Image by hosny salah from Pixabay.
By Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
A quarter of the way into the 21st century, we would never have expected an economically developed nation to deliberately set out to starve an entire population in a territory under its control. Such a policy would seem to belong to a past era, a time before the international community adopted binding codes of human rights. Yet in Gaza today, this assumption is being turned upside down. While the world looks on, Israel has imposed on Gaza a policy of extreme food deprivation that has already passed the threshold of famine. The global rules-based order is hanging on a thread, and that thread is gradually getting thinner.
The use of food as an instrument of control has been integral to Israel’s relationship to Gaza. Even before October 2023, Israel’s food policy in Gaza operated within the broader context of its extensive blockade, first imposed in 2007, which limited the flow of goods, including food, into the Gaza Strip. When Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, Israel instituted new security regulations that hampered the territory’s infrastructure and limited access to food throughout the strip. This policy led to widespread food insecurity, a weakened local economy, and high dependency of Gazans on humanitarian aid. Policies that restricted dietary diversity and nutrition-rich food resulted in higher rates of malnutrition, particularly among children.
Following the horrific Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders indicated that they were ready to impose collective punishment on the people of Gaza. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, ascribed blame for the Hamas massacres to the entire Gazan population, stating: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.” Just two days after the attack, the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, made explicit the intention to use food aid as a means of reprisal, saying: “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.”
The Siege On and Off
Under international pressure, the Israeli government wavered in its enforcement of the siege. For over a year, periods of complete denial of humanitarian aid would alternate with periods when restrictions would be partly lifted, allowing limited amounts of food and other essentials into the territory. During the ceasefire that began on January 19, hundreds of trucks full of food freely entered Gaza, finally providing the people of the territory relief from persistent hunger. But the respite was short-lived. Just two months later, Israel broke its ceasefire agreement with Hamas and imposed a complete blockade on food deliveries to the territory. Between March 2 and May 19, no food aid at all was allowed to enter Gaza, accelerating the process of starvation. Subsequently, in response to international pressure, Israel has slightly relaxed the siege, but access to food is still extremely limited and crisis levels of hunger continue to rise.
The Present Situation
Over the past couple of months thousands of people have gone for weeks without obtaining even a morsel to eat. Babies have perished from lack of infant formula. Children have been reduced to skin and bones, lying motionless in their beds. Adults faint from malnutrition. Each day, the number of starving people is escalating and the death toll mounts. As of September 18, 2025, reports from Al Jazeera indicate that 440 people have starved to death in Gaza since October 2023, with 147 of the victims being children.
Even doctors and nurses, working long shifts in the few functioning hospitals in Gaza, have had to endure hunger and exhaustion. Mark Brauner, an American emergency physician who volunteered in Gaza in June 2025, reports that “there have been physicians and nurses who have simply passed out in the middle of the emergency department; there are people passing out during surgery…. When we were there, every person on our team lost between 12 and 15 pounds.”
Here is a summary account of where things stand at present:
- Famine Confirmed: As of August 15, 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification partnership officially confirmed a famine in the Gaza Governorate. The famine threatens to spread to other parts of Gaza affected by severe food restrictions.
- Widespread Starvation: More than half a million people in Gaza are in the most severe category of food insecurity, known as IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe), which is characterized by starvation, destitution, and death. Projections indicate this number could rise to over 641,000 people. The entire population of Gaza (over 2 million people) is facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
- Malnutrition at Alarming Rates: Child malnutrition has reached devastating levels, with a record proportion of children screened in August found to be acutely malnourished. In Gaza City, almost one in five children were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in August.
- Access to Aid is Severely Limited: Despite a slight increase, aid supplies remain vastly insufficient and inconsistent. Aid delivery is hampered by ongoing conflict, restrictions, and logistical challenges. Humanitarian organizations report a near-total blockade on aid flows, with many essential items like food, water, and medical supplies being denied entry or delayed.
- Lack of Essential Services: The collapse of essential services, including health, sanitation, water, and market systems, is compounding the crisis. Many people lack access to clean water and fuel for cooking, and the agricultural sector has been decimated.
- Displacement and Insecurity: The constant displacement of the population and the destruction of infrastructure have made it nearly impossible for people to secure basic necessities. Violence at aid distribution points has also resulted in numerous deaths.
The United Nations recently warned that more than 320,000 children under 5 are at imminent risk of severe hunger. The number of children expected to be at risk of death from malnutrition by the end of June 2026 has tripled from 14,100 to 43,400. The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, called this “a 21st century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
After ending its complete siege, Israel assigned the task of providing food aid in the Gaza Strip to a private U.S.-based contractor called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). In contrast to the 400 distribution points that operated earlier under the UN’s Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, GHF maintains only four distribution sites. Three of these are in southern Gaza and one in the center, which means that the people of northern Gaza have virtually no access to food at all. In a public statement, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley calls this “a strategy of displacement” that forces people to move south to obtain food.
But even worse, each day desperate Gazans who flock to the GHF distribution sites in quest of food are shot by the Israeli soldiers and military contractors maintaining the sites. According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, between May 27 and August 1, “at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys.” Since then, the number of killings has increased. As early as June, the Commissioner General of UNRWA said, with reference to GHF, “the so-called ‘aid mechanism’ is an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people, a death-trap costing more lives than it saves. Food is weaponized, and Palestinians are dehumanized, without consequence.” The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said of GHF: “This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing.”
The agony faced by the people of Gaza is poignantly conveyed in an essay by Farida Al-Ghoul, a writer and educator sheltering in northern Gaza. She writes in USA Today: “Behind each number and statistic reported from Gaza is a person with a name, a face, a story. Mine. My siblings. The countless children wasting away in displacement camps and hospital corridors…. Hunger and displacement are not accidental. They are deliberate, part of Israel’s plan. Hunger is not faceless. It is the 9-year-old’s frail body. It is my wasted frame. It is the hollow eyes of every child in Gaza. Let the food trucks in. Let the children eat. Stop the endless displacement. End this calculated cruelty.”
What Must Be Done
In its recent report designating Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory includes, among its recommendations, the following measures:
- Immediately implementing a complete permanent ceasefire in Gaza and ending all military operations in the occupied Palestinian territory that involve the commission of genocidal acts.
- Restoring unhindered access to all UN staff, including UNRWA international staff, and all international agencies coordinating or providing humanitarian aid in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.
- Immediately ending its policy of starvation and ending the distribution of food aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
- Ensuring full, unimpeded access of humanitarian aid at scale and through multiple distribution points throughout the Gaza Strip, including food, clean water, medical equipment, and medicine to all areas of Gaza through a UN-led humanitarian response.
Since the U.S. has been the primary supplier of weapons to Israel and its champion at the UN Security Council, it’s especially incumbent upon us, as U.S. citizens, to stand up to protect the people of Gaza. Sadly, on September 18, the U.S. was the only nation to vote against a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, but the U.S. veto power was enough to cause the motion to fail.
In his famous Christmas sermon of 2023, the Palestinian Christian pastor Munther Isaac called Gaza “the moral compass of the world.” A compass, wherever it is placed, always points in one direction: true north. The crisis in Gaza has become a compass testing our own true north: our moral integrity, our ethical convictions, our faith in human decency. It determines our commitment to truth and the authenticity of our compassion, demanding of us solidarity with those who each day face incomprehensible, unimaginable, inescapable suffering—who are living through a nightmare that results, not from natural disaster, but from a regime bent on displacement, dispossession, and elimination.
In following the needle of this moral compass, the BGR Board has allocated $25,000 to providing emergency food relief to Gaza. At the time of this writing, we have not yet decided how to distribute these funds. We are still exploring the options open to us, trying to determine the most effective and efficient means to ensure the funds will be used to safely provide relief from hunger to the people of Gaza. We are considering dividing this amount between three major relief organizations: the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and the World Central Kitchen. Once we come to a decision, we will share the information with our supporters.
BGR’s vision statement says that we aspire to “a world in which all people dwell in peace and harmony with one another and with the natural environment.” This applies with special urgency to the people of Israel and Palestine. We hope that in time all the residents of this volatile region, Israelis and Palestinians, will finally be able to flourish in harmony, free of hatred, enmity, and violence.
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi is the co-founder and chair of Buddhist Global Relief.
