Starvation in Gaza is met with humanitarian theatre, not intervention

Images of Gaza's starving children force statements of concern, but western leaders substitute talk of 'humanitarian access' for action to end Israel's genocide

Protesters hold placards supporting Palestinians facing famine outside Downing Street in London during an emergency cabinet meeting on the Gaza humanitarian crisis on 29 July 2025 (Justin Tallis/AFP)

Protesters hold placards supporting Palestinians facing famine outside Downing Street in London during an emergency cabinet meeting on the Gaza humanitarian crisis on 29 July 2025 (Justin Tallis/AFP)

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Following repeated warnings by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), Unicef and others of a risk of famine throughout 2024, Israel's systematic denial of food, water and medicine to Gaza has reached its inevitable conclusion: mass starvation, with hundreds already killed as a direct result of intentional deprivation.

Condemnation of Israel's use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza has grown in recent weeks. And yet all this moment has revealed is the exceptional threshold for even the most basic display of liberal concern.

Palestinians must be starved to death on camera, in full view of the world, before the western political class shows a modicum of unease.

Even then, it is only suffering inflicted on Palestinian children that appears to evoke discomfort.

In the UK, both Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have placed particular emphasis on hunger and malnutrition among children. Lammy has described "innocent children holding out their hand for food", while Starmer has expressed that "images of starving children in particular are revolting".

Listening to their latest performance of selective concern, I am reminded of the Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, who reflects in Perfect Victims that "we practice a politics of appeal, transforming our children into persuasive talking points, hoping to pull at the heartstrings of the heartless".

As Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people continues unabated, only the most barbaric crimes have elicited fleeting condemnation or brief coverage in the mainstream media.

Western appetite

By December 2024, Israel had committed more than 9,900 massacres against Palestinians in Gaza.

A single one of these crimes committed against white people anywhere in the world would have been enough to swiftly end all military, political and economic support to the perpetrator.

At first glance, it might appear that the West will permit Israel to kill Palestinians in any manner of ways except by starvation

It is not simply global indifference and apathy that led us to this moment - an ambivalent audience would eventually tire of Israel's violence and respond to public dissent. Rather, 680 days of unrelenting genocide stands as testament to the West's bloodlust for Palestinian death.

Western powers are captivated by, and dependent on, Israel's spectacle of violence. There is profit to be made from the genocide too, with some already speaking openly of building theme parks and casinos atop the mass graves of the Palestinian people.

Is Israel's starvation of children a step too far?

At first glance, it might appear that the West will permit Israel to kill Palestinians in any manner of ways except by starvation.

Air strikes on homes, hospitals and schools can be denied, downplayed or eventually blamed on Palestinians themselves. After all, the so-called "fog of war" is thickest when it is an Israeli soldier whose finger is on the trigger.

Deny, downplay, deflect

In response to growing recognition of starvation, Israel and its allies have deployed the same tried and tested strategy: deny, downplay, deflect.

First, they say there is no starvation. Then they insist it is not as severe as Palestinians and countless public health experts attest. And when that fails, they blame the UN or the Palestinian armed resistance.

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In a particularly grotesque display of their irredeemable inhumanity, the host and guest on a far-right British TV show recently tried to excuse Israel's weaponisation of hunger by claiming that children were malnourished due to underlying medical conditions, and not for want of food.

Have new footnotes been appended to the Geneva Conventions that now make it acceptable to starve children to death as long as they have another health problem, such as cerebral palsy?

As political scrutiny has briefly intensified, several states have issued statements of condemnation or reiterated calls for humanitarian access, repeating the same ineffective demands for compliance with international law and the delivery of aid.

Yet history should have taught us that you cannot appeal to the benevolence of a genocidaire.

This rhetoric of supposed humanitarian concern only functions to deflect attention from the absence of meaningful political intervention, and by extension the deepening culpability of states in Israel's ongoing genocide.

Speaking from his golf course on the west coast of Scotland on 28 July, US President Donald Trump announced that the State Department had committed $60m in food aid in June to Gaza (later revealed as $30m, of which only $3m had actually been dispensed as of early August).

"Nobody said thank you," Trump complained, while avoiding mention of the unprecedented value of US military aid to Israel during the genocide, overshadowing humanitarian aid with $17.9bn as of October 2024.

The sum total of what the West considers politically possible is mouldy food thrown from airplanes, a PR stunt eagerly publicised by the very governments complicit in the slaughter.

Starvation as political violence

With starvation, there can be no ambiguity of intent.

It is impossible to accidentally starve someone, and certainly not to the point of death. Starvation is always an act of intentional deprivation, perpetrated by one group against another. Given the established charge of genocide, Israel's exterminatory intent could not be clearer.

Contrary to the suggestion that it is more politically palatable to speak of starvation or famine than of genocide, all are always intentional, always premeditated, and always violent in the most extreme way. No wonder Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again kicked the hasbara machine into full swing.

Israel is starving Gaza to death, and still the world does nothing

While experts still dither over acknowledging hundreds of clear instances of genocidal intent from Israeli officials, the evidence of starvation in Gaza reveals the depths of the Zionist logic of elimination.

It should be no surprise that Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, was among the first to declare that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide.

To this end, starvation must not be framed as a physiological condition that can be remedied with food alone. It is the end stage of the most grotesque form of calculated political violence. The only effective intervention is to stop those who use starvation as a weapon to kill.

Anything less is little more than the latest act in Israel's protracted theatre of cruelty, what British writer and rapper Akala has ridiculed as "false charity that gives with one hand and bombs with the other".

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Famine in Gaza

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