I cannot comprehend the mindset required to weaponize famine as a military and political strategy.
And yet this has repeatedly been part of conflicts and wars throughout history. Invading armies taking food and destroying crops.
And this was the strategy used against the Native people in this country. Untold numbers of buffalo were intentionally slaughtered. A history of forced assimilation and genocide.
More than 116,000 metric tons of food aid have been sitting in position along the aid corridors into Gaza, the U.N children’s agency, UNICEF, and the World Food Program said, adding that it represents enough food to feed 1 million people for four months.
“Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border,” said U.N. World Food Program executive director Cindy McCain. “If we wait until a famine is confirmed, it will already be too late for many people.”
Gaza faces ‘critical’ famine risk, experts say, as Israel blocks aid. The world’s leading body on food emergencies, the IPC, said Gaza was at “critical” risk of famine, two months into an aid blockade by Israel. By Abbie Cheeseman, Miriam Berger and Claire Parker, The Washington Post, May 12, 2025
In a powerful statement, Tom Fletcher, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, condemned Israel’s decision to halt humanitarian assistance as a “cruel collective punishment” of the Palestinian population.
GAZA STRIP: IPC Acute Food Insecurity and Acute Malnutrition Special Snapshot
Nineteen months into the conflict, the Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of Famine. Over 60 days have passed since all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies were blocked from entering the territory. Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks. The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation.
One in five Gazans are facing starvation, while the entire territory is at critical risk of famine that is projected to worsen in the coming months, the globe’s leading body on food emergencies said Monday.
The report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC, came in the midst of a more than two-month-long aid blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip that Israeli officials say is designed to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. Aid organizations and the United Nations have called for an end to the siege and described it as a policy of “cruel collective punishment.” Legal experts and rights groups say it violates international law.
According to the data published by the IPC, a panel developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, at least 244,000 people — or 12 percent of the population — were classified as living in IPC Phase 5, the most severe level of food insecurity before famine, otherwise known as “catastrophe,” based on its latest snapshot assessment from April 1 to Saturday. By September, it projects that 470,000 people will be in that category: the entire population facing acute food insecurity if conditions persist.
Gaza faces ‘critical’ famine risk, experts say, as Israel blocks aid. The world’s leading body on food emergencies, the IPC, said Gaza was at “critical” risk of famine, two months into an aid blockade by Israel. By Abbie Cheeseman, Miriam Berger and Claire Parker, The Washington Post, May 12, 2025
Briefing document
The NotebookLM research system can create, among other things, briefing documents. These are compilations from the sources in the NotebookLM project. There are currently 50 sources I’ve loaded into this project about advancing Israeli incursions and famine in Gaza.
unflinching 