Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Amnesty International concluded this week that the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, and that denying food to people is part of a genocidal campaign.
Like Human Rights Watch and other human rights non-govermental organizations, Amnesty International is extremely cautious and only issued the finding after substantial and painstaking fact-checking.
Amnesty writes, “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life, Amnesty International said today as it published chilling new testimonies of starved displaced civilians.”
Erika Guevara Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns at Amnesty International, called the findings “a searing indictment of an international system that has granted Israel a license to torment Palestinians with near-total impunity for decades.”
She pointed out that the situation inside Gaza has been so debilitated by the Israeli army that it would no longer suffice just to let food aid truck enter the Strip. The UN has hundreds of trucks ready to go but Israel lets precious few in every day. Before the war it took 500 trucks a day to provision the Strip, and that was a time when Palestinians could farm and fish, as well.
Ms. Rosas is saying that now things are so bad, even that would not suffice to roll back the genocide:
- “The impact of Israel’s blockade and its ongoing genocide on civilians, particularly on children, people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, older people and pregnant and breastfeeding women is catastrophic and cannot be undone by simply increasing the number of aid trucks or restoring performative, ineffective and dangerous airdrops of aid.”
AI points out that as of August 17, 110 Palestinian children in Gaza have died of malnutrition, according to the Strip’s Ministry of Health.
It continues,
“In an alert published on 29 July 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) stated that famine thresholds had been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza, concluding that the worst-case scenario for famine is already playing out and the number of people, including children, dying from starvation will continue to increase.”
“This alarming reality was reflected in data collected by the Nutrition Cluster, according to which nearly 13,000 cases of acute malnutrition admissions for treatment among children were recorded in July, the highest monthly figure since October 2023. Of those, at least 2,800 (22%) were cases of severe acute malnutrition.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials engage in bald-faced denial of these horrifying statistics. Even Donald Trump told Netanyahu that he should stop lying about it. “Those children look hungry,” he said with his gift for stating the obvious.
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But when we say that 13,000 children showed up at the hollowed out shells of Gaza hospitals in July suffering from acute malnutrition, what exactly does that mean?
- “Acute malnutrition is a form of malnutrition that occurs when an individual suffers from current, severe nutritional restrictions, a recent bout of illness, inappropriate childcare practices or, more often, a combination of these factors. It is characterised by extreme weight loss, resulting in low weight for height, and/or bilateral oedema [swollen feet and legs], and, in its severe form, can lead to death.”
And the 2,800 cases of severe acute malnutrition? The NIH says:
- “Severe acute malnutrition is defined in these guidelines as the presence of oedema [fluid] of both feet or severe wasting (weight-for-height/length <-3SD or mid-upper arm circumference < 115 mm). No distinction is made between the clinical conditions of kwashiorkor [severe protein deficiency] or severe wasting because their treatment is similar."
In layman’s terms, they have spindly little arms because they’ve lost muscle and they have fluid in their legs and ankles, and they may have a distended tummy and copper hair. Note that children don’t come back from 6 weeks of severe acute malnutrition — they suffer permanent health and cognitive damage.
Photo of Gaza March 2024 by Emad El Byed on Unsplash
The AI report comes at a time when genocide deniers who are partisans of the extreme-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are going to extraordinary lengths to push back against the increasing international consensus that Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza as part of a deliberate project of genocide.
Professor Martin Shaw of the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI) underlined a concept drawn from the work of sociologist Stanley Cohen, to wit “interpretive denial.” It consists of putting the facts in a permissive frame. Are large numbers of civilians in Gaza being killed? “People,” as Joe Biden said dismissively, “die in war.” Or “Israel has a right to defend itself,” as though bombing helpless civilians, destroying over 80% of buildings, and constantly displacing civilians could possibly be a form of self-defense for a nuclear state with the best military equipment in the Middle East. Or it was alleged (with bad math and no proof) that the ratio of civilian deaths to combatants in Gaza was typical for contemporary wars. But no one knows how many combatants have been killed; the Israeli military has admitted that it does not — and so there is no basis for a ratio. We do know from the Israeli investigative journal +972 Mag that outrageous rules of engagement have been adopted allowing between 25 and 100 civilian deaths for each combatant killed, an RoE that would get any officer in any NATO country court-martialed if they tried to implement it. Indeed, NATO has ceased joint military operations with Israel because of these bloodthirsty rules of engagement.
Genocide denial has always formed a key component of genocide itself. Trying to wipe people out because of who they are, or even trying to wipe some people out because of who they are, is shameful and even the perpetrators know it, hence they deny it all. Because it is universally recognized as shameful, people will try to stop it. So in order to carry it out, perpetrators have to cover it up. In Austria, it is actually illegal to deny the genocide against Europe’s Jews during WW II, a measure enacted to prevent Nazism from reemerging. But it is not only not illegal to deny the genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, protesters and academics and entire university systems are being actively punished simply for pointing it out. These punishments for speaking out are part of the apparatus of genocide denial.
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