Catastrophic Starvation In Gaza

Food scarcity reaches new heights

My position on Israel’s war in Gaza has been the same for quite a while: while a military response was appropriate in the wake of October 7th, the war should have been over a long time ago. It has gone on for far too long, and cost the lives of tens of thousands of Gazans—probably near 70,000. About one in twenty Gazans are dead.

Life in Gaza has been hell since the start of the war. One cannot in good conscience continue carrying out a war until the last vestiges of radicalism have been stamped out from an almost entirely radicalized population. At this point, I predict the historical record will judge Israel’s assault on Gaza as similar to the U.S. bombing of Laos or Cambodia—as a horrifyingly gratuitous air war that cost far too many innocent lives and bombed millions of people back to the stone age.

It’s not a subject I spend very much time talking about because it’s one on which changing minds seems uniquely impossible, and I don’t have any unique expertise. Everyone already has an opinion on the conflict, and I don’t have much to add that people don’t already know. We’re approaching two years of catastrophic and destructive war, of nearly all the homes in Gaza being demolished, of children going hungry in tents, and of children being burned alive in schools. And no, the mere fact that Hamas hasn’t surrendered and operates in civilian areas does not give unfettered license to endlessly raze.

Like the war in Vietnam, the war in Gaza has dragged on for long enough that it’s hard to keep track of it. So much has happened, that beyond occasionally hearing news reports of new horrors, it’s hard to get an accurate qualitative sense of what’s been happening.

So for this reason, probably many people do not know the following very troubling fact: recently, things have gotten a lot worse.

While starvation deaths have been pretty modest up until this point, this is likely to change. Gazans might very well start starving to death in droves.

Don’t take my word for it. Avi Bitterman is a pro-Israel medical doctor who has, since the start of the war, spent lots of effort criticizing claims about famine that he regards as overblown. Yet he recently noted “that there is very concerning data regarding the food situation in Gaza.” Similarly, the Free Press, a pro-Israel outlet that has previously pushed back against claims of starvation in Gaza, recently claimed “unlike past lies about the [food] situation in Gaza, new research is a real cause for concern.”

You should trust people most when they tell you things that go against their ideological inclinations. When libertarians tell you that some industry should be regulated, you should listen. When liberals tell you that regulations of some industry are killing growth, you should listen. And when pro-Israel commentators who have repeatedly argued against claims of Gazan famine start telling you there’s a severe famine risk, you should listen.

What’s the data that’s so concerning? Part of it comes from humanitarian groups on the ground who have been warning about hunger reaching heights previously not seen. But the most convincing evidence comes from charts of food prices over time. When food is scarce, the price goes up. The charts below, from Yanay Spitzer of Hebrew University, show catastrophic rise in food prices:

Here’s the reporting from the Free Press:

Since October 7, 2023, according to Spitzer, flour’s price, per 25 kilogram sack, changed as follows:

January 2024: Over 300 shekels.

January 2025, before the most recent ceasefire: 500 shekels.

During the ceasefire: It dropped back down to 50 shekels—almost its pre-war price.

Why the volatile prices? That’s war—and while a tenfold increase in the cost of flour likely indicates a significant drop in supply, it doesn’t necessarily prove widespread hunger, let alone famine.

But here’s why Spitzer is worried. After the last ceasefire ended in March, the cost of flour shot back up to 500 shekels by the end of April. It then hit 875 shekels by the second week of May, and 1,750 by the end of the month.

Here’s the worst part. “According to reports from the past few days,” Spitzer wrote, “if the price of a kilogram of flour has indeed reached 150 shekels—meaning 3,750 shekels per sack—we are looking at an 80-fold price increase.”

In other words, Spitzer is arguing that whatever flour shortage there was in Gaza up until now doesn’t even come close to what the strip is currently experiencing. In summary, he writes, “very few households can sustain themselves under such shortages for more than a few days.”

Life in Gaza has been brutal for a long time. But we must not be desensitized to the reality: the situation is at a crisis level that has not been seen throughout the war so far. This much has been acknowledged by generally pro-Israel sources. The New York Times summarizes the situation: “Gazans are dying of starvation.” Around 100,000 women and children face severe acute malnutrition, the harshest hunger diagnosis. Parents routinely go days without eating, so that they can give a few scraps of bread to their hungry children.

What should be done about this crisis? Avi Bitterman has several suggestions. First, humanitarian operations should be scaled up dramatically—more food should be brought in and more personnel should be hired to distribute the food. Second, the IDF should raise conditions for engagement near food distribution centers, so that vastly more provocation is needed to justify firing their weapons near food distribution centers. If the IDF fires into the crowd of starving people near where they’re distributing food, that doesn’t just kill innocent people, but makes food distribution vastly more difficult. Third, if aid hasn’t been distributed within some time period, then it should be donated to humanitarian groups tasked with distribution.

These seem like incredibly modest and obvious suggestions. Israel should also, in my view, end the war. It would be far easier to distribute food if Israel was not actively continuing military operations in Gaza. Israel should attempt to get the hostages back in exchange for a permanent end to the war. But even if they can’t get the hostages back, it would be wrong to continue imposing hell on millions of people for a dwindling probability of freeing around fifty hostages. Even if a nation has special obligations to its own people, these special obligations are not so extreme as to license unfettered carnage on millions for the sake of possibly saving fifty.

Though it’s easy to look away from the carnage and be fatigued by all the death, this is the time when policy change is most important. This is the time when there is serious risk of many people starving to death. I can think of no words more fitting than those of Mohammed Mansour, writing for the New York Times:

We need the world to see us. Gaza is fading from the headlines, but the suffering continues. Every day, quietly, relentlessly. The international community must act: to open access to aid, to protect civilians and to demand an end to this devastation.

We are exhausted, but we endure. We have to. Our children are watching.

Edit: 7/28 Israel has announced efforts to accelerate aid drops. As for how successful this will be, we can only wait and see.