Famine in Gaza?

[It’s so Joever]

I would have no way to prove the veracity of these videos.

One thing I always find interesting during global conflicts is to go on SnapChat and look at the Snap Map hotspot to see what people are posting from some particular area of the world.  It's been annoying during this war because there are so many snaps in English that are either propaganda against a blank background, or sad face girl selfies with CashApp/Telegram requests (I'm starving can you please send me money CashApp in profile).  You have to flip through anything with English text to get to the snaps in Arabic that are actually for the local audience.

Right now go do this and come back and let me know whether the Gazans look like starving concentration camp survivors or just perfectly normal people.  I specifically didn't look before posting this because hey maybe I'm wrong and one of the first videos will be a bunch of starving people.

1. I do this too and have seen plenty of refugee camps, people lining up for food etc in Arabic.

2. People living a life doesn’t mean there isn’t war you dumb f**k! Even in the worst of war zones, people still laugh, they still make the most of what little food they can, they still listen to music.

3. You probably also aren’t seeing the worst of it. When bullets are flying people aren’t generally thinking “oh get a snap” they are thinking “get to the basement NOW!” And when their child is dying they aren’t thinking “let’s take an image of my bleeding out boy!” They are instead trying to desperately speak to the boy, maybe hug him one last time.

4. Malnourishment only looks like concentration camp level in the final stages where death is near inevitable. With your logic I can also go to Venezuela and see “normal looking people” and conclude there is no food crisis there, but that’s incorrect as well. I will tell you this from personal experience, when I was suffering from a severe eating disorder and at a dangerously low level where I well could’ve been hospitalized just on that alone, I looked pretty “normal” with clothes on. I’m sorry but do you hear yourself? You are trying to use a few Snapchat posts to disprove a famine, like come on man you are reaching Woodbury levels here!

[It’s so Joever]

This is because Hamas are not the occupying power and do not have the capacity to bring in food.

Hamas are bad guys for very many other reasons, but as the occupier of northern Gaza, Israel are responsible for what happens there.

Israel brings in food.  Hamas steals the food and keeps it from the Palestinians.  Israel sends soldiers to protect the food.  Hamas shoots the soldiers.  Palestinians try to prevent Hamas from stealing their food.  Hamas shoots the Palestinians and says Israel did it.

End result: Hamas are the heroes, Israel are the genocidal monsters.

You should’ve just said this at the start instead of trying to deny an obvious humanitarian crisis.

[GeneralMacArthur]

To meet its minimum needs, aid agencies and U.N. officials say Gaza currently requires 500 to 600 trucks a day, including humanitarian aid and the commercial supplies that were coming in before the war. That’s about four times the number of trucks getting in now.
In March there has been an uptick, with an average of 150 trucks entering Gaza each day.

We know this from your link:
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-update-covering-august-2023

In August, 392 truckloads of authorized goods exited Gaza through the Israeli and Egyptian crossings. This represents a 3 per cent decrease compared with July and is 59 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2022.

Food and aid is what's relevant to Gaza right now.

I don't care how many construction materials were coming into Gaza before the war.  I don't think Gaza needs any construction materials right now.  It would be a complete waste.

I have no idea where the U.N. is pulling that 500-600 trucks/day number from, since I found where they originally made the claim and they didn't post any sort of math to back it up.  Maybe they are just pulling it out of their ass, maybe they are trying to claim Gaza needs construction materials, maybe they are saying Gaza needs things to sell to get its economy rebooted.  After all, even your quote mentions "commercial supplies" -- commercial supplies will be important once it's time to rebuild Gaza but they are not relevant to preventing a famine, which is the current concern.

The math in my original post is quite clear.  You simply take what food is on the trucks, multiply it by the amount of food on the trucks and the number of trucks getting in per day, and divide by the number of Gazans, and it's apparent that the current rate of food trucks is sufficient to meet the daily caloric needs of Gazans.  Nobody has tried to dispute this or deny this.  Instead you are reaching for truck numbers the U.N. puts out that are not about food trucks.

The most charitable thing I could say is that you (and the U.N.) are simply conflating two entirely different things.

[GeneralMacArthur]

This is because Hamas are not the occupying power and do not have the capacity to bring in food.

Hamas are bad guys for very many other reasons, but as the occupier of northern Gaza, Israel are responsible for what happens there.

Israel brings in food.  Hamas steals the food and keeps it from the Palestinians.  Israel sends soldiers to protect the food.  Hamas shoots the soldiers.  Palestinians try to prevent Hamas from stealing their food.  Hamas shoots the Palestinians and says Israel did it.

End result: Hamas are the heroes, Israel are the genocidal monsters.

You should’ve just said this at the start instead of trying to deny an obvious humanitarian crisis.

Nobody is denying that there is a humanitarian crisis, that much is obvious.  It's a war zone, of course there's a crisis.

The question is (A) is Israel getting enough food into Gaza.

And the follow-up question is (B) if not, is it because Israel is intentionally starving the Gazans to try and kill them -- which would be a genocidal tactic.

In my original post I demonstrate that the answer to (A) is "yes", which makes (B) moot.

If Israel is giving people food and then Hamas is stealing the food from them at gunpoint, then that would make Hamas responsible for any starvation, not Israel, yes?

[Velasco]

See GenMac, regardless of whether you believe what you say due to some cognitive dissonance, stop revolving on this issue. Hundreds of thousands are starving in Gaza. Show some respect.

Thank you

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

This is because Hamas are not the occupying power and do not have the capacity to bring in food.

Hamas are bad guys for very many other reasons, but as the occupier of northern Gaza, Israel are responsible for what happens there.

Israel brings in food.  Hamas steals the food and keeps it from the Palestinians.  Israel sends soldiers to protect the food.  Hamas shoots the soldiers.  Palestinians try to prevent Hamas from stealing their food.  Hamas shoots the Palestinians and says Israel did it.

End result: Hamas are the heroes, Israel are the genocidal monsters.

You should’ve just said this at the start instead of trying to deny an obvious humanitarian crisis.

Nobody is denying that there is a humanitarian crisis, that much is obvious.  It's a war zone, of course there's a crisis.

The question is (A) is Israel getting enough food into Gaza.

And the follow-up question is (B) if not, is it because Israel is intentionally starving the Gazans to try and kill them -- which would be a genocidal tactic.

In my original post I demonstrate that the answer to (A) is "yes", which makes (B) moot.

If Israel is giving people food and then Hamas is stealing the food from them at gunpoint, then that would make Hamas responsible for any starvation, not Israel, yes?

Your mathematical calculations, such as they were as they were loaded with assumptions, started with the premise that there were 200 trucks a day getting into Gaza which as you've now acknowledged is more like 150 a day on average.

Definitely an increase and more than I had thought, but certainly your math is filled with assumptive holes.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Your mathematical calculations, such as they were as they were loaded with assumptions, started with the premise that there were 200 trucks a day getting into Gaza which as you've now acknowledged is more like 150 a day on average.

Definitely an increase and more than I had thought, but certainly your math is filled with assumptive holes.

The last five days have been 224, 206, 193, 139, 137.  I would expect we'll get to 150-200 again today (it's 78 so far).  The Kerem Shalom crossing looks to have been closed for Shabbat the last two weeks.  Not sure what's up with that, it wasn't before.

150 is probably still enough (after all, I got to 1500 calories per Gazan at only half of the food) but 200 is better.  I hope it stays at or above 200 for most of the rest of the war.

The point is that if that happens, which is inconsistently happening currently, it is enough to say that Israel is providing sufficient food aid just in terms of raw food.  Which is contrary to the extremely popular current narrative.  I bet if you polled Americans and asked them "is the food Israel is allowed to come into Gaza sufficient to feed the Gazans" like 95% of them would say no.  But it is!  And this is a good thing!

There are no assumptions baked into this math.  All of it is based on real data provided by the United Nations and various aid agencies.  The question of "is that aid actually being distributed equitably to Gazans once it enters Gaza" is a separate question and I make no claims or assumptions about this.  I think even if Israel were to double the amount of food going in it would still have this problem, because Hamas would still be stealing all of it to then re-sell to Palestinians for cash they can then use to buy black market weapons from Jordanians to use to kill Israeli soldiers.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Your mathematical calculations, such as they were as they were loaded with assumptions, started with the premise that there were 200 trucks a day getting into Gaza which as you've now acknowledged is more like 150 a day on average.

Definitely an increase and more than I had thought, but certainly your math is filled with assumptive holes.

The last five days have been 224, 206, 193, 139, 137.  I would expect we'll get to 150-200 again today (it's 78 so far).  The Kerem Shalom crossing looks to have been closed for Shabbat the last two weeks.  Not sure what's up with that, it wasn't before.

150 is probably still enough (after all, I got to 1500 calories per Gazan at only half of the food) but 200 is better.  I hope it stays at or above 200 for most of the rest of the war.

The point is that if that happens, which is inconsistently happening currently, it is enough to say that Israel is providing sufficient food aid just in terms of raw food.  Which is contrary to the extremely popular current narrative.  I bet if you polled Americans and asked them "is the food Israel is allowed to come into Gaza sufficient to feed the Gazans" like 95% of them would say no.  But it is!  And this is a good thing!

There are no assumptions baked into this math.  All of it is based on real data provided by the United Nations and various aid agencies.  The question of "is that aid actually being distributed equitably to Gazans once it enters Gaza" is a separate question and I make no claims or assumptions about this.  I think even if Israel were to double the amount of food going in it would still have this problem, because Hamas would still be stealing all of it to then re-sell to Palestinians for cash they can then use to buy black market weapons from Jordanians to use to kill Israeli soldiers.

Yes, whether the food actually reaches its intended destination is one of your assumptions and the other is that the trucks average 20 tons of food. (OK, I missed the U.N Link you had on that.) So, you are correct about that. Although with the increase in the number of trucks, it isn't necessarily the case that they are as loaded as initially when very few trucks were getting through, so that is still an assumption but possibly a reasonable one.

The percentage of trucks containing food is another assumption you made, but I think that's a reasonable assumption.

Your total calculation of caloric intake based on the amount of food is also based on assumptions though.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yes, whether the food actually reaches its intended destination is one of your assumptions and the other is that the trucks average 20 tons of food. (OK, I missed the U.N Link you had on that.) So, you are correct about that. Although with the increase in the number of trucks, it isn't necessarily the case that they are as loaded as initially when very few trucks were getting through, so that is still an assumption but possibly a reasonable one.

The percentage of trucks containing food is another assumption you made, but I think that's a reasonable assumption.

Your total calculation of caloric intake based on the amount of food is also based on assumptions though.

This is a fair criticism.

My calculation of caloric intake assumes lamb is the frozen meat.  When I was in the middle east, lamb was by far the most common meat.  Chicken and beef were the other most common.  I actually have no idea where I got that 0.5lbs of lamb was only 250 calories because I just Googled "8oz lamb calories" and it came out as more than 600 calories.  The actual line item is "frozen vegetables/meat" and I assumed it was all meat since meat is way more dense than vegetables, and there is a separate line item for standalone vegetables.

I'm also assuming they can cook the flour into bread, or make it edible somehow.  Still, for this I just Googled "0.72lbs flour calories" and it comes up as around 1200.  I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that the Gazans have the means to make flour edible... all you need is a fire and some water.

Percentage of trucks containing food is direct from the UNRWA tracker.  Yesterday there were 224 trucks, 161 of them were food trucks, 11 were mixed, 3 were medical supplies.  161/224 = 71.9% food trucks, higher than my number of 66.7%.

I'm not making any claims about the distribution of food.  My point is that the amount of food getting into Gaza is sufficient, which counteracts the claim that Israel is intentionally choking off aid at all, much less doing so to try and starve Gaza or intentionally cause a famine.

I claimed that this also disproves that a famine is imminent.  A famine could still occur if the food distribution is so bad that the food doesn't actually reach Gazans to a sufficient extent to avert a famine.  I do not think we have seen this yet and I do not think we will see this.  However, I think when people talk about "imminent famine in Gaza" or whatever, they are clearly having a discussion about the amount of food they believe is entering Gaza -- since this is always paired with some attempt to blame Israel for allegedly holding up aid.

[MyLifeIsYours]

https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1773704059549061296
UN official having children in Gaza telling him they need food. This is a famine crisis and we should all pinch to help the people in the Gaza strip.What is going to be the excuse for the Israel cheerleaders noe?

[It’s so Joever]

This is because Hamas are not the occupying power and do not have the capacity to bring in food.

Hamas are bad guys for very many other reasons, but as the occupier of northern Gaza, Israel are responsible for what happens there.

Israel brings in food.  Hamas steals the food and keeps it from the Palestinians.  Israel sends soldiers to protect the food.  Hamas shoots the soldiers.  Palestinians try to prevent Hamas from stealing their food.  Hamas shoots the Palestinians and says Israel did it.

End result: Hamas are the heroes, Israel are the genocidal monsters.

You should’ve just said this at the start instead of trying to deny an obvious humanitarian crisis.

Nobody is denying that there is a humanitarian crisis, that much is obvious.  It's a war zone, of course there's a crisis.

The question is (A) is Israel getting enough food into Gaza.

And the follow-up question is (B) if not, is it because Israel is intentionally starving the Gazans to try and kill them -- which would be a genocidal tactic.

In my original post I demonstrate that the answer to (A) is "yes", which makes (B) moot.

If Israel is giving people food and then Hamas is stealing the food from them at gunpoint, then that would make Hamas responsible for any starvation, not Israel, yes?

Bro, the literal title of this thread you created is “Famine in Gaza?”

[AtorBoltox]

See GenMac, regardless of whether you believe what you say due to some cognitive dissonance, stop revolving on this issue. Hundreds of thousands are starving in Gaza. Show some respect.

Thank you

This kind of low effort moralising crap which doesn’t address any of the points that have been made in this thread should not be allowed

[AtorBoltox]

See GenMac, regardless of whether you believe what you say due to some cognitive dissonance, stop revolving on this issue. Hundreds of thousands are starving in Gaza. Show some respect.

Thank you

This kind of low effort moralising crap which doesn’t address any of the points that have been made in this thread should not be allowed

Seriously, I don’t know where this style of argumentation comes from, probably tumblr, but it’s been embraced by the online left in recent years. ‘X is happening.’ ‘Actually, no it isn’t, here’s the proof’’ ‘wow, I can’t believe you support x you sick fck’

[Velasco]

See GenMac, regardless of whether you believe what you say due to some cognitive dissonance, stop revolving on this issue. Hundreds of thousands are starving in Gaza. Show some respect.

Thank you

This kind of low effort moralising crap which doesn’t address any of the points that have been made in this thread should not be allowed

AtorBoltox, regardless of whether you believe some points have been made in this thread, Gaza today has more people in Phase V than Somalia had at the peak of its famine. In casextou din't know what's "Phase V", you can read the article linked below.

https://www.justsecurity.org/93841/gazas-famine-is-underway/

How are Hunger Crises Measured?
Humanitarian language around famine tends to be cautious and highly technical – and sometimes difficult for people outside the field to decipher. Humanitarian professionals use a 5-phase scale to characterize the severity of food crises, similar to better-known systems like the hurricane early warning system. And like the hurricane warning scale, the famine warning system produces highly rigorous forecasts built on decades of experience and research.

A formal declaration of famine (typically made either by the affected country’s government or by the United Nations) hinges on reaching Phase V on the 5-phase IPC scale, specifically once a crisis has breached three quantitative thresholds. Breaching one or two of these thresholds is enough to characterize a population as Phase V, but a formal declaration typically requires evidence that all have been surpassed:

Hunger: At least one in five households facing an extreme lack of food, meaning that their daily consumption consistently falls far below minimum daily nutritional requirements.
Malnutrition: At least 30% of children under 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition.
Death: At least 2 people per 10,000 population are dying per day from starvation or related health problems.  

Famine in Gaza is no longer "looming" or "imminent". Famine in Gaza is underway, says the article. The window to avert catastrophe has been closed and the question now is whether tens or hundreds of thousands are going to die*.

I will add this famine is induced by those conducting a genocide campaign in Gaza. You should show some respect for the innocent victims. In case you think asking for that is "moralising crap", I'm not hoing to waste more time. Bye

* The death toll of the Gaza Genocide may reach hundreds of thousands adding famine, induced disease and massive bombing.

[MyLifeIsYours]

A State Department official said that there is a “significant risk” of mass starvation throughout Gaza, and some regions of the Strip are “quite possibly” already in a state of famine. Millions of Palestinians are on the brink of starvation as a result of Israel’s brutal six-month military assault and a blockade on aid entering the Strip.

Speaking with Reuters, an unnamed State Department official said, “While we can say with confidence that famine is a significant risk in the south and center but not present, in the north, it is both a risk and quite possibly is present in at least some areas.”

The official’s assessment matches a warning put out by the international watchdog on starvation. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) released a new report last week predicting famine in Gaza will begin within the next two months. For a famine to be declared, at least two per 10,000 people must be dying of deprivation each day.

“The latest evidence confirms that famine is imminent in the northern governorates of the Gaza Strip and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024,” the IPC report found. “The entire population in the Gaza Strip (2.23 million) is facing high levels of acute food insecurity. This includes half of the population in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe), an increase of 530,000 people (92 percent) from the previous analysis.”

The starvation is worse in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands are struggling to survive. On Sunday, the UN aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, announced that Tel Aviv would not allow shipments of food or other assistance into the area.
 

https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/29/state-dept-says-parts-of-gaza-likely-experiencing-famine/

[CumbrianLefty]

US State Department is pro-Hamas then is it.

(at least, if you use the binary "thinking" of some pro-Israel posters here)

[GP270watch]

 Disgusting that the mods allow threads like this, this is psychopathic and inhumane to deny people are starving when multiple organizations have said this is the case. The President of the United States has taken the unprecedented step of doing food drops and building an entire port because of the Netanyahu government and extremist Israeli citizens continually blocking humanitarian aid.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Famine in Gaza is no longer "looming" or "imminent". Famine in Gaza is underway, says the article. The window to avert catastrophe has been closed and the question now is whether tens or hundreds of thousands are going to die*.

I will add this famine is induced by those conducting a genocide campaign in Gaza. You should show some respect for the innocent victims. In case you think asking for that is "moralising crap", I'm not hoing to waste more time. Bye

* The death toll of the Gaza Genocide may reach hundreds of thousands adding famine, induced disease and massive bombing.

Hey it's a month later and I just wanted to check in on this.  A catastrophic famine leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths was "already underway" on March 30, but now it's April 26 and the death toll for the conflict has only risen by about 1,000 deaths in that time period.

Given that Gaza has a birth rate of around 27/1000 per year or 4500 births/month, even assuming it's dramatically reduced during the conflict, that would still indicate a population increase in the Gaza Strip over the last month.

It's ok if we don't know yet... I will check back in on May 28 to see if things have changed at all.

BTW 5500 trucks have entered Gaza during this time period of which 4000 were food trucks - 80,000 tons of food or about 80 lbs/food per person for the month of April.

[GeneralMacArthur]

See GenMac, regardless of whether you believe what you say due to some cognitive dissonance, stop revolving on this issue. Hundreds of thousands are starving in Gaza. Show some respect.

Thank you

This kind of low effort moralising crap which doesn’t address any of the points that have been made in this thread should not be allowed

AtorBoltox, regardless of whether you believe some points have been made in this thread, Gaza today has more people in Phase V than Somalia had at the peak of its famine. In casextou din't know what's "Phase V", you can read the article linked below.

https://www.justsecurity.org/93841/gazas-famine-is-underway/

Somalia had a population of about 6 million in 1991 (~3x the current population of the Gaza Strip) and the famine began in around December 1991 and continued through to the end of the summer of 1992, or about eight months, before it began to decline substantially in Sept-Dec thanks to U.N. aid and United-States-led military intervention.  In that eight months, 300,000 people died.  If the two are actually comparable (you're alleging that the situation in Gaza is worse than that in Somalia than at the peak of its famine) then we would expect ~100,000 deaths in Gaza due to the famine alone, over the course of eight months, or around 12,000 deaths/month due to famine.

Instead, in the month since you wrote this post, we have only recorded 1,000 deaths -- furthermore, the Gaza Health Ministry of course does not make any distinction, but given fighting is still ongoing, it's safe to assume most of these were combat deaths.

BTW -- a 72% majority of Atlas in my recent poll said that the United States should not have gone into Somalia in 1992.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Famine in Gaza is no longer "looming" or "imminent". Famine in Gaza is underway, says the article. The window to avert catastrophe has been closed and the question now is whether tens or hundreds of thousands are going to die*.

I will add this famine is induced by those conducting a genocide campaign in Gaza. You should show some respect for the innocent victims. In case you think asking for that is "moralising crap", I'm not hoing to waste more time. Bye

* The death toll of the Gaza Genocide may reach hundreds of thousands adding famine, induced disease and massive bombing.

Hey it's a month later and I just wanted to check in on this.  A catastrophic famine leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths was "already underway" on March 30, but now it's April 26 and the death toll for the conflict has only risen by about 1,000 deaths in that time period.

Given that Gaza has a birth rate of around 27/1000 per year or 4500 births/month, even assuming it's dramatically reduced during the conflict, that would still indicate a population increase in the Gaza Strip over the last month.

It's ok if we don't know yet... I will check back in on May 28 to see if things have changed at all.

BTW 5500 trucks have entered Gaza during this time period of which 4000 were food trucks - 80,000 tons of food or about 80 lbs/food per person for the month of April.

Three days later the IDF made the mistake of applying their standard rules of engagement to a bunch of politically connected foreigners and blew up the World Central Kitchen aid convoy. Miraculously as soon as it was the friends of a DC celebrity chef getting blown up instead of Palestinians the Israelis actually started facing real pressure and spontaneously decided to open the crossings next to northern Gaza to allow aid through. Why was aid prevented from entering through those crossings in the first place if famine wasn't the explicit goal of the IDF?

It's absolutely incredible that you're pointing to the fact that the Israelis had the power to end the famine whenever they wanted as a point in their favour, as if the WCK bombing didn't happen in the interim and totally change the equation.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm not going to have a back-and-forth discussion with the guy who gets his news from Jake Shields.  Any time he responds to me I am going to post tweets from the Holocaust Denier that he unironically cited as a credible source on the Israel/Gaza thread, revealing the kinds of people he subscribes to and the kinds of places he gets his information from.  Just so you guys all know who you're arguing with, or agreeing with, when you see that yellow USSR avatar.

https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1783949869662834835

https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1777253326192795789






I do want to point out for other readers of this thread that food trucks were entering Gaza at a rate of 150-200 per day when I made this thread (this is noted in my OP) and that 5500 trucks in a month is 183 per day.  The talking point that "Israel could have ended this all along but only changed their ways after the WCK bombing" (which I have seen repeated by many people, not just the Jake Shields acolyte) is not true.  The throughput of aid has actually remained the same -- and we have not seen the catastrophic Somalia-esque mass-casualty famine that was predicted, because as I said in the original post a month ago, the current aid is sufficient to meet the caloric needs of the Gazan population.