may be gunned down.”

The killing is not random. A leaked Israeli military order, Operation Salted Fish, published by Haaretz, revealed directives to disperse crowds with lethal force before and after aid deliveries. Human Rights Watch has called this a war crime. The UN has accused Israel of “deliberate obstruction” of life-saving aid, adding that the starvation is not collateral, it is tactical.

Silencing The Witnesses:

Journalists attempting to document these atrocities are being starved alongside civilians. Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that 113 of its staff remain trapped in Gaza, operating under the threat of starvation and bombardment.

“Our colleagues are no longer just documenting famine,” the agency said. “They are starving too.”

Al Jazeera, which has lost over 25 staff since October 2023, aired footage this week of aid seekers being shot near food queues in Deir al-Balah. A grieving man holding the bloodied body of his son shouted into the camera:

“He went to get bread. They shot him. For bread!”

Legal Reckoning, And Stalled Diplomacy:

Despite mounting evidence, Israel continues to tighten its grip. On Wednesday, the Israeli government barred the UN’s humanitarian chief from re-entry, after accusing OCHA of harbouring Hamas sympathisers, without evidence.

“This is not just obstruction. This is the criminalisation of humanitarianism,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including deliberate starvation of civilians. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) continues hearings on the broader genocide case against Israel.

Despite this, diplomatic efforts remain fragile. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met Israeli and Qatari officials in Rome this week in a last-ditch bid to push a 60-day ceasefire. Hamas has yet to respond.

Analyst Hanan Ashrawi, former PLO spokesperson, offered a grim forecast:

“Israel is starving Gaza into submission. And the world is letting it happen.”

A Numbers Game Of Death:

The Israeli campaign has killed over 100,000 Palestinians, injured approximately 377,000, and displaced nearly 2 million. Gaza’s health infrastructure is in ruins. Entire neighbourhoods are flattened. Aid routes remain blocked.

Starvation, once a spectre, is now a daily killer.

“We’re watching a society disintegrate,” said UNRWA’s Thomas White. “And the world has normalised it.”

Conclusion: A War On Survival.

What is unfolding in Gaza is not a humanitarian failure; it is the deliberate unravelling of a society through starvation, siege, and suppression. The Israeli government’s systematic restriction of aid, targeting of civilians at food lines, and demolition of critical infrastructure form a pattern that legal scholars and rights organisations increasingly recognise as intentional mass atrocity, not mere collateral damage.

The evidence is unrelenting: skeletal children in overcrowded hospital tents; parents boiling grass to feed their families; infants too dehydrated to cry. Babies’ tears have run dry, parched by starvation, while begging not for liberation, but for food, water, and safety. This is not a byproduct of war. It is the mechanism of war.

Despite relentless warnings from UN agencies, humanitarian organisations, and local medics, Israel continues to choke off food and aid. Entire populations are being methodically starved, not by accident, but by design. Aid convoys are obstructed. Relief zones are shelled. UN staff are defamed and banned. Civilians gathering around food trucks are gunned down in broad daylight.

“Famine is not creeping into Gaza, it is being marched in by tanks,” said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, British-Palestinian surgeon and witness to the ongoing catastrophe. “Starvation has become policy.”

But the crime does not end with Israel. The international community is equally culpable, not merely for doing nothing, but for actively enabling these atrocities. From Washington, London, to Brussels, governments have continued to arm and fund Israel while blocking ceasefires, vetoing accountability, and maintaining a grotesque diplomatic double standard.

“This isn’t just Israeli violence, it’s a Western-sanctioned siege,” said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza. “The hypocrisy is staggering.”

Western governments have not only refused to stop the carnage, but they have created a smokescreen of theatre. They perform outrage in press conferences, voice concern in carefully worded statements, and then quietly approve arms exports, intelligence cooperation, and military aid. It is a diplomatic pantomime, designed to feign humanitarian concern while protecting and profiting from the siege itself.

“They cry crocodile tears in Geneva and ship bullets from Baltimore,” said Ammar Al-Dwaik of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights. “It’s a script they’ve rehearsed too well.”

And behind the frontlines, the blockade has evolved into something more sinister: a lucrative machine of control and profit. Israeli defence firms and military units have turned Gaza’s starvation into an economy of repression, using siege-tested tactics, biometric surveillance, and control over food flows as exportable tools of militarised governance. The **weaponisation of starvation is no longer just about punishment; it has become a profiteering venture for the Israeli government and its allied contractors.

“Gaza is a laboratory for military technologies and doctrines, including starvation,” said an Israeli arms analyst who requested anonymity. “Everything from food restriction algorithms to drone targeting over breadlines is being monetised.”

The siege is no longer just about security or retaliation. It is about systemic domination, economic extraction, and political messaging through hunger. And the world’s most powerful nations are not bystanders to this; they are stakeholders.

Legal action is underway. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, citing the starvation of civilians as a war crime. The International Court of Justice is investigating genocide. But courtrooms move too slowly for the scale of devastation on the ground, where children die every day not from bombs, but from empty plates.

In a war where bread is banned and babies starve silently, the question is not only who is killing Gaza, but who is profiting, who is defending, and who is orchestrating this with a veneer of global legitimacy.

“Israel Is The Axis Of Evil,”

This is not merely a war crime. It is the collapse of the moral infrastructure of the so-called international community. It is a deliberate betrayal of law, conscience, and human life. And it will stain the hands of all those who facilitated it, through action, inaction, or applause.

The time for statements is over. The world must choose: complicity or confrontation. There is no middle ground while children die with dry tears and swollen bellies, and a global military economy turns their starvation into a market-tested tool of power.