https://jakarta.hostmaster.org/articles/gaza_holodomor/en.html
All my friends in Gaza are telling the same story, the markets are empty, there is simply no food available. Not even for those with money.
What the people in Gaza are experiencing at the moment is not a humanitarian crisis, it’s a manufactured catastrophe. It is not just hunger, it is weaponized famine. The World Food Programme (WFP) reports that 100% of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents face acute food insecurity, with 495,000 in catastrophic hunger as of July 2025. The reality behind these numbers is, that everyone in Gaza is starving at this point. People are already emaciated from the 21 months before. Many adults have lost 50% of their body weight and children whose developing bodies need a constant supply of energy, protein and other nutrients are barely recognizable as humans. Their arms and legs are skeletal, often as thin as twigs, with little muscle or fat and fragile bones. Their torso is gaunt, ribs protruding sharply beneath taut skin. Their heads appear disproportionately large, with hollowed faces - eyes sunken deeply into their sockets, cheekbones stark, and chins underdeveloped, lacking bone density, muscle, or fat.
Israel’s total siege on Gaza, imposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Israel Katz, and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich since March 2nd, 2025, has taken this horror to the next level. No humanitarian aid, no food, and no medicine have been allowed to enter and reach the two million people living in the strip for 141 days now. The recent expectation of incoming aid - sparked by an EU-Israel backroom deal - prompted merchants to release their final reserves. But the aid never arrived. The shelves emptied overnight, and famine took hold. There is no food available in the markets, not even for those with money from successful fundraising campaigns. There is no flour, no lentils, no vegetables, and no baby formula. People are literally collapsing in the streets from starvation. The remaining hospitals cannot handle the influx of patients suffering from severe malnutrition, and they have neither food nor TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition) to treat them. Even the doctors and nurses are starving at this point - but they keep going, as long as they can.
Unlike historic sieges like the one on Stalingrad, Israel is controlling all borders and crossings. There is no smuggling and there is no way out for the people in Gaza. Two million people are being starved to death in full view of the world. This is not self-defense, this a campaign of extermination, executed with cold, calculated intent and with the complicity of most western governments and media outlets.
Israel’s actions are a blatant violation of international humanitarian law (IHL). Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacks on objects essential to civilian survival - food, water, farmland. Israel has razed Gaza’s agricultural lands, it has banned the people from fishing or even swimming under penalty of death, and it has destroyed both the fresh water and the sewage infrastructure including pipes and desalination plants. The Rome Statute’s Article 7 classifies “extermination” as intentionally causing death by denying access to food and medicine. The Genocide Convention’s Article II(c) defines “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction” as genocide. Israel’s blockade meets both criteria.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court, has directly addressed this crisis. In the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel, the ICJ issued provisional measures on January 26, 2024, modified on March 28 and May 24, 2024, ordering Israel to:
Israel has defied these legally binding orders. The WFP’s 116,000 metric tons of food aid remain blocked and the Rafah has been occupied since May 2024, closing the only border crossing not previously under Israeli control. Gaza’s famine is no hidden tragedy; UN reports, WHO statistics, and images of starving children saturate social media. Israel’s refusal to comply is a clear violation of international law, and its actions - starving, bombing, and displacing - are the best documented yet the most denied genocide in human history.
To condemn Israel’s actions is not to attack Judaism. It is to defend it.
“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”
Proverbs 25:21–22
The total siege imposed on Gaza, first in October 2023 and now since March 2025 is therefore not only a violation of international law, it’s also a violation of Halakha.
“Whoever destroys a single life is considered as if he destroyed an entire world.”
Sanhedrin 4:5
Judaism values human life above everything else Pikuach Nefesh because every human is created B’tzelem Elohim - in the image of god. The soil of Gaza is soaked with the blood of 58,765 human beings and it cries to the heavens like once the blood of Abel:
“What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the earth.”
Genesis 4:10
Israel’s policies and actions have destroyed - 83% of all plant life - 70% of the agricultural land including fields and orchards - 45% of the greenhouses - 47% of the groundwater wells - 65% of water tanks - all wastewater treatment facilities in Gaza. Again violating both international law and Halakha
“When you lay siege to a city… do not destroy its trees… Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?”
Deuteronomy 20:19
Israel is not a Jewish state and it is not the state of the Jews. It is Avodah Zarah to put statehood and the conquest of land above His commandments. It is Chillul Hashem to invoke his name to justify war crimes and the murder of innocent people.
Unlike 80 years ago, this time the world cannot claim it did not know. The ICJ found it plausible in his order of provisional measures that some of Israel’s actions in Gaza could amount to acts prohibited under Article II of the Genocide Convention. Amnesty International concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to the crime of genocide in December 2024. And there is a majority consensus among genocide scholars coming to the same conclusion. The United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme and others have repeatedly warned that Israel’s siege will inevitably lead to a man-made famine and many people dying from starvation. Yet the international community remained silent, betrying its oath of Never Again and it’s obligations under international law.
“Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation… It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan… aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups.”
Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944)
Israel justifies its actions in the name of security. But no doctrine justifies starving children, bombing hospitals, or destroying water systems and forcing civilians to drink sewage. These are not acts of defense. They are crimes against humanity. The ICJ’s provisional measures affirm a “serious risk of genocide” - a threshold established in the 2007 Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro case, which obligates all states to act immediately when such risk is evident.
The obligation to prevent genocide, therefore, requires States to take measures as soon as they are aware, or should normally have been aware, of the serious risk that acts of genocide would be committed
International Court of Justice ruling in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro
The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that at least 57 children have died of malnutrition since March 2025 - a number likely understated due to the collapse of reporting systems. If these were Western children dying, global outrage would erupt. Instead, Palestinians are dehumanized, their suffering shrugged off. The world’s failure to enforce the ICJ’s measures is a death sentence for the people in Gaza.
Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to a second Holodomor - a genocide by starvation, a hunger plague deliberately imposed to destroy a people. This systematic denial of food, water, and medical aid is a flagrant violation of international law. It fulfills the Actus Reus of genocide: the physical execution of mass death. Israel’s brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s 2024 provisional measures further confirms Mens Rea - the criminal intent to annihilate - under the Genocide Convention.
The promise of “Never Again” is hollow if international law does not apply to Israel. Human rights mean nothing if they do not extend to Palestinians.
The inaction of our governments has made us witnesses to what will be remembered as the greatest crime of the 21st century.
There will be a legal and moral reckoning - of that, there is no doubt. The only question is when. And whether it will come in time to save lives, or only to mourn them. The rest of this century will be haunted by that delay, by that failure, by the question: Why did we allow this to happen?
Silence is complicity. And history will not be kind to those who remained silent in the face of genocide.