There is reportedly a famine in Gaza. How can this be?
Time came out with a report this morning on Gaza. It begins with what appears to be an honest take on what is going on:
If any place had experience seeing civilians through war, it was the Gaza Strip. It’s much of why the place exists. That stretch of Mediterranean coast was only even named while being demarcated as a refuge for Palestinians driven off their land by Jewish forces in the 1948 war that created Israel. Gaza’s permanent status, like the fate of the Palestinians, was never decided, however. And as the decades churned on, so did the conflict.
There was a devastating rhythm to it. Palestinian militants launched missiles into Israel from Gaza. Israel’s military replied with airstrikes, at times with sustained campaigns dubbed wars. The longest lasted 50 days. In each round of fighting, civilians knew where to find safety: in the schools, clinics, and hospitals run by the U.N., which also fed them.
Nearly all of that has been destroyed in Israel’s response to the horrific Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023—though not only by bombardment. In its war on a terrorist group, Israel also dismantled civic structures that support an entire population, with the bonus of undercutting the U.N.
Israeli distrust of the U.N. runs deep. Most of its member nations support the Palestinian ambition for a state of their own, and in 1949 it set up the architecture of one. That was the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA. As its administrator, Philippe Lazzarini, put it, “The Israelis got a state. The Palestinians got UNRWA.”
With 13,000 employees, UNRWA was Gaza’s largest employer, and after Oct. 7, Israel charged that a dozen of them took part in the attack. (One was videotaped loading a body into an SUV.) Asserting that UNRWA was as riddled with Hamas as Gaza was with tunnels, Israel cut relations with it in January. In March, as a cease-fire with Hamas fell apart, Israel shut down aid from all international aid agencies—collapsing a fragile but professional humanitarian apparatus that had kept 2.1 million residents fed.
No food entered Gaza during March and April. In May, Israel declared that it was taking over aid distribution itself, through what’s called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Aid groups lamented that it reduced the number of food-distribution points from 400 to four and that, at about the same time, Israel launched a massive new offensive.
The result: now “the worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding in Gaza,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a consortium of leading aid agencies. The IPC is, in effect, the world’s hunger watchdog: from sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East and beyond, aid groups take their cues from its determinations about the food needs of communities caught in natural and man-made upheavals. Though it stopped short of formally declaring famine across the Strip, the warning was the humanitarian-world equivalent of a four-alarm fire. And it galvanized global opinion. “That’s real starvation stuff,” President Donald Trump said, after seeing images of wasting children on television. “You can’t fake that.”
Some reporters have looked into the reported famine in Gaza and were shocked with what they found. Many are blaming the Israelis for the lack of food in the region.
The Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza has forced Mohammad Abu Amsha to spend all day, every day, looking for a single meal for his family of seven. https://t.co/H2YCSSLh41
— CBC News (@CBCNews) August 1, 2025
Others say that is propaganda. Hamas is making money selling food for the people in Gaza.
Here you have it, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, is the problem in Gaza, they are stealing the food aid and selling it for a profit. https://t.co/xulRNALu6J
— Jungleball2 (@JungleBall_2) August 1, 2025
Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and current Trump Ambassador to Israel looked into it as well.
United States Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee after his visit to the Gaza Strip:
Hamas hates the American aid fund because it provides food without it being looted by Hamas. pic.twitter.com/p1klBcwu6f
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 1, 2025
Massive quantities of food are entering the Gaza Strip every month. But it appears it’s not making it to the people of Gaza.
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