Hunger’s role in Jewish philosophy and history makes it all the more horrifying that civilians in Gaza are eating garbage

For many months now, it has been no secret that one of America’s closest allies has been using hunger as a weapon against a civilian population. That hunger is being used by Israel is supremely ironic, given the particular role that privation from food plays both in Jewish philosophy and in the grim history of the Jewish people. It is a charge that the Jewish state has repeatedly denied in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Beginning this past winter, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam both condemned Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. Governmental organizations have also begun to echo those accusations. “In Gaza, we are no longer on the brink of a famine, we are in a state of famine,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said several weeks ago. The Gaza population was facing a “man-made disaster”, Borrell reported. The United Nations World Food Program concurs: a “full-blown famine” is taking place in northern Gaza, according to the head of the program. This was followed by the international criminal court considering issuing warrants against leaders of both Hamas and Israel, and, in the case of the Israelis, for the war crime of starvation of civilians.

John Oakes is the author of The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy and Promise of Doing Without. He is publisher of the Evergreen Review

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