According to the UN and international health organizations, the people of Gaza City are experiencing a severe famine. They report that, by the end of September, more than 640,000 people in Gaza City will face the highest level of food insecurity, Phase 5 – Famine (at least two adults or four children under five per 10,000 people die every day from starvation or related disease). An additional 1.14 million people in the Gaza Strip will be in Phase 4 – Emergency, and 396,000 people in Phase 3 – Crisis conditions.
This is a genocide being carried out by the state of Israel. It is a result of the calculated effort to exterminate the Palestinian people. The U.S. is a backer of this horrific war crime. According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the U.S. spent at least $17.9 billion during the first year of the war. It has continued its support.
Israel is a main ally of the U.S. – its cop in the Middle East. Israel has received an estimated $310 billion from the U.S. since Israel’s founding. It defends the oil and gas companies’ exploitation of Middle Eastern resources. The U.S. also depends on Middle Eastern dictatorships that supply their oil and supports the rulers who live in luxury on the backs of the people of the region.
The state of Israel was established in 1948, when, backed by the European powers and the U.S., its armed colonial forces forced more than 700,000 Palestinians from their land, an event known as the Nakba. Conflicts between Israel and the Palestinian people have continued ever since.
The Gaza Strip has since become the home to 2.2 million Palestinian people. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world – called the “world’s largest open-air prison.” On October 7, 2023, Hamas, the Palestinian organization that rules over Gaza, raided Israeli cities and towns outside Gaza. 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage. Israel retaliated almost immediately by bombing Gaza and carrying out a ground invasion six days later.
The ongoing war on Gaza has forced Palestinians to flee from one place to another. Under the pretense that they are fighting Hamas, Israel has obliterated most of Gaza. Hospitals, schools, mosques, community centers and residential areas have been targeted and reduced to rubble. Water supply systems have been destroyed and sewage systems targeted – sending sewage everywhere. The farmland that existed has been destroyed. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 62,622 people have been killed as of August 22, 2025. In July 2024, Lancet, a respected medical journal, estimated that at least 186,000 had been killed. Estimates today are much higher.
The control of access to food, water, medicine, and other basics of life is being used by Israel as a weapon of war. In 1948, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established and, along with other aid organizations, has provided aid for the Palestinian people ever since. But since October 2023, food aid has been greatly restricted. In March 2024, Israel accused 13 of the more than 3,000 UNRWA workers of working with Hamas. As a show of support, Biden, along with more than a dozen countries, stopped funding UNRWA, ending what little regular access to food and other humanitarian aid was available.
The flow of even small amounts of aid has been turned on and off, according to the status of the so-called peace negotiations and limited ceasefire agreements. Instead of 500 or more truckloads that delivered food and essentials daily, it has been restricted to 30 or 50 trucks or none.
Recently, U.S. contractors took over food distribution. The distributions were totally disorganized and inadequate and resulted in Israeli soldiers and contractors opening fire on desperate Palestinians seeking food. They have killed more than 2,000 and wounded thousands.
The Israeli military is preparing its new offensive, Gideon’s Chariot II. It is calling up 60,000 military reservists and extending deployment of 20,000 reservists to escalate its war of terror. The Israeli government wants to take complete control over Gaza.
This murder and cruelty is covered in the media, but foreign reporters are not allowed into Gaza, unless they are with the Israeli military. And more than 270 Palestinian reporters and media workers have been targeted and killed. We hear about the genocide and mass murder on a daily basis. But the major powers and their politicians, led by the U.S. and Europe, have continued to support this Israeli murder. This imperialist system has shown it has no limits to its inhumanity.
People around the world have protested and called for an end to the genocide of Palestinians. We must find the way to do even more – whatever we can to stop it.
