Here’s an old adage that takes on new meaning for Palestinians:  Feed a fever, starve a cold.

Well, there must have been a lot of Gazans with fevers, and worse, according to the Israelis. Israel says that most of the starvation deaths are caused by the Palestinians’  underlying health issues – such as diabetes, or lung cancer, or high blood pressure or birth defects or god knows what else. As recently as two days ago Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu vigorously denied anyone was starving in Gaza. Key cabinet ministers say the same and worse! Sure sick people die if they don’t get proper nutrition, that’s why we in Canada feed patients three meals a day and snacks when they are in hospital! In Gaza hundreds of thousands if not millions suffer from malnutrition – now to the point of starvation and beyond – there’s little to no food for the walking wounded or young children and the elderly.  And this is deliberate starvation courtesy of the Israeli government.  Every country agrees – but Israel obfuscates, blames Hamas and when that fails, tells us we’re all antisemites.  

Daniel Levy, a negotiator under the Labour Party-led governments in Israel, and current president of a nonprofit, the US/Middle East Project, noted recently, 

 “For a long time, Israel thought that if we throw antisemitism and the Holocaust at them loudly enough, it will all go away. But the zeitgeist is shifting, and the Israeli attempt at outrage works with an ever-smaller cohort.”

Indeed, Israel’s friendship circle too is shrinking.  The UK, France and even Canada are going to recognise Palestine.  Still, in Canada, most Jewish Canadians, “official” Jews and others who support Israel continue to fall for just about every lie Israel utters.  

Even today, Israel will not allow infant formula or tinned tuna into Gaza. Israel “deliberately limit[s] types and amounts of food supplies to keep Gazans within a specific malnutrition threshold.”

Mahmuda Khan, director of the Canadian charity Human Concern International (HCI)

After all, I have not seen one comment, let alone a rebuke, about Israel intentionally starving the Palestinians from any of the “troika” — the three major  pro-Israel — CIJA, B’nai Brith or Friends of Simon Wiesenthal — and heavily-funded official Jewish organizations in Canada. Israel and its supporters now claim that all of the 175 starvation deaths especially among Palestinian children  – starting months ago – can be blamed on Palestinians’ poor health.  Perhaps some were sick, hell hundreds of thousands in Gaza live in abject conditions, no clean water to drink, a few spoons of rice as their only food once every day or two, no sanitation– for example one toilet for 600 Palestinians who sleep on the streets.  A year ago, UNRWA reported that since October 2023, there have been 40,000 cases of Hepatitis A. Hepatitis A is transmitted through ingesting water or food contaminated (even in tiny amounts) with feces or food prepared by someone with the virus. In the year before Israel’s war on Gaza began, there were 85 cases.

Oddly – even if the children have medical problems, why would Israeli worsen them?  Why drop bombs on them; why shoot them in the heads, why shell them with tanks?  Why continue to deny them infant formula, antibiotics or any urgent medications since March 2 (when Israel broke the ceasefire).  In fact, the Israelis are saying, “well they would have died anyway – given their pre-existing conditions – so not having food, water and medicine isn’t really an issue.”

Gaza needs 600-800 aid trucks filled with food and medicine to enter the enclave every day.  Israel has allowed under 70 trucks some days, and often none at all.  The Canadian charity, Human Concern International (HCI) has three trucks with food aid in place set to enter Gaza.  Mahmuda Khan, HCI’s director, said her group was given permission to enter Gaza on Thursday with two trucks that carried 1300 x 25 kg bags of flour. HCI has seven more trucks containing 2,080 boxes of food, but as Khan said in an interview, the Israelis will not allow infant formula or meat in.  Said Khan, not permitting infant formula or even tinned tuna “deliberately limit[s] types and amounts of food supplies to keep Gazans within a specific malnutrition threshold.”

However, this is not new.

Israel: Putting Palestinians on a “diet”

But as far back as 2006, the “malnutrition threshold” was a policy designed “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger, according to Dov Weisglass, a senior advisor to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Indeed, at the time The Guardian reported,

“The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.”

Israel’s strategy of putting Palestinians on a diet was again noted in 2012. Though Israel said it went along with the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline that adults should consume at least 2,279 calories a day, Israel made sure that didn’t happen in Gaza. According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, early in 2008 Israeli authorities produced

“a document that calculated the minimum caloric intake necessary for Palestinians to avoid malnutrition so Israel could limit the amount of foodstuffs allowed into Gaza without causing outright starvation.”

The restrictions on food aimed to punish the Palestinians for voting for Hamas in the 2007 election.

From October 2023 to December 2024, the UN reported the average Gazan was “living” on 1510 calories a day. But since May 2025, the average Palestinian in Gaza eats 1400 calories daily — or 67% of what an adult human needs to survive. In my newsletter post a year ago, I wrote about Gazans who are forced to live on far fewer calories.

Splitting a can of beans…

The hinge of fate has turned once again. In March 2025, we first heard the first squeak from the American (and so the Canadian) media as they started to report on Israel’s genocide in a critical way—18 months after the genocide began. Now from the beginning of the US-Israeli-backed GHF food “depots” – sorry murder mills – created in June, the media is churning out story after story on malnutrition, starvation and the killing of Palestinians trying to get a bowl of beans for a family, or even part of one of those 25 kg bags of flour.

Photo at the top: French dockworkers hold a banner to support a Swedish dockworker who was fired in retaliation for a six-day boycott of military cargo to Israel. (Photo credit: WIP) For more on the Swedish worker’s firing and the protest, read LaborNotes here.