Palestinian mother holds her malnourished sons, 4 and 3 years old, at Friends of the Patient Hospital in Gaza City, July 29, 2025. Photo: AP
Millions are already desperately hungry and now Gaza is hurtling toward mass deaths by starvation.
Over 159 Palestinians in Gaza, including 90 children, have died of starvation since October 7, 2023. This is entirely due to Israel’s restrictions and near total blockade of food coming into Gaza. Dozens have starved to death in just the past week, and the pace of death is accelerating.
Famine expert Alex de Waal warns, “All the evidence points us to being at a threshold where [mass starvation] is going to get exponentially worse. Every day that it goes unremedied, it's going to be harder to pull it back.” He adds, “For a very large number of Gazans, in particular children, they will have the biological imprint of starvation for their lifetimes.”
Last week, a U.N.-backed group warned that “the worst-case scenario of famine is playing out.”1 UNICEF says some 320,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition.
This criminal nightmare has been caused by Israel’s U.S.-backed destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, water system, electrical grid, and food production; its blockade of food, water, fuel, medicine and other needed goods; and its overall assault on the Palestinian people.2
"Everything we know about how famine unfolds tells us that what Israel has done has created those conditions," de Waal concludes. Famine is the highest and most severe classification of starvation on a mass scale, and if man-made, a war crime.
The Global Outcry and the Deadly Sham of U.S.-Israeli “Humanitarian” Efforts
The intolerable horror unfolding in Gaza, day after day, night after night, has sparked global revulsion and outrage against Israel, as well as the U.S.
The response from the fascist Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netan-Nazi (Benjamin Netanyahu) are lies and distraction—trying to relieve some political pressure, while giving themselves room to continue their systematic campaign of starvation and genocide of the Palestinian people.
While Trump says there are hungry children and “real starvation” in Gaza, and that he’s working on a plan to “get people fed,” what he means is more Hunger Games–type terror inflicted on the Palestinian people. Trump brags about the U.S. “giving money and things” but literally complained, “Nobody said, ‘Gee, thank you very much. And it would be nice to have at least a thank you.”
Well gee, you fucking monster: maybe one reason “nobody” did is that U.S. “humanitarian” aid is not being used to end starvation, it’s being used to create death traps for starving Palestinians.3 And maybe another reason is that the U.S. is giving thousands of times more funding for bombs, planes, missiles and other weapons of mass civilian death—over $22 billion in one year alone, with another $675 million now in the works!4
Meanwhile, Netan-Nazi is outright lying—claiming, “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.”
But even Netan-Nazi has been forced to make some concessions. However, as the magazine +972 wrote in the article Israel’s aid concessions merely offer Gazans survival on a leash: “To deflect international outrage, Israel’s strategy is clear: maintain enough control to kill with impunity, and enough relief to look humane while doing it.”
Israel's so-called “humanitarian measures” include a daily 10-hour “tactical pause in military activity” in Gaza—meaning some pause in the bombings; the opening of “secure routes” to allow more aid trucks into Gaza; and aid drops of food from the sky.
But all this is less than meaningless:
- At least 500-600 trucks worth of food are needed every day, but Israel is only allowing in a “trickle” of aid (just 109 trucks on July 29, for example), a “drop in the ocean” according to aid groups. And Israel has closed off the safest routes within Gaza, which makes it nearly impossible for the aid to be delivered, much less get to those who most desperately need it. Israel has allowed criminal gangs to operate,5 and because starvation is so rampant, crowds of people have stormed aid convoys, preventing food from getting to those most in need. Israel also routinely fires on crowds of Palestinians trying to get aid from UN trucks (or at GHF sites). One example: 51 Palestinians were massacred by Israeli forces on July 30 when they were trying to reach UN aid trucks at the Zikim Crossing into Gaza. In total, some 111 Palestinians were killed and 820 injured on that day alone, including 91 seeking aid.
- Overall, between Tuesday, July 29, and Friday, August 1, Israel killed some 230 Palestinians and injured many more, bringing the death toll since October 7, 2023 to 60,138 people killed and 146,269 wounded.6
- One relief worker called air drops of food “a grotesque distraction from the reality of what's needed on the ground in Gaza right now. They can never deliver the volume, the consistency or the quality of aid and services that's needed.” People are being killed by falling “aid.” Others are forced to scrabble through sand and dirt for kernels of rice scattered by the drop’s impact.7
Deathtrap: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been the main focus of the “humanitarian” aid from the U.S. It’s a vicious, degrading death trap that U.S. officials continue to praise. On August 1, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, visited one of the GHF sites, with Huckabee raving, “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”
De Waal writes that the GHF system “has so thoroughly ignored conditions on the ground that it raises the question of whether Israel has been intentionally engineering starvation in the strip.” Indeed!
- GHF sites come nowhere close to feeding Gaza’s 2 plus million people. There are only four GHF sites; there had been 400 UN sites before Israel shut them down.
- Palestinians have to trek miles to get to GHF sites, which is impossible for many older people, women and children who most need food. The sites are only open for 10-12 minutes before their meager supplies run out.
- Even if GHF is delivering a million “meals” a day—which seems far-fetched—that means half the population isn’t getting anything and the rest are getting a third or less of what they need.
- Experts warn GHF ration boxes lack nutrients that are essential for starving populations, especially children.
- Worst of all, these aid sites are literal death traps: at least 1,373 Palestinians had been killed while trying to get food aid, and 859 have been killed near GHF sites, mainly by Israeli (IDF) forces but also by U.S. mercenaries. A former GHF contractor describes IDF soldiers deliberately gunning down Palestinian children at a GHF site, and carrying out other war crimes along with U.S. personnel.
Trump Insists Israel Stay in Charge... of Genocide
Palestinians killed while trying to get food at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site, July 19, 2025. Photo: AP
As hunger ravages Gaza, Israel’s blockade, its daily mass slaughters, ongoing destruction of Gaza’s medical and water systems,8 and leveling much of Gaza to a hellscape of rubble has continued. This past week Netanyahu put forward a proposal to annex parts of Gaza. His right-wing allies rejoiced that taking all of Gaza and resettling it was coming.9
Trump is insisting that this continues. He said Israel would remain in charge of all aid coming into Gaza. And he wrote on social media, “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!”
This is Trump not only blaming the victim, but continuing to fully back, fund and support the victimizer! It is a green light justification for Gaza's captors—the Israeli war criminals—to remain in control of the lifelines for their victims. The fastest way to “end the humanitarian crises” is for Israel to stop causing this humanitarian crisis!
This is a bright green light from Trump for Israel to step up its genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza—fueling its complete and utter destruction.
On cue, on Sunday, August 3, Haaretz reported that Netanyahu was promising to act more forcefully, and the Israeli military was preparing to expand its Gaza offensive including “into sensitive areas and central Palestinian refugee camps, where the IDF has so far avoided ground activities.”
The Global Outcry and Urgent Need to Stop the Genocide
The escalating crisis of starvation in Gaza is sending ripples—and shockwaves—around the globe. For the first time, the leading Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, issued reports finding Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.10
De Waal warns, “Israel and the international community have a window of opportunity to deliver lifesaving aid to millions of people. We cannot wait until it’s time to count the graves of the children who have perished, declare it a famine—or indeed, a genocide—and say, simply, ‘Never again.’”
This has created cracks in the longstanding wall of unquestioned support for Israel, and caused some imperialist powers and mouthpieces to finally speak out. The New York Times editorialized that “Gaza’s Hunger Is a Moral Crisis.”
This shows some of the splits among the rulers of this system—that this kind of outright, open genocide cannot be tolerated. But they have yet to cut off funds or openly sanction the state of Israel.
That’s why massive protest and acts of conscience by millions demanding an end to this U.S.-Israeli genocide are so urgently needed now.
U.S. Provides 70 Percent of Funds for Gaza Genocide!
We Have a Special Responsibility to Stop It!
A recent study by Brown University contained a staggering revelation: that the $22.76 billion in military aid to Israel and related U.S. operations (in one year) is estimated to have made up some 70 percent of the costs of Israel’s criminal slaughter in Gaza. 70 percent!11
This isn’t simply an Israeli genocide—and never has been. It’s a U.S.-Israeli genocide, with the U.S. providing the bulk of the funding, without which Israel could not carry out its depraved slaughter and starvation!
The U.S. is disproportionately responsible for the genocide in Gaza—and so we in this country have a disproportionate responsibility to mobilize, protest, and speak out demanding the genocide end!
And we have a disproportionate responsibility to demand that the fascist Trump regime be driven from power. Trump is right now fueling this genocide. His regime is viciously repressing protesters who've spoken out against the genocide. And he is rapidly moving to crush all dissent and protest.
