Israel Tried to Hide the Famine – Then Journalists Flew Over It

Right, so they fall like promises — parachutes descending slowly over Gaza’s shattered skyline, each bundle of aid framed as a symbol of hope. But those who rush to retrieve them risk death. Some are crushed beneath them. Others are gunned down for approaching. Still others drown in the sea chasing floating crates of flour. Where aid drops have been sold to us all as a significant move to provide international relief, these drops are anything but humanitarian. They are spectacle. A theatre of mercy staged by the very governments funding Gaza’s destruction. Airdrops that help no one and conceal everything — not least the deliberate, systematic starvation of two million people. They are not a response to famine. They are part of it.
These aid drops are just the latest chapter in the starvation crisis of Gaza that is not just a humanitarian failure — it is a political strategy, a war crime in motion, and a genocidal policy executed through bureaucratic cruelty and military enforcement. Aid, grossly insufficient as this again is, has not been delivered to stop famine but used to disguise it. Therefore these parachutes are falling at the exact speed required for international impunity to keep pace with the ongoing atrocity.
Right, so the current conditions of famine in Gaza are not the tragic but accidental consequences of war. They are the logical extension of a longstanding Israeli policy of siege, control, and demographic punishment. Since 2007, Gaza has endured a land, air, and sea blockade, reinforced by restrictions on imports, fuel, fishing zones, construction materials, and even calorie intake. I’m not joking there either, Israel actually calculated the minimum caloric intake needed for Gazans to avoid malnutrition while deliberately restricting food imports just above that line, they did this back in 2012.
After the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, Israel shifted from siege to starvation warfare. Defence Minister at the time, Yoav Gallant declared a “complete siege,” cutting off electricity, food, water, and medicine. Israel told the world "We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly." These are not offhand remarks. They are expressions of intent — and intent is the legal bedrock of a genocide charge after all, so the foundations of what we’re seeing now, we’re all laid out, the warning signs were there.
The siege was deepened through new coordination with Egypt, which sealed the Rafah border under pressure from Israel and Sisi’s US backers. Cairo, dependent on American military aid and wary of destabilisation, effectively became an accomplice in isolating Gaza.
So by the time we come to the here and now, famine conditions in Gaza have become undeniable. The World Food Programme noted that a third of the population had not eaten in several days. Save the Children warned that almost every single child in Gaza was now at risk of famine. Medecins Sans Frontieres reported starvation deaths in makeshift hospitals and camps. Palestinian authorities confirmed over 60,000 dead from war and siege, with 10% of the population missing and presumed dead under rubble or lost in bombed-out ruins.
Yet the United Nations has not officially declared famine. Why is that then Damo? Well, one significant reason is because Israel has prevented the data collection necessary for such a declaration to be made. Journalists, medics, and aid workers on the ground have been killed in historical numbers and outside of Gaza, journalists have been banned. Aircraft carrying journalists have been denied access and this connects to these aid drops now, because as The Middle East Monitor have reported, citing Israeli outlet Haaretz, Israel threatened to cancel all air drops if media were onboard filming Gaza. When famine cannot be documented, it cannot be named — and when it cannot be named, it cannot be prosecuted. That is the logic Israel are working with here.
In response to international outrage, Western powers began conducting aid air drops over Gaza. The UK, France, Jordan, and the United States dropped food packages, claiming it was a life-saving operation. But analysis of these drops reveals their almost farcical inadequacy.
According to Quds News and Press TV, many air drops consisted of less than one truckload of food — barely enough to feed a single neighbourhood for a day. UNRWA Director Philippe Lazzarini criticised the air drops, saying they were "optics," not substance. Thousands of trucks carrying real aid remained stuck at Israel’s border crossings, yet governments chose the performative option of parachutes and photo ops. Hamas condemned the airdrops as a "political stunt," designed to deflect attention from the continuing siege.
Worse still, some of the aid drops have caused harm. On July 27, 11 Palestinians were injured when heavy crates fell onto tents in a displaced persons camp. On July 31, as Skwawkbox has covered, Israeli forces dropped aid into the sea and then fired at civilians trying to swim toward it. These are not isolated incidents. They demonstrate a policy that treats food not as a necessity but as a lure — a trap that enforces desperation and control.
Even more disturbingly, airdropped aid often falls in Israeli-controlled areas or zones where Israeli-backed militia groups operate. Reports from Euro-Med have highlighted that food dropped in such areas is frequently confiscated or sold at black market rates. For the average Gazan, even reaching aid has become a life-threatening act. The idea of humanitarian airdrops has become a grim parody of actual relief, serving more to shield Western governments from criticism and give them some brownie points in the mainstream media than to do something meaningful to alleviate suffering on the ground.
While planes parachute token aid from the sky, trucks carrying real food remain idle outside Gaza’s sealed borders. UNRWA has reported that thousands of trucks are queued at Rafah and Kerem Shalom, waiting days or weeks for Israeli approval that rarely comes. When trucks do enter, they are often rerouted or looted. Waiting outside they can become targets for settlers.
The disparity between what is needed and what is allowed is staggering. Gaza requires around 500 aid trucks daily to meet basic needs, according to humanitarian agencies. Yet in most weeks for well over the last year, the number has hovered below 50. During declared “humanitarian pauses,” aid volumes rose briefly but never exceeded 20% of what was required. These are are deliberately engineered mechanisms of starvation.
Aid convoys coordinated by the US - and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) have become notorious for discriminatory distribution. Aid was being weaponised by armed gangs linked to former Daesh fighters operating under GHF protection. Food is only distributed to compliant zones.
But behind these cruel mechanisms lies a deeper political ideology. Openly genocidal figures like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have demanded a total siege on Gaza and opposed even symbolic humanitarian gestures.
The refusal to allow food, the criminalisation of aid agencies, and the blocking of medical evacuations are not aberrations. They are extensions of a state doctrine that sees Palestinians not as civilians with rights, but as an obstacle to be managed, removed, or erased. Aid is only permitted when it does not disrupt the ongoing plans of elimination.
This is why the ban on independent verification by global journalists is such a massive issue and Israel demanding they stay out, or the pittance of aid they are literally dropping on Palestinian heads right now will stop as well. Israel has tightly controlled information leaving Gaza. Foreign journalists are banned. Palestinian journalists have been assassinated, detained, or threatened. Human rights monitors have been denied access or expelled. Even satellites and drone footage have been suppressed.
This policy ensures that evidence of famine, mass graves, targeted starvation, or aid-related deaths cannot be gathered. Without evidence, it becomes increasingly difficult for the international courts or UN agencies to act in an evidenced manner. Israel wants the starvation to become invisible, and the genocide with it rather than empirical and proven fact. It is an attempt to blind the eyes of the world to the destruction of an entire people and it can’t be allowed to happen, in fact the failure to stop it getting out, via social media, is what has destroyed Israel’s reputation for good. It is a pariah state, genocidal in intent and we all know it now, despite the best protestations and denials the Zionist Lobby can muster.
Between January and July of this year, at least 87 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the name of silencing Israel’s crimes, many in targeted strikes on press-marked vehicles or homes. International correspondents have been banned from entering at every turn. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have issued multiple emergency alerts, but Western media coverage remains limited to government-vetted briefings and anonymised satellite data.
Moreover, UN agencies such as WFP and OCHA have complained privately of Israeli interference in data collection. Health clinics are bombed, malnutrition surveys obstructed, and local staff intimidated. When no documentation can be collected, the declaration of famine becomes impossible, despite widespread hunger. The result is the grotesque situation in which Gaza is dying of hunger on the world’s screens, but cannot be formally declared a famine zone by the UN.
The July 31 video released by Skwawkbox is emblematic of this cruelty.
What kind of aid kills those who seek it? What kind of humanitarian operation demands that starving people dodge bullets to retrieve food? Only one designed not to help, but to control and to do that, the last thing Israel want are people reporting on it. It is not just starvation. It is starvation as a message: You are unwanted. You are unprotected. You will not be saved. We will make sure of it
Gaza is not starving because food is unavailable. It is starving because food is being withheld. The siege is not incidental to the war; it is a weapon of war. The airdrops are not a humanitarian intervention; they are public relations cover for the maintenance of siege and we know this whether foreign journalists get into Gaza or not.
Until the blockade ends and full access is restored to aid organisations like UNRWA, until journalists can freely document conditions, and until international bodies are willing to use the word "genocide," the parachutes will keep falling, but so will the bodies.
What we are witnessing is not just starvation. It is a theatre of starvation, designed to make complicity look like compassion. And every crate that falls from the sky is another silent admission that the world sees what is happening — and chooses to do almost nothing, but still wants a pat on the back for it.
Ordinary people are not standing for it though, and as the last of the Handala crew are released from Israeli detention, having been kidnapped in international waters, just like the crew of the Madleen before them, now a Freedom Armada may be about to launch and actually in no small part is this not only on Netanyahu and Israel, but also Egypt’s puppet leader Sisi too. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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