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Starvation in Gaza? The Truth Behind the Headlines
Trucks carrying aid move, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri
“Gaza edges closer to famine as Israel’s total blockade nears its third month” (CNN, May 1, 2025).
“Starvation looms as Israel’s total blockade on Gaza enters its third month” (NBC News, May 4, 2025).
“Israel is starving us in Gaza. This is what that feels like” (The Guardian, May 6, 2025).
Once again, various media headlines and NGO press releases are teeming with the news that Gaza is on the brink of famine and mass starvation. In many cases, these forecasts of doom are laying the blame squarely at the feet of Israel and its two-month-old blockade of the coastal enclave.
But is this accurate? Is Israel’s ongoing blockade about to cause a mass famine across the Gaza Strip?
The answer is more complex and nuanced than the sensationalist media headlines would have us believe.
When reading news stories about the alleged ongoing food crisis in Gaza, it’s important to bear in mind that:
- Enough aid entered the Gaza Strip during the second ceasefire in early 2025 to keep Gaza’s two million residents nourished for at least 5 to 6 months.
- The inequality in the distribution of food among the people of Gaza is due to a variety of complicating factors on the ground, including the hijacking of free food aid by Hamas and the exploitation of it for profit.
- The Israeli leadership is currently devising plans to restart the distribution of food to Gaza’s Palestinians without it falling into the hands of Hamas.
- Throughout the war, there have been several claims that a famine caused by Israeli restrictions on aid was imminent. However, none of these famines have ever occurred as forecasted.
- The rate of malnutrition among children in Gaza is roughly equal to the rate of malnutrition that existed prior to the start of the war.
Markets, Restaurants & Food Lines: The Food Aid Situation in Gaza
Following a six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in January and February 2025, Israel imposed a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, hoping to pressure Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages and accepting more favorable conditions for a renewed ceasefire.
Under this blockade, no aid and materials (including food) are allowed to enter the embattled Strip.
However, in the six weeks between the beginning of the ceasefire and the imposition of the blockade, Israel facilitated the delivery of 338,676 tons of food into Gaza.
According to the World Food Programme’s estimate, this amount of food would be enough to sustain all 2 million residents of Gaza for between 5 to 6 months, while, according to the UN’s estimate, this amount should last the people of Gaza between 6 to 8 months.
Funny how UNRWA suddenly stopped reporting the amount of aid entering Gaza right after the ceasefire began and the number of daily trucks shot up to 600.
Maybe they realized their “starvation” narrative had completely collapsed, with the quantities of food being enough to… pic.twitter.com/hjCXeAvHuk
— Mark Zlochin – מארק זלוצ’ין༝ (@MarkZlochin) April 29, 2025
Now, less than four months since the beginning of the ceasefire, it is clear that there should still be ample supplies of food available across the Gaza Strip.
If so, what accounts for the disturbing images of Palestinian civilians waiting in long food lines?
According to Times of Israel journalist Lazar Berman, the existence of long and chaotic food lines alongside images of Gazans patronizing markets and restaurants (which have yet to receive the attention of the mainstream media) likely points to an imbalance in the distribution of aid within the Strip. While some areas have adequate access to food, other areas either have little access to food or only have food available at inflated and restrictive prices.
One of the main factors contributing to this discrepancy in access to food aid is Hamas itself, which has commandeered a significant amount of this free food aid, either to hoard it or to sell it at inflated prices and to fill its coffers with the profits.
Malnutrition in Children
Alongside stories and images of long food lines, another aspect of the alleged food crisis in Gaza that has received a considerable amount of attention from the media is malnutrition among local children.
In the first half of April 2025, 32,000 children were screened for acute malnutrition. Of those screened, 984 were diagnosed with severe or moderate malnutrition.
While any level of malnutrition among children is lamentable, analyst Mark Zlochin has noted that this level of malnutrition among children (3%) is actually slightly lower than the rate that existed in Gaza prior to the war.
Given the renewed hysteria about alleged “starvation” in Gaza, here are two critical facts:
1) Out of 92,000 children screened for malnutrition in March, only 3,722 were diagnosed as malnourished and enrolled in a malnutrition management program.
That’s 4% – exactly the same…
— Mark Zlochin – מארק זלוצ’ין༝ (@MarkZlochin) April 28, 2025
As part of the media’s focus on malnutrition in children, news outlets will focus on certain examples to provide a human face to this issue.
However, in many cases, the children represented in these stories suffer from pre-existing conditions that can contribute to their ill state. For example, NBC News, CBC News, and CNN all profiled Osama Al-Raqab, a 6-year-old Gazan boy diagnosed with malnutrition. Unlike the description of him as having been “full of life” and “once-healthy,” Osama suffers from cystic fibrosis, a disorder that can lead to malnutrition in even the best circumstances. To blame Osama’s condition on Israel’s blockade is both misleading and manipulative.
In sum, while many media organizations and NGOs seek to portray Israel’s two-month-long blockade of Gaza as the sole cause of impending famine and mass starvation in the region, the reality is much more complex.
It’s time the media acknowledge the complexity, and — above all — stop falling for the Hamas narrative of a non-existent famine in Gaza.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Starvation in Gaza? The Truth Behind the Headlines first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.