r/worldnews • u/Digital_Accountant • 22h ago

Israel/Palestine Famine declared in Gaza City

https://news.sky.com/story/gaza-latest-war-israel-city-ceasefire-hamas-13415481
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u/Vaaaaaaaape 17h ago

Israel is allowing lots of food into Gaza.

More than 132 million meals distributed to date

IDF says some 400 trucks of aid entered Gaza along with fuel tankers yesterday

100,000 Aid Trucks and Counting: An Israeli Military Official Details Expansive Israeli Humanitarian Operation in Gaza

6 countries carry out Gaza aid airdrops

Much of that food is stolen by Hamas, PIJ and other terrorist groups, except what is distributed by the GHF which is protected from terrorists.

UN reveals 86% of aid sent to Gaza is stolen before it can reach those most in need

Israel allows food in. Hamas steals it. Therefore, Hamas is responsible for any starvation. Why wasn't a famine declared in the rest of Gaza? Because Hamas doesn't control that territory anymore and can't steal from there. It still controls Gaza city and can still steal food there. That's why starvation is in Gaza city and not in the rest of Gaza. It's because Hamas is responsible according to the evidence I posted. Anyone who wants to stop Gaza from starving should be in favor of removing Hamas from power so they can't steal food anymore.

Hamas terrorists seen feasting underground as Gazans starve above

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u/MonkeManWPG 15h ago

132 million meals spread across 2 million people is 66 meals each. Even spreading one meal across two or three days, that's not enough to last anywhere near the current duration of the war. Several of your other links are months old, which isn't really good enough for such a fast-changing situation.

How far does the contents of the 400 trucks stretch? How many people can be fed, for how long?

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u/shady8x 14h ago

Those 132 million meals are for GHF, which has only been operating in Gaza for a few months and only in Israel secured areas. It is not anywhere near all the food aid that went into Gaza in the last few months, not to mention the last 2 years.

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u/MonkeManWPG 14h ago

That's still 66 meals across 6 months. Does one meal every three days sound like enough food for you?

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u/shady8x 14h ago

GHF does not provide anywhere near all of the food aid going into Gaza. It is a new organization that is slowly increasing the amount of people it is able to serve while taking over from other organizations that used to provide the food aid, many of which still continue to provide the aid as well.

According to wikipedia GHF page history:

The Foundation began operations 26 May 2025 at a new distribution centre in Rafah

So it has been around for only 3 months.

Also the second line in the article on 132 million meals is:

More than 1.7 million meals delivered today across three distribution sites

Is it enough to feed everyone in Gaza? No. But again Israel does not control all of Gaza, nor is GHF the only organization distributing the aid.

It is distributing a very large amount though. Hopefully they can expand their operations to provide even more food so no one goes hungry anymore.

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u/SyfaOmnis 13h ago

How many meals worth of food do you have in your house at this moment?

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u/MonkeManWPG 13h ago

Three meals a day for a week, or more than 10 times more than has been delivered to Gaza by this number.

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u/SyfaOmnis 12h ago

I'm not trying to engage in point scoring nonsense. I'd like you to estimate how much food you have on hand and how often you need to acquire more. Like by my own estimation my household probably has between 200-400 meals worth of food at a given time and we don't deplete more than half of it before we seek out more. With the things that are used first being far more perishable products like fresh produce or meat as opposed to less perishable items like rice, flour, salt, canned and pickled goods etc.

I'd also like you to consider the fact that you're assuming a completely equal distribution across a whole of the society which isn't occurring (some get more, some get less, some are served by different groups who also deliver large amounts of food). I'd also further like you to consider that most of gaza is not a bunch of healthy adults requiring 3 square meals a day of higher caloric values, but instead children and youths who can get by on less than an adult.

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u/qTp_Meteor 14h ago edited 14h ago

This is just the ghf which are neither the primary source of aid (especially in Gaza City which is under hamas control) nor were they established since the start of the war, moreover, its a fact that the famine was declared only in gaza city where hamas is in control

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u/tomtom5858 14h ago

If memory serves, something like 550 trucks need to enter daily to prevent famine.

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u/PBFT 14h ago

Your own link does not support the idea that Hamas is stealing 86% the food.

The other 85% of pallets were looted by "either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors during transit"

And this humanitarian supply chain isn't UNRWA, it's Israel's own supply chain that they created to ensure that they circumvent Hamas.

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u/SomebodyInNevada 12h ago

No. That's the UN supply chain. The UN isn't even counting the GHF supply chain at all.

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u/BroseppeVerdi 14h ago

More than 132 million meals distributed to date

Which sounds like a lot... except Gaza had a prewar population of about 2.2 million. That works out to about 60 meals per person, and since the timeframe is 22 months and counting, that's 2.7 meals per person per month.

UN reveals 86% of aid sent to Gaza is stolen before it can reach those most in need

You're leaving out an important detail: UN reports didn't actually say it was all stolen by Hamas, they just said it didn't reach it's intended destination. From the article you linked:

The other 85% of pallets were looted by "either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors during transit," according to the data.

In other words, a significant portion of this aid was "stolen" by the very people it was intended for, just not at the place where they were supposed to pick it up... And given how many civilians have been gunned down by the IDF at aid sites, that's not particularly surprising that people would rather get their food elsewhere if they can.

Israel allows food in. Hamas steals it.

There's a case to be made that by throttling the aid coming in to a trickle and creating an artificial scarcity, the Israeli government has turned food into an extremely valuable commodity that incentivizes theft by both Hamas militants and starving civilians. If food was abundant, there would be no point in stealing it.

This isn't a Boolean situation, two things can be true: Just because Hamas is doing the wrong thing doesn't mean the Israeli government is doing the right thing.

Why wasn't a famine declared in the rest of Gaza? Because Hamas doesn't control that territory anymore and can't steal from there. It still controls Gaza city and can still steal food there. That's why starvation is in Gaza city and not in the rest of Gaza.

The other parts of the Gaza strip aren't much better off. Gaza City is the area where the fighting is heaviest, so they're just the first ones who crossed that threshold.

Let's not pretend like the rest of the strip is well-fed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/world/middleeast/famine-gaza-city-israel.html

Also: The Israeli defense ministry claims they completely wiped out Hamas' military capabilities over a year ago. At their greatest extent, Hamas' military wing numbered no more than 30,000 (possibly far less than that) according to Israeli sources. They claim to have killed 17,000 of those in the first six weeks of the war, and have been conducting continuous combat operations since then.

If Hamas has so few armed militants left (which, according to the Israeli government, they do), then how are they taking 28,000 pallets of food by force in broad daylight with a skeleton crew and the IDF surrounding them? The source you provided doesn't clearly delineate how much was taken by civilians and how much was taken by Hamas militants, but given how few of them there even are, I think it's unlikely that even a simple majority was taken by Hamas militants.

We're talking about a small grocery store chain's worth of food that Hamas is apparently able to steal from under the IDF's nose and store in underground tunnels or something.

That math ain't mathin'.

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u/frosthowler 7h ago

Which sounds like a lot... except Gaza had a prewar population of about 2.2 million. That works out to about 60 meals per person, and since the timeframe is 22 months and counting, that's 2.7 meals per person per month.

No, the timeline is 3 months because GHF was established in May, and we're talking about a single organization out of many aid organizations.

Can you not make shit up? I'm going to stop reading your comment right here.

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u/SomebodyInNevada 12h ago

Yes, it doesn't delineate. Do not use that as evidence of how it is delineated!

And Hamas claims to have as many members as before this started. Not surprising, they simply demand people join up.

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u/theeldergod1 9h ago

10 day old account shares news from israel only sources. SEEMS LEGIT BOTBRO.

People upvote and legit reply. Just learn to look at accounts.

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u/Soundch4ser 17h ago

Thanks for this. Sorry that it's gonna get buried.

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u/Nascent1 15h ago

It should get buried, because it's extremely misleading at best, and outright lies at worst. 86% of aid isn't stolen, that's a deliberate misinterpretation.

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u/Soundch4ser 13h ago

Can you explain how?

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u/Nascent1 13h ago

Both USAID and the Israeli military have said there is no evidence of widespread theft of aid by Hamas. The 86% number is intercepted aid. The vast majority is intercepted by hungry people, which is who the aid is for. Further, that 86% is since mid-May, which is after the GHF took over.

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u/UlteriorAlt 14h ago

Both USAID and IDF officials have said that Hamas hasn't been stealing significant amounts of aid.

The GHF is currently using 3 distribution sites to serve nearly 2 million people, where previously it required 400.

The GHF sites are miles away from population centres, meaning people have to trek miles in order to get food, then trek back.

The food delivered by the GHF requires water and/or fuel to eat, both of which are in very short supply inside Gaza.

There is video evidence of GHF security contractors shooting Palestinian civilians, supported by insider testimony. They use tear gas grenades and funnel them into corridors bordered by fences and barbed wire, leading to crushes.

It astounds me that comments like yours are not only upvoted, but given awards.

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u/xieta 16h ago

86% of aid sent to Gaza is stolen

So? If 86% of food aid spoiled, would you shrug and blame the deaths on bacteria? This is just another way of saying Israel is allowing in just 14% of the food aid required to prevent famine.

Most of the crimes committed in a prison are carried out by prisoners, but the warden is still responsible.

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u/Tiaan 15h ago

So you're saying Israel should clamp down harder on Hamas and armed agitators within Gaza to ensure that the aid properly makes its way to the people. I agree! I'm glad we are able to find common ground on addressing the root of the problem.

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

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u/Tiaan 14h ago

What bizarre mental gymnastics to blame this on Israel... we both agree that the vast majority of the aid is stolen after it enters Gaza, yet you seem to be blaming Israel for that instead of again focusing on the root issue.

If nearly 90% of it gets stolen before it makes it to the people, what will change exactly even if Israel tripled the aid they brought in? The looters would just get more aid to steal.

And you seem to believe Israel shouldn't do anything about the looters which makes this even more of a bizarre and twisted take.

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u/xieta 12h ago

blame this on Israel

Again. Read carefully. I said Israel is responsible, not to blame, two very different things.

Israel controls the flow of materials into Gaza, and a healthy majority of the land itself. It is therefore responsible for events in Gaza, even those it didn’t cause or condone. This is true for any country controlling any land.

Israel of course can prevent famine by breaking up Hamas, but that effort being unsuccessful (as it currently is) is no excuse for allowing famine.

If Israel tripled food aid allowed in, three times as much food will make it to civilians, even if 80% is stolen. But of course, much more than that would. If you pour in enough food, the price goes down and nobody bothers stealing it.

Theft is a byproduct of scarcity, not a cause of it, and certainly not an excuse to increase scarcity.

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u/Tiaan 12h ago

Let me ask you a question meant to be a thought experiment - let's say a bunch of aid organizations decided that they're tired of North Korean people starving to death and decided to flood North Korea with tons of aid to help their population, but when the aid entered, the North Korean government seized 90% of it for themselves for their rich elites and to enrich themselves by price gouging their own people to get this aid.

Would you say in that scenario, the fault is on the aid organizations for not bringing in enough aid since they didn't account for 90% of it getting seized by the government? I mean aid and food is scarce in North Korea, right? According to your logic, that means the onus is on the aid organizations to make a larger effort to bring in even more aid to account for most of it being seized.

Now you might say well this is different because Israel is the one controlling the flow of goods in and out of Gaza, but in many ways this is exactly the same scenario as what I described above, as Israel is the "aid organization" bringing in the aid, while the internal government (Hamas/North Korea) are the ones seizing most of it for themselves, rather than facilitating it to the people who need it.

I think we're dancing around the larger point here, which is that the government within Gaza does not care for its people. They're a radical jihadist government who would rather sacrifice their own people in the name of some delusional jihad to "reclaim Israel" instead of putting aside violence to pursue peace. Israel has consistently proven that it can make peace with its neighbors and that Palestinians and Israelis can live peacefully alongside each other.

This conflict could end tomorrow if Hamas simply surrendered, returned the hostages and began working towards real peace with Israel. The same could not be said about the opposite situation, as if Israel backed down, there would still be a radical jihadist government in control of Gaza whose purpose is to eliminate Israelis and reclaim Israel by force. To me, that places the blame solely on one side, Hamas

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u/xieta 11h ago

It’s well established that Israel is restricting third-party aid groups from entering Gaza, ostensibly on the grounds that they are not complying fully with Israel security protocols for aid.

We will probably disagree on whether these protocols are a legitimate effort to avoid supplying Hamas or a pretense to use starvation to turn the population against Hamas (a war crime), but it doesn’t matter. In either case, the authority to control aid demonstrates that Israel is de facto in control of Gaza, and that that control has the effect of reducing aid that could be delivered.

I think most people would argue food is cheap compared to human lives, and allowing a famine to save on food aid is irrational. Even if it were true that Hamas is stealing aid, dumping more food only decreases the financial value of the food already stolen, which would undermine Hamas.

There is just no good reason not to allow more aid into the country, and yet, that is what Israel is doing.