Starving children is the ultimate war crime
Image: Vigil for Gaza, Maplewood Town Hall, Maplewood, NJ 10/20/2024. Photo Credit: Matt Dragon.
They are everybody's children
Newark, NJ - I’ve been struggling to understand how, for almost 2 years, politicians and mainstream media outlets have managed to keep up the charade that there wasn’t a genocide occurring in Gaza.
Even beyond the usual taboos and the early and loose declarations of anti-Semitism, politicians still felt comfortable backing up their votes to send even more bombs to Israel.
Our elected representatives were proud, shamelessly so, to sign the death warrants of more Palestinian children. Except there are no legal warrants because these children have done nothing wrong--unless being born two miles west of an imaginary line in the sand is now their crime.
Starvation has always been a tool of war
Even just two days into the “war,” on October 9, 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gloated: "A complete siege on the city of Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed." Starvation was stated and enacted as policy, and now 22 months later, the documentation makes it clear: the independent reports tell the story, and the attacks on UNRWA were never about Hamas membership, never about stolen aid.
The real issue: UNRWA was too good at feeding Palestinians in Gaza. You cannot have a starvation campaign when someone is feeding the children.
In May 2025, it was acknowledged that Gaza was facing systematic starvation by the Israeli Government, which followed the March 2025 announcement that Israel was blocking all aid into Gaza after it refused to continue the previously agreed-upon Ceasefire agreement.
In establishing that blockade, Israeli officials claimed enough food had entered Gaza in the 40-day Ceasefire to last for 6 months. Yet it didn’t even last 3 months.
Image: Vigil for Gaza, Maplewood Town Hall, Maplewood, NJ 10/20/2024. Photo Credit: Matt Dragon.
The tide has turned
Change doesn’t come all at once. It’s a slow, frustrating process, but we must fight. So maybe any genocide that goes on far long enough will come to be seen for what it is. But I can’t shake the idea there’s more to it than that.
A thought is that people can relate to starvation. We can all easily remember a time when we’ve been so hungry. Starvation is so much worse, with symptoms including chronic fatigue, mental fogginess, always feeling cold, chills, slower healing, depression, and insomnia. Stretching out over weeks and months, almost unimaginably terrible. So maybe the connection to starvation feels closer, more emotionally evocative than a child murdered by a sniper’s bullet to the head, or vaporized by a 2,000 pound bomb.
Maybe our social media overlords didn’t adjust our AI slop algorithms fast enough. Famine and starvation escaped containment in a way that the words “G*z*” and “unalived” couldn’t. For better or worse, social media is the primary news source for many. So as we balance our own social demise on the platforms, we can use it to remember our shared humanity.
Neither governments nor their representatives or corporate media giants can ignore or deny the emaciated bodies of children, even if they lie or ignore the bombs and sniper killings of the brothers, sisters and parents of said children.
So, if that’s the case, keep it up. Keep posting, sharing, watching, emailing, calling, and protesting.
The views expressed in this article express those of the writer alone and not necessarily those of Public Square Amplified.
