No amount of flagrant denials and occupation propaganda can change facts written in blood. For a Gaza death toll exceeding 21,000, about 70 percent is comprised of women and children. That figure buries the Israeli myth of countering “terrorism". It also makes clear that the principal target of "Israel’s" genocidal campaign is none other than the existence of Palestinians themselves. In fact, "Israel’s" invasion was specifically focused on destroying major sources of agricultural produce, targeting key locations despite the knowledge that critical food and water supplies were practically non-existent. 

After Human Rights Watch (HRW) found "Israel" guilty of using starvation as a deliberate weapon of war against Palestinians, it also unearthed a wider pool of evidence on US-based social media platforms driving blatant Palestinian censorship. This included over “1,050 takedowns and other suppression of content Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters.” Satellite imagery and aid organization reports further corroborate the extent of "Israel’s" war campaign in Gaza through starvation tactics.

A belligerent occupation that celebrates Palestinian bloodshed tries every bit to bury public accounts of unspeakable oppression, brutality, and starvation. But as the damning revelations show, "Israel’s" documented war crimes, starvation campaign, and attacks against Palestinian liberation voices stand exposed in granular detail.

HRW has simply corroborated what international observers and Palestinian activists have pointed out for so long: that the blocking of critical aid by occupation forces and the obliteration of infrastructure serves the broader purpose of dehumanizing and terrorizing Palestinian masses. The occupation cannot pretend it didn’t fuel immediate risks of famine and early possibilities of mass hunger, despite a series of warnings from international organizations.

A formal confession is not needed to establish criminal intent from the aggressor. It remains amply evident in the consequences of "Israel’s" full-fledged genocide on occupied soil. The United Nations-based “Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)” report recently confirmed that the total population of Gaza is subject to "crisis levels" of hunger. "Israel’s" use of starvation as a weapon is also central to alarming levels of acute food insecurity faced by households in Gaza. The proportion of households affected, according to the damning report, is the largest ever recorded worldwide.

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What is the Israeli strategy in Gaza?

It is an occupation that has stuck to a unilateral blockade of the Palestinian enclave and clung to its closure for well over 16 years to force “collective punishment” as the unilateral status quo. Indiscriminate airstrikes and relentless bombing have inflicted a lion’s share of devastation on Palestinian civilians, compounding their catastrophic hunger levels with a flagrant disregard for disease controls, life-saving hospitalization, and assistance from the ground up.

“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza's population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, "Israel" and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, last week.

International law illustrates the gravity of "Israel’s" deliberate starvation tactics and where the world needs to really focus its outrage. Starving civilian populations is strictly prohibited under the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (Protocol I). Important proof points – such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – are also categorical: that denying civilians objects that are central to their survival is a war crime. As an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, "Israel" is under strict obligation to ensure that food and medical supplies reach Palestinian civilians. And yet, Western silence over "Israel’s" criminal defiance of international humanitarian law is deafening.

The Palestinian Resistance will never cower to oppression. This puts the spotlight on the corporate social media cover of Meta, a company overwhelmingly complicit in the anti-Palestinian information warfare. HRW’s investigative findings confirm that a systemic and barbaric effort has been underway to stamp out and ban pro-Palestinian posts that expose Israeli starvation and deliberate trauma inflicted on “a million more” Palestinians as early as October. As the rights watchdog puts it, this censorship drive comes across as “the biggest wave of suppression of content about Palestine to date,” and "Israel"-leaning Meta has a “well-documented record of overbroad crackdowns on content related to Palestine.”

Despite the UN Security Council’s meager consensus on Resolution 2720 on Gaza aid delivery, the belligerent Zionist regime continues to work to block its impact on the ground. "Israel" has laid siege on every practical aspect of human existence and public life in Gaza, a continuation of its brutal intent to cut off civilian access to food, water, and fuel. The HRW provides a staggering compilation of public statements from occupation ranks, with figures vowing to create circumstances that attack the very survival of Palestinians. From the occupation's Security Minister Yoav Gallant to its "National Security" and Energy ministers, a range of occupation figures have brazenly endorsed or furthered Israeli goals of deliberate starvation in Gaza. 

For all those who were driven by the illusion that Gaza’s starvation was simply a catastrophic consequence, think again. This was a conscious policy adopted by the brutal Zionist regime to mount its genocidal campaign under the garb of fighting so-called “terror.”