The Hunger Games: Pressure Builds On Israel To Stop Gaza’s Mass Starvation That It Denies Exists 

Open the border, open the border – this is the substance of the rising clamor heard around the world for weeks and even months, a plea, a demand, aimed at Israel to allow food into the besieged enclave of Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people now don’t eat for days at a time. 

After four months of an Israeli siege that mostly closed the border to aid deliveries, the country is coming under intensifying pressure – from allies and also from within.  

That’s because the scenes of mass starvation emanating out of the enclave depicting emaciated children are shocking even those observers used to the daily violence and death toll from the conflict in Gaza: This has now cumulatively topped 60,000 since October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, took 251 more hostage, and began a war. 

But now, say world leaders, United Nations officials, and protesters around the world, the situation has become intolerable. “I don’t know what else you would call it other than mass starvation,” said UN World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

Doctors such as Mark Brauner, an emergency physician from the US who spent two weeks in June volunteering at Nassar Hospital in Gaza, said he was deeply shocked at what he saw. 

“I was prepared for the trauma, the (wounds from) explosions, gunshots, unstable patients but what I didn’t realize was that this was a mass casualty starvation event,” he told 1A in an interview Friday. “Many children are far beyond the point of recovery – and while we are seeing the numbers of deaths from starvation climb, month by month, I think we are all going to be very shocked at the numbers in September, October and November.”  

So far, more than 154 people have died from malnutrition in the past month, including 89 children, while thousands more, like 2-year-old Yazan, pictured here held by his mother, Naeema, are so emaciated that it’s easy to count their ribs and vertebrae. 

For these children still alive, say doctors, the damage is already irreversible.  

These days, Gaza’s few operating hospitals have grown overwhelmed with the malnourished, whom they are unable to help: Doctors and nurses themselves have grown too weak to minister to the sick – and they have nothing left to give the starving. 

Helen, a medical student at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told NPR the situation is so dire that she is praying “right now to die.” 

“We’ve been through difficult times during the war, but not like this,” she said. “We (are) literally starving. We haven’t eaten for days … I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do.” 

It’s the same situation for aid workers and journalists, who have no supplies and are growing too frail to work. Last week, French newswire Agence France-Presse asked the Israeli government to allow its reporters to leave the enclave because they are in danger of starving to death.  

“Since AFP was founded in 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, some have been injured, others taken prisoner,” the agency’s Society of Journalists said on X. “But none of us can ever remember seeing colleagues die of hunger.” 

Israeli officials dispute that anyone in the enclave is starving, calling it Hamas propaganda and saying, “Yeah, it’s very easy to blame Israel for everything.”  

“Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza – what a bald-faced lie,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.”  

However, aid groups have been warning about mass hunger developing since March, when Israel blocked food and medicine from entering the enclave, saying aid was benefiting Hamas – a claim rejected by most Western officials, aid groups, and the UN.  

Recently, a US AID report and also Israeli military officials said there was no evidence that Hamas has routinely stolen aid. Instead, they say armed groups fighting Hamas, and supported by Israel, have been looting food and other supplies as recently as this week.  

In late May, Israel allowed the resumption of some aid deliveries, mainly through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an organization created by former US intelligence and defense officials in conjunction with Israel that has come under heavy criticism from international aid groups and charities for delivering insufficient aid, among other changes.  

At the same time, its distribution sites have become death traps, scenes of deadly stampedes as Palestinians fight for food or face violence from the Israeli military – more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed attempting to obtain food at its sites, many of whom died after Israeli soldiers fired into crowds or airstrikes hit the hungry.  

For example, last week, the GHF announced a “woman only” distribution day in the southern Rafah area. Sisters Mary and Khawla arrived to obtain food but found chaos. 

“There was a huge crowd of women and the place seemed out of control, they couldn’t offload and distribute the aid,” Khawla told the BBC. “They started spraying the women with pepper spray, then they brought stun grenades and started throwing them on the women to force them backward.” 

The sisters became separated soon afterward. When Khawla tried to call Mary, a stranger picked up and told her that her sister had been shot in the head. “I called again, but this time I was told the owner of this phone had been killed,” Khawla recalled. 

Israeli military officials say they are reviewing allegations of shootings and acknowledge that their soldiers fire “warning shots” at approaching crowds to prevent “suspects from approaching.” 

As international pressure on Israel grows, its officials agreed Sunday to a pause in the airstrikes daily for 10 hours a day around three areas of the enclave to allow aid delivery and to restore electricity to a desalination plant to alleviate a dire shortage of potable water. It also said it was creating secure routes for UN aid trucks to distribute food and medicine across Gaza. 

Its military also began airdropping small amounts of food into the Gaza Strip, a move critics called a “grotesque distraction,” as well as insufficient and potentially dangerous, citing past incidents in which food pallets killed civilians. 

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump was visibly shaken this week by the reports of mass starvation, saying that, “Some of those kids are – that’s real starvation stuff … I see it and you can’t fake that…” After meeting with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Monday, they both agreed to set up food centers in Gaza but haven’t yet offered details. 

At the same time, the United Kingdom announced it would recognize the Palestinian state this fall if there was no ceasefire deal, following France’s declaration to do so last week. Canada announced its intentions on Wednesday.  

Internal pressure on the Israeli government is growing, too. This week, two prominent Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, accused Israel of crimes against humanity in Gaza, calling the situation there “our genocide,” CNN reported. 

“Nothing prepares you for the realization that you are part of a society committing genocide,” said Yuli Novak, head of B’Tselem, which released a report on the situation in the enclave. “This is a deeply painful moment for us. But… we have a duty to speak the truth as clearly as possible: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.” 

Also, this week, the presidents of five of Israel’s leading universities published an open letter to Netanyahu, telling the prime minister to “solve the terrible problem of hunger in Gaza,” adding that as victims of the Holocaust, Jews have “a special obligation” to prevent indiscriminate harm. 

Amid the furor and the stalled peace talks between Israel and Hamas, some far-right Israeli officials are doubling down on their plans to annex Gaza, possibly with the approval of Netanyahu for the first time, ABC News reported.  

Earlier this week, Israeli Minister Gila Gamliel showcased her vision of a future Gaza, which would replace a landscape of near-complete destruction with one featuring gleaming high-rises and luxury yachts, an enclave emptied of Palestinians because they, as she said, would become part of a program of “voluntary emigration.”  

Her colleague, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, elaborated: “All Gaza will be Jewish,” he said, explaining that the Israeli government “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out.”  

“There’s no hunger in Gaza,” he added. “But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”