EDITORIAL
Mass Starvation in Gaza
—Aided and Abetted by the U.S. Government

Aug 4, 2025

Trump sent his Mideast envoy and the U.S. ambassador on a public relations trip, supposedly to see what the rest of the world was already looking at in horror—men, women and especially children are starving to death in Gaza. There are Palestinian children in Gaza today who look like they had been in a Nazi concentration camp.

The Gaza Health Ministry said that over a hundred people have already died of starvation, with many more on the brink of dying. Doctors in Gaza say that hundreds more people have died from other causes that were exacerbated by malnutrition—people who could have lived if they had gotten enough food.

Medical experts say of the children in Gaza who do survive, many of them will be permanently deformed, physically and mentally, by the lack of food at this young age.

The starvation in Gaza is not due to some crop failure or a natural catastrophe where food is not available. Food is available. This starvation is being deliberately and consciously produced by the Zionist regime in Israel. Thousands of truckloads of food have been kept out of Gaza by the Israeli regime. This mass starvation in Gaza is part of the war the Netanyahu regime has been waging against the Palestinian people.

In October of 2023, Hamas organized a terrorist attack into Israel, killing over a thousand people. In response, the Israeli military invaded Gaza and began a war. They claimed the war was against Hamas, but most of their weapons and bombs have been directed against civilians in Gaza.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 60,000 people are known to have been killed, the majority of them women and children. Many thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble of Gaza, where Israel has destroyed over 70% of the buildings, including the hospitals and schools.

During the occupation of Gaza, the Israeli military has controlled the borders, deciding when and if to let food in. The United Nations and other relief agencies have been providing some food; at best it was barely adequate to keep people alive. But in March, the Israeli regime stopped all food deliveries into Gaza, despite warnings that it would lead to mass famine.

In May, a handful of food distribution areas were opened, controlled by the Israeli military and U.S. contractors. Most of the two million Palestinians in Gaza have to walk miles to get to the food. They have to decide whether to risk starving to death, or risk being shot down by Israeli soldiers, because at the food distribution sites, over one thousand people have been killed by Israeli troops firing into the crowds. It is a continuation of the genocide of the Palestinians committed by the Israeli regime.

But it is not only the Israeli regime that is responsible for this mass murder and genocide. Standing firmly with and behind the Israeli regime is the U.S. government, just as it has for decades.

U.S. imperialism uses Israel as its cop in the Middle East. The U.S. government, under both parties, has armed Israel to the teeth. With U.S. money and U.S. weapons, Israel has the strongest military in the Middle East, in order to protect the interests and profits of U.S. oil companies and U.S. banks against the peoples of the Middle East. Today, that U.S. money and those U.S. weapons are being used to kill and starve the Palestinians.

Trump didn’t have to send people to Gaza to know what is happening in Gaza. It was his policy to support Israel as it stopped all food coming into Gaza. Just like it was Biden’s policy to support Israel as it dropped bombs on Gaza hospitals. Just as it has been the same policy of U.S. imperialism for decades, under both Republicans and Democrats, to support Israel’s wars in the Middle East.

The interests of the Israeli regime and the U.S. government don’t always exactly align. But they are both responsible for today’s slaughter and starvation in Gaza. They both have blood on their hands.