Gaza famine exposes the world’s moral collapse

The official declaration of a famine in Gaza by the United Nations-backed agency, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, marks a grim milestone, as Israel weaponises hunger, literally starving people to death for its ends. In a report published on August 22, the UN agency said the famine is “entirely man-made”.

The agency says unless there is an “immediate” response, the famine will spread causing an “unacceptable escalation” in famine-related deaths, especially between now and the end of September. They also project that malnutrition will threaten the lives of more than 130,000 children up to June next year. Currently, 313 people have died from hunger in Gaza which includes 119 children.

We have already seen countless images of starving children, their bodies reduced to bones. We have seen the videos of people shot to death while waiting for food aid in a desperate environment. The Israeli government has dismissed the UN report as “Hamas lies”, like they do with everything else. But we did not expect better from the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is turning a blind eye to genocide in Gaza in the name of fighting terror, all so that he can cling to power longer.

It is not just the UN. More than 100 aid groups have said Israel is deliberately withholding food to the people of Gaza. Now Pope Leo XIV has also stepped in and demanded that Israel stop its “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a failure of the world, of our conscience and our moral compass. Since October 2023, when Hamas brutally murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians, the retaliatory Israeli actions have killed at least 60,000 people in Gaza, and these are just conservative estimates. For most of the last two years, the West looked the other way as Israel pounded Gaza to the ground. Now, it has become uncomfortable for even Israel’s friends to condone a policy of starvation. Except, of course, the United States, which was the only member of the UN Security Council that did not sign on a joint statement last week saying the Gaza famine was man-made and warning that the use of starvation as a weapon of war is banned under international humanitarian law.

Israel does not care about the international community’s outrage. They have Donald Trump on their side. And that is all the leverage they need. Trump’s advisors are busy lecturing India on “fuelling” Russia’s war in Ukraine. The US has no moral authority to lecture anyone. Netanyahu says his end game is to destroy Hamas. But then, why would his government announce plans of 3,400 new settler homes in the West Bank where there is no Hamas. It is an illegal move that was immediately condemned by 26 countries and the EU.

But all the condemnation, all the declarations of recognising a Palestinian state have come too late. And then there is the media. The Western media’s coverage of the Gaza crisis has largely been one-sided and myopic. Today, journalists of media organisations have been killed in Israeli strikes, including those from AP and Reuters. Some media houses, which once prided themselves on being impartial, have failed to hold Israel to account on anything, simply regurgitating Israeli propaganda and not calling out its genocidal actions. One of the news anchors of a well-known media house resigned over its Gaza coverage, while over 100 of its staff have come out and said the organisation has given more favourable coverage to Israel.

The moral compass of the world’s western democracies, of the US, of the western media - have all been exposed during this unprecedented crisis in Gaza.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres summed it up when he recently said “just when it seems there are no words left to describe the living hell in Gaza, a new one has been added: ‘famine’… it is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.