Israel's lies about Gaza's famine taken apart

Israel has deliberately starved Gaza. Here are its lies taken apart one by one

Israel has deliberately starved Gaza in front of the whole world. Its apologists have sought to deflect from this heinous crime with a campaign of lies - up to and including erasing the repeated, relentless confessions of Israel’s own leaders.

According to Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International:

This was a catastrophe engineered by Israel by design - with the full facilitation of the West. Any other claim is a lie. Here is the evidence.

Israel confessed to deliberate starvation from the very beginning

From the very beginning, Israel’s leaders and officials made clear that they would starve Gaza - and deprive it of the other essentials of life.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s then-defence minister, 9th October 2023:

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.

Major General Ghassan Alian, Coordinator of COGAT, the IDF’s civilian wing - supposedly charged with humanitarian affairs:

Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified. Human animals are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a tota blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.

This video was posted in a tweet addressed both to Hamas “and the residents of Gaza.”

Notably, Ghassan Alian has recently been driven out of his post - on the grounds that even more extreme elements believe he hasn’t done enough to block humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Israel’s Western allies admitted Israel’s deliberate starvation

In the spring of 2024, two US government departments told then-US President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that Israel was deliberately blocking aid from getting into Gaza. This imposed legal obligations on the US to immediately stop all military support for Israel. The US ignored its own laws.

Last October - during the US presidential contest, fearing backlash from voters for complicity in genocide - the US administration sent a public letter to the Israeli government listing various ways which it was blocking aid, threatening consequences if that did not change.

Israel refused to comply with these demands, clearly understanding that they had been written for domestic consumption and carried no weight. Their calculation was correct. After the election, the US refused to impose any consequences for Israel’s defiance of these supposed demands.

Similarly, in March 2024, the then-British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron wrote a letter to the Chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee listing various ways that Israel was deliberately blocking humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza. And yet still British support for Israel continued - including the sale of arms.

The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants centred on starvation

In May 2024, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, made requests for arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

That included:

• Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute.

• Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity.”

• My Office submits that these acts were committed as part of a common plan to use starvation as a method of war and other acts of violence against the Gazan civilian population as a means to (i) eliminate Hamas; (ii) secure the return of the hostages which Hamas has abducted, and (iii) collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza, whom they perceived as a threat to Israel.

• The effects of the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are acute, visible and widely known, and have been confirmed by multiple witnesses interviewed by my Office, including local and international medical doctors. They include malnutrition, dehydration, profound suffering and an increasing number of deaths among the Palestinian population, including babies, other children, and women.

In November 2024, the ICC formally issued those arrest warrants, finding “reasonable grounds” that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

But Western states repeatedly undermined the ICC, making clear that they would not honour the arrest warrants. That includes France, Italy and Germany. In doing so, they helped cement Israel’s impunity as regards its deliberate starvation of Gaza.

Israel’s war on aid agencies and aid workers

Israel has perpetrated the biggest slaughter of aid workers ever recorded. By March this year, the UN estimated that over 400 aid workers had been killed by the Israeli military.

Israel specifically waged a public war against UNRWA - the UN agency for Palestinian workers, and also the main humanitarian agency in Gaza.

In January 2024 - plausibly to distract from the International Court of Justice’s ruling and provisional orders in South Africa’s genocide case - the Israeli state launched a smear campaign against UNRWA, alleging it was “totally infiltrated” by Hamas and terrorists.

These claims were entirely unsubstantiated. But several of Israel’s Western allies nonetheless responded by suspending their funding for UNRWA, just as Gaza collapsed into Israel’s manufactured humanitarian catastrophe.

With the lack of evidence impossible to ignore, some Western countries restored funding to UNRWA - but the damage had been done. The US Congress has banned funding to UNRWA.

In October 2024, Israel’s legislature passed legislation banning UNRWA from operating in the occupied territories, including Gaza.

Although it is overwhelming Palestinian aid workers who have been killed by Israel - last April, Israel attacked a World Central Kitchen convoy of three cars, killing three Brits, an Australian, a Canadian-American, a Polish citizen and their Palestinian driver. WCK had coordinated its movements with the IDF. The top of each car was emblazoned with a giant WCK logo. The wreckage of each car were around 2.5km apart - in other words, each car was methodically attacked.

The senior IDF commander responsible had signed an open letter three months earlier demanding all aid to Gaza be stopped. The impact of the attack was that international humanitarian aid agencies suspended their operations - deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel kept bombing police officers charged with escorting aid envoys in Gaza - crucial for distributing aid. Even the United States asked them to stop doing so. Israel refused, with no consequences.

Israel destroyed Gaza’s agriculture, food production and livestock

It’s not just Israel’s siege of Gaza which has driven its population into famine. You have to marry this with Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s own ability to provide food for its population.

Israel’s attacks have left more than 95% of Gaza’s agricultural land unusable. 80% of Gaza’s total cropland has been damaged. 71% of greenhouses and 83% of agricultural wells have been damaged. According to the UN earlier this year:

Over two-thirds of agricultural wells (1,531 in total) are no longer functional, crippling irrigation. Cattle losses are at 96 percent, milk production has nearly halted, and only 1 percent of poultry remains alive.

According to Forensic Agriculture last November, 83% of all plant life in Gaza had been destroyed.

Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s fishing industry - destroying its port, destroying fishing vessels, and kidnapping or killing those who attempt to go out to sea to get fish.

Israel’s legal responsibilities

Under international law, as the occupying power, it is Israel’s legal responsibility to ensure the distribution of food and other humanitarian supplies to the civilian population. This contradicts claims by Israel that allowing in any aid at all is somehow an act of charity or generosity.

As per Article 55 of the 1949 Geneva Convention:

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

Israel announced a total siege in March 2025

On 2nd March 2025, Israel announced a total siege on Gaza - that nothing would be allowed in. It is difficult to know how much more explicit Israel is supposed to be.

Israel’s past massacres of Palestinians seeking aid

Israel’s massacre of hungry Palestinians seeking aid is far from new. In the so-called ‘Flour Massacre’ of 29th February 2024, the Israeli military massacred more than 100 civilians - and injured another 700 - as they waited for aid in Gaza City.

True to form, the Israeli state responded with a combination of lies, deflection, distortions and gaslighting. This was indulged by Western media outlets, who failed to attribute blame. Belatedly, a detailed CNN investigation 41 days later established what should always been obvious - that it could only be the Israeli military to blame. By then, attention had moved away.

Israel’s lies about Hamas stealing aid

Israel has justified its starvation of Gaza by claiming that Hamas is stealing aid.

But this is a lie. Cindy McCain is the director of the World Food Programme, and the widow of the late hawkishly pro-Israel Republican Senator John McCain. She has refuted the claims about Hamas stealing aid.

Then there’s David Satterfield, who was the Biden administration’s special Middle East envoy for humanitarian affairs, who has served George W Bush and Donald Trump in various different roles. He says that Israel doesn’t even privately make the claim or offer evidence that Hamas is stealing aid.

Let’s read this crucial passage from the International Crisis Group:

Israel insists that aid restrictions are needed to prevent Hamas from stealing supplies for itself, a theoretically valid concern in Gaza, where aid shipments are an obvious target amid general scarcity. While Hamas likely does extract some revenue – a common practice by authorities in conflict zones – comprehensive audits show that less than 1 per cent of assistance has been lost to theft, far below levels elsewhere. Despite its vaunted intelligence, Israel has released no evidence for its claims of rampant pillage… Organised looting, as UN and Israeli military assessments confirm, occurs at the hands of armed gangs, which the Israeli army encourages as an alternative to Hamas control. Aid officials and Gaza residents told Crisis Group that the Abu Shabab gang, armed and protected by Israel, has been the single most prolific looter since the war began.

Note that figure: “comprehensive audits show that less than 1 per cent of assistance has been lost to theft, far below levels elsewhere.”

Yesterday, it was revealed that an internal US government analysis “ found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies”, as Reuters puts it. They examined 156 incidents of theft of loss of US-funded supplies reported by US aid partner organisations between October 2023 and May 2025. They found “no reports alleging Hamas” benefited from these supplies.

Reuters note that “A State Department spokesperson disputed the findings, saying there is video evidence of Hamas looting aid, but provided no such videos.”

Israel’s ISIS-linked allies are stealing aid

As the International Crisis Group notes, aid is being looted - by Israel-backed criminal gangs in Gaza.

As even Avigdor Lieberman - Netanyahu’s former deputy prime minister - notes, these gangs are linked to ISIS. When challenged about these links, Netanyahu was bullish. “What's wrong with that?” he asked.

Israeli leaders and officials continue to loudly broadcast their support for starvation

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who in May 2025 announced that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” by the Israeli military, has frequently made clear his support for starvation, whilst making clear his fear that international pressure would prove an obstacle.

In August 2024, he declared: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”"

But in May 2025, Smotrich suddenly backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - which we will examine - as a substitute for the effective UN system. He was completely honest about his reasons.

Israel would allow the entry of the “minimum necessary… supply of food and medicines” so “that the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes.” In other words, this was simply a ruse.

For those who claim that Smotrich and fellow far-right National Security minister Itamar Ben Gvir have no influence - a recent New York Times piece exposed how Netanyahu systematically accepted their demands in order to remain in power.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Amichai Eliyahu - who has declared “all Gaza will be Jewish” an that Israel “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out” - declares: “There’s no hunger in Gaza. But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a dystopian killing machine

The shadowy Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was set up to replace the effective UN system of aid delivery. It violates the very basics of humanitarianism.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Jake Wood, a former US marine appointed as the GHF executive director. On the eve of its launch, he resigned, declaring that it was

clear that it is 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.

As a coalition of aid groups noted in May, the GHF aims to encourage the displacement of surviving Palestinians to southern Gaza. Why? Because Israel is building what right-wing former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert describes as a “concentration camp” on the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, with anyone refusing exterminated . This is a transitional step to deporting whoever survives, so that no living Palestinians remain in Gaza.

Much of the aid is unusable, because it includes dried and prepackaged food which cannot be cooked because Israel has “blocked the means of preparing it”, as Refugee International’s Jeremy Konyndyl points out.

As the GHF launched, Israeli soldiers immediately began massacring deliberately starved Palestinians. This was made clear repeatedly by the testimonies of Palestinians. Such testimonies should be sufficient - but alas, Palestinian life is treated as meaningless by most of our media.

After the first massacre, CNN more promptly established that the Israeli military was responsible - but still Western media outlets overwhelmingly did not attribute responsibility.

Israeli soldiers and officers briefed Israeli newspaper Haaretz that they had been ordered to deliberately shoot at unarmed Palestinians waiting for aid. An Israeli reservist told the same to Sky News. The likes of the World Food Programme’s Cindy McCain has testified that Israeli troops are firing at Palestinians at aid sites.

Yesterday, a US colonel who had worked with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - Anthony Aguilar - told the BBC that Israeli troops were firing at unarmed starved Palestinians at aid points. He said:

In my entire career, never have I witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against an unarmed, starving, civilian population.

Well over a thousand Palestinians have been murdered by the Israeli military while seeking aid, with thousands more maimed and injured.

Israel itself admits lies

In today’s New York Times, Israeli officials have briefed 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”.

Israel’s claims about aid trucks waiting at Gaza’s border

Israel has claimed that there are 950 truckloads of aid waiting at Gaza’s border, but the UN is refusing to distribute it. They’ve even tweeted: “We call on the United Nations to stop blocking essential aid. Immediately.”

The truth is that Israel has made it impossible to distribute that aid. As Associated Press note:

To retrieve the aid at the border — or move around most of the Gaza Strip — U.N. trucks must enter zones controlled by the military after obtaining its permission. Once the aid is loaded, the trucks must get safely to the population. The whole trip can take 20 hours, the U.N. says.

Large crowds of desperate people, as well as criminal gangs, overwhelm trucks as they enter and strip off the supplies. Witnesses say Israeli troops regularly open fire on the crowds, causing deaths and injuries.

“Taken together, these factors have put people and humanitarian staff at grave risk and forced aid agencies on many occasions to pause the collection of cargo from crossings controlled by the Israeli authorities,” said Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA."

Israel’s slaughter of police officers charged with guarding aid trucks, the desperation caused by mass starvation, and the Israel-supported armed gangs looting aid - all of this has provoked a mass collapse in law and order. That makes the safe distribution of aid impossible.

Furthermore, when the aid is at the border, the UN must request facilitation from the Israeli military. “It says more than half its movement requests, 506 out of 894, were either denied or impeded by the military in May, June and July.” The UN also refers to constant waiting for Israeli forces to give the green light for “only to be denied.” As we’ve seen, Israel has perpetrated the biggest slaughter of aid workers ever recorded.

Yesterday, an IDF whistleblower revealed that aid from 1,000 trucks was buried in pits or burned.

The crime of the century

Some politicians and commentators complicit in Israel’s genocide are beginning to panic. They realise that the scale of this historic crime will be impossible to suppress, and that their role will be exposed.

Here are the facts. Israel has deliberately manufactured a famine in Gaza. They repeatedly made clear — boasted, even — that they are intentionally depriving the Palestinian people of the means of survival. Their Western allies knew they were doing this, and continued to arm and support them. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants over this crime long ago. They massacred aid workers, waged war on Gaza’s main humanitarian agency, and destroyed Gaza’s ability to produce its own food. They armed ISIS-linked gangs who loot aid, slaughtered security personnel charged with guarding aid, and destroyed infrastructure necessary to distribute aid. They replaced the effective UN system with a dystopian killing machine, designed to help them construct a concentration camp and then deport any remaining survivors. They have admitted their own lies.

Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people has been more documented and confessed to as it happened than any other crime in history.

Those who aided and abetted this abomination will be held accountable in the coming reckoning.