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starvation
Winter in Gaza
The most urgent task, to end genocide, requires truthful coverage about Israel’s war crimes.
Nov 12, 2025
On Saturday, 8 November, 2025, Dan Perry wrote in The Jerusalem Post about Israel's projected lifting of the media blockade on Gaza. Perry laments that Israeli censorship has left all reporting of the atrocity in the hands of Palestinians, who refuse to be silent. To date, Israel has assassinated over 240 Palestinian journalists.
Perry writes, "The High Court ruled last week that the government must consider allowing foreign journalists into Gaza but also granted a one-month extension due to the still-unclear situation in the Strip." He asserts that Israel had and has no motive for excluding foreign journalists save concern for their own protection.
He makes two appeals. First, the duplicitous demand that Israel should use the one-month reprieve to cover up the evidence of atrocities: "Soon, journalists and photographers will enter Gaza… They will find terrible sights. Hence, Israel’s urgent task: to document retrospectively, to finally prepare explanations, to show… that Hamas operated from hospitals, schools, and refugee camps." In other words, bury the truth with the bodies.
Secondly, that since in this conflict Israel did absolutely nothing that it could have wished to hide, it should learn not to impose absolute media blackouts so likely to arouse suspicion.
Our own hearts cannot escape the howling winter unless we take, far more seriously, the hell of winter and despair to which we continue to subject Palestinians living in Gaza.
I sense a cold, hard winter within the souls of people in league with Dan Perry’s perspective.
Now, a cold, hard winter approaches Gaza. What do Palestinians in Gaza face, as temperatures drop and winter storms arrive
Turkish news agency Anadolu Ajansi reports: "Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to endure hunger under a new starvation policy engineered by Israel, which allows only non-essential goods to enter the enclave while blocking essential food and medical supplies… shelves stacked with non-essential consumer goods disguise a suffocating humanitarian crisis deliberately engineered by Israel to starve Palestinians.”
“I haven’t found eggs, chicken, or cheese since food supplies started entering the Gaza Strip,” Aya Abu Qamar, a mother of three from Gaza City, told Anadolu. “All I see are chocolate, snacks, and instant coffee. These aren’t our daily needs,” she added. “We’re looking for something to keep our children alive.”
On November 5, 2025 the Norwegian Refugee Council sounded this alarm about Israeli restrictions cruelly holding back winter supplies. NRC's director for the region, Angelita Caredda, insists, “More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered."
The report states:
Millions of shelter and non-food items are stuck in Jordan, Egypt, and Israel awaiting approvals, leaving around 260,000 Palestinian families, equal to nearly 1.5 million people, exposed to worsening conditions. Since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October, Israeli authorities have rejected twenty-three requests from nine aid agencies to bring in urgently needed shelter supplies such as tents, sealing and framing kits, bedding, kitchen sets, and blankets, amounting to nearly 4,000 pallets. Humanitarian organisations warn that the window to scale up winterisation assistance is closing rapidly.
The report notes how, despite the ceasefire, Israel has continued its mechanized slaughter and its choke hold on aid.
In Israel's +972 Magazine, Muhammad Shehada reports: "With the so-called ‘Yellow Line,’ Israel has divided the Strip in two: West Gaza, encompassing 42 percent of the enclave, where Hamas remains in control and over 2 million people are crammed in; and East Gaza, encompassing 58 percent of the territory, which has been fully depopulated of civilians and is controlled by the Israeli army and four proxy gangs." This last, a reference to four Israel Defense Forces-backed militias put forward by Israel as Hamas' legitimate replacement.
If ever tallied, the number of corpses buried under Gaza’s flattened buildings may raise the death toll of this genocide into six figures.
The United Nations estimates that the amount of rubble in Gaza could build 13 Giza pyramids.
"The sheer scale of the challenge is staggering," writes Paul Adams for the BBC: "The UN estimates the cost of damage at £53bn ($70bn). Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN's satellite centre Unosat…The Gaza Strip is littered with 60 million tonnes of rubble, mixed in with dangerous unexploded bombs and dead bodies."
No one knows how many corpses are rotting beneath the rubble. These mountains of rubble loom over Israelis working, in advance of global journalism's return, to create their counternarratives, but also over surviving Gazans who, amid unrelenting misery, struggle to provide for their surviving loved ones.
Living in close, unhygienic quarters; sleeping without bedding under torn plastic sheeting; and having scarce access to water, thousands of people are in dire need of supplies to help winterize their living space and spare themselves the dread that their children or they themselves could die of hypothermia. The easiest and most obvious solution to their predicament stands enticingly near: the homes held by their genocidal oppressors.
In affluent countries, observers like Dan Perry may tremble for Israel's reputation, eager to rush in and conceal Israel's crimes, clothing them in self-righteous justifications. These are of course our crimes as well.
Our own hearts cannot escape the howling winter unless we take, far more seriously, the hell of winter and despair to which we continue to subject Palestinians living in Gaza.
There is no peace in Gaza. May there be no peace for us until we fix that.
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ICJ Rejects Israeli Claims About UNRWA and Orders Officials to Provide More Aid to Gaza
"Yet another Israeli government lie—slavishly repeated by Western media—collapses," said one policy expert.
Oct 22, 2025
The commissioner-general of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that he welcomed an "unambiguous ruling by the International Court of Justice" affirming that the organization has not been infiltrated by Hamas, as Israel and its allies have persistently claimed, and that Israeli officials must cooperate with the UN to ensure Palestinians receive sufficient aid after nearly two years of starvation policy.
In an advisory opinion, the ICJ ruled 10-1 that as the occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is responsible for providing aid to Palestinians and allowing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to operate in Gaza.
Israel has sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since January 2024, when it alleged without evidence that a small number of staffers at the agency had participated in a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023.
Multiple investigations found that Israel had not provided supporting evidence of the allegations, and the ICJ on Wednesday said that the country had “not substantiated its allegations that a significant number of UNRWA employees were members of Hamas.”
With the advisory opinion, said Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, "yet another Israeli government lie—slavishly repeated by Western media—collapses."
ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa said in the ruling, which is not legally binding, that Israel's first obligation is to "ensure that the population of the occupied Palestinian territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies, and services."
The court also ordered Israel to "agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes on behalf of the population of the occupied Palestinian territory so long as that population is inadequately supplied, as has been the case in the Gaza Strip."
UNRWA has said it has roughly 6,000 aid trucks that are ready to enter Gaza.
"With huge amounts of food and other lifesaving supplies on standby in Egypt and Jordan, UNRWA has the resources and expertise to immediately scale up the humanitarian response in Gaza and help alleviate the suffering of the civilian population," said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the agency.
Israel began blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza following the Hamas-led attack in 2023, and intensified the blockade from March-May this year after breaking a ceasefire that began in January. More than 450 Palestinians have starved to death, and experts have warned that the many of the effects of starvation on those who have survived, especially children, may be irreversible. A famine was declared in August by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a UN-backed group.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the ICJ opinion "comes at a moment in which we are doing everything we can to boost our humanitarian aid in Gaza. So the impact of this decision is decisive in order for us to be able to do it to the level that is necessary for the tragic situation in which the people of Gaza still is.”
As it has with numerous other rulings by the ICJ, Israel immediately rejected the decision and claimed it was politically motivated. The US State Department also dismissed the ruling, saying it "unfairly bashe[d] Israel" and repeated the debunked allegations of UNRWA's "deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism."
Step Vaessen of Al Jazeera reported that "even if Israel ignores [the advisory opinion], as it’s done time and time again, all the UN countries are obliged to follow up on this court’s advice."
The ICJ is also considering a genocide case against Israel, brought by South Africa.
In September, a commission of independent experts at the UN said Western countries including the US must stop providing military aid to Israel as it found the country was carrying out a genocide in Gaza, citing several of the attacks that have killed more than 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and public statements made by Israeli officials demonstrating their intent to wipe out Gaza's population of 2.1 million people.
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We Must Call It What It Is: A Genocide in Gaza
For too long, our elected officials have hidden behind euphemisms like “tragedy” or “conflict.” But history will not remember their silence kindly.
Oct 07, 2025
Over the past two years, Gaza has been turned into rubble and starvation by one of the most relentless bombing campaigns in modern history. This is not a conflict. It is not a “war between two sides.” It is genocide—the deliberate destruction of a people, carried out in full view of the world.
More than 66,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, most of them women and children. But that number only scratches the surface. Humanitarian agencies estimate that over 680,000 people may have died—buried under collapsed buildings, starved to death, or left to suffer without medicine or clean water as Israel continues to blockade aid. The death toll grows daily as people die unseen beneath the rubble.
I speak not only as an advocate for justice, but as someone personally scarred by this horror. Over 200 members of my own family have been killed in this genocide. Their lives ended in the same way as tens of thousands of others—bombed in their homes, trapped without food, or killed while trying to flee. These were teachers, children, and parents. They were human beings who deserved to live in peace.
Across the world, millions are refusing to look away. From Amsterdam to Istanbul, from New York to Johannesburg, protesters are filling the streets to call this what it is: genocide. Even many who once hesitated to use that word now recognize it as the only accurate description.
The question now is not whether this is genocide. The question is: what will we do about it?
This genocide has extended beyond Gaza’s borders. In the West Bank, Israeli incursions continue—raids, home demolitions, mass arrests, and settler violence, all designed to displace Palestinians from their homeland.
Meanwhile, Gaza is being starved. Thousands are dying for lack of food, water, and medicine. Hospitals have been reduced to ashes, and more than 560 aid workers and medical personnel have been killed. This is not an accident—it is strategy. Starvation and disease have become weapons of war.
It is clear: Israel’s campaign can only have been made possible by US weapons and funding. Every bomb dropped on Gaza carries the imprint “Made in America.” Every home destroyed is a reminder that the US continues to arm and defend a government committing crimes against humanity. This does not serve America’s interests. It only increases anger and resentment toward our country.
There can be no moral ambiguity left. The bombing must stop—permanently. Israel must end its incursions into the West Bank and allow full humanitarian access for rebuilding Gaza. Palestinians have the right to live freely and safely on their own land.
For too long, our elected officials have hidden behind euphemisms like “tragedy” or “conflict.” But history will not remember their silence kindly. It will remember who stood by as a people were starved and buried alive—and who had the courage to speak.
The United States cannot continue to claim moral leadership while enabling genocide. Every day that our government sends weapons to Israel, it deepens our complicity.
The question now is not whether this is genocide. The question is: what will we do about it?
For many, the response has been philanthropy; protesting; and participation in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement—all vital and powerful tools for change. But if we want lasting impact, we must also build political power.
That is why CAIR Action was created: to turn outrage into organization, and compassion into change. Through our educational campaigns, voter guides, endorsements, and candidate amplification, we are helping communities of conscience identify and elect leaders who will stand up against genocide and vote for peace and justice.
We are organizing to shape the next generation of politicians—leaders who will not shrink from truth, who will end U. complicity, and who will fight for human rights everywhere.
Our humanity—and our democracy—depend on it.
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