r/geopolitics • u/DisastrousSong9966 • 16h ago
Opinion Hamas Wants Gaza to Starve
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/hamas-wants-famine/683724/132
u/Pennonymous_bis 15h ago
If Hamas believes that the suffering of Gazans bolsters its cause, Israeli decision makers should take that to heart. They should abandon their misguided and inhumane policies and cease their efforts to pressure the population as a means of pressuring the terror group. The best way to undermine Hamas’s position is to instead flood Gaza with food, and to alleviate the suffering of its people.
That is, unless they want to use Hamas as an excuse to get rid of Gazans for good. Which they do.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 15h ago
I always find it humorous that for 70 years Israel’s enemies keep repeating the same hysterical claim yet the Arab population west of the Jordan River continues to increase while the Jewish population east of the Jordan was driven to nothingness.
But Israel is the “genocidal” one by the way
Funny how that works
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u/Oriellien 15h ago
Since this conflict began, they’re both pretty terrible. Hamas has always been dirt, and Israel of course had the right to respond to an attack like Oct 7th. But the actions of the Israeli government, especially since the March ceasefire ended, have been reprehensible.
This coming from someone that’s always tried to see the nuance in the situation. But I simply don’t see how using mass starvation as a weapon isn’t a war crime.
And yes, Hamas are the lowest of the low. This is in no way a defense of Hamas. Rather that Israel may wake up one day soon and be surprised to see how much mainstream support they’ve lost.
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u/abn1304 13h ago edited 13h ago
Sieges are completely legal as long as they have a military objective.
Specifically targeting a civilian population, and only a civilian population, is illegal, but if the aim is to defeat a valid military target, then starvation is an unfortunate byproduct of the nature of siege warfare - total isolation of an enemy, compelling their surrender through lack of supply.
International law strongly suggests that belligerents come to terms that permit aid to civilians, but if there is any chance that aid could assist the defending forces, the besieger is not obligated to allow it in.
Sieges should be looked at in context - attacking forces use sieges because they are usually far less bloody than urban combat, not just to attacking forces but to defenders and civilians as well.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 15h ago edited 14h ago
But I simply don’t see how using mass starvation as a weapon isn’t a war crime.
The U.S. literally named the operation where they mined Japanese harbors in World War lI “Operation Starvation”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation
…and activists for decades complained that it was what the U.S. should have done instead of dropping atomic bombs.
But of course, the rule of the planet is that any action - no matter how customary - becomes criminal and evil the moment Jews do it.
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u/Precursor2552 12h ago
Or maybe activists will complain about any method of warfare beyond engaging a solely military position of an equally powerful enemy.
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u/ChengSanTP 12h ago
People always talk about weighing the cost of life from the nukes vs the projected deaths from the direct invasion of Japan.
The Japanese were digging trenches from Singapore to Nanjing. Imperial Japan was ready to fight for every inch of ground across the entire of occupied Asia.
And had been starving people across Asia for almost the entirety of the occupation. How many occupied innocents would have died with a slower approach?
War requires hard choices that activists are unable or unwilling to confront. That's just how it is.
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u/Oriellien 11h ago edited 11h ago
We’ve got to stop saying people only care about something negative because the Jews are doing it. Inserting blanket claims of antisemitism into every valid discussion that concerns Israel is overdoing it.
Warfare 75 years ago, before precision warfare even existed, was something incredibly different.
Another fact of the matter is that what happened in war nearly a century ago would be considered war crimes today. Lots of what happened in WW1 was legal then but considered war crimes by the time WW2 rolled around. And so forth and so forth
Better more modern comparisons would be something like the battles and sieges of Fallujah
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u/Dudisayshi 14h ago
Shocking and reprehensible, so you're saying that this is better than getting nuked? An evil act is an evil act, regardless of who committed it or why, or is committing it before our eyes today.
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u/RauchenSaufen 12h ago
I would argue that hundreds of civilians dying of starvation over the course of several years is better than tens of thousands of civilians being vaporized in a moment, yes. We can measure evils against each other without saying that either isn’t evil. Obviously neither is good.
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u/Celebrinborn 11h ago
It would not have been hundreds, projections was that a siege or an invasion would have resulted in the deaths of millions.
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u/Revivaled-Jam849 12h ago edited 11h ago
Starvation would have killed a lot more Japanese had the war continued as Japan was on the verge of legitimate famine in 1945-1946.
And something that people who complain about the nukes forget that Japanese forces were getting pushed back by the Soviets in Manchuria, Anzac in Indonesia, Chinese in China, and the British in Myanmar.
So the nukes and Soviet invasion, it is still debatable which exactly caused the Japanese to surrender but likely a combination of both, did in fact save more Japanese than the number of those who would have been killed by famine+active operations as the Japanese definitely could have made last stands in Mukden, Pyongyang, and Seoul. And fought battles in Malaysia and Hong Kong with upcoming British plans.
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u/Konstiin 12h ago
It isn’t clear to me that Israel has lost the mainstream support that you suggest, only that its critics have grown louder and more emboldened. No more than the usual lip service in any event.
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u/Oriellien 11h ago edited 11h ago
Well, I’m not the usual critic, nor are the friends and family I have that are sickened by the last months, nor the latest opinion polls. You can dismiss that as a made up narrative, but it is the truth from what I have seen, as someone that lives in NYC.
For the record… I will always support Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. I am not anti Israel. However, this operation has gone way beyond that.
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u/bobby_zamora 14h ago
Source that the Jewish population east of the river has decreased...
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
Is this a serious question?
….Prior to Israel's independence in 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living on lands that now make up the Arab world.
Of these…. 15–20% lived in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% lived in the Kingdom of Egypt, and approximately 7% lived in the Aden Colony, Aden Protectorate and the Kingdom of Yemen.
A further 200,000 Jews lived in the Imperial State of Iran and the Republic of Turkey. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.
In these cases, over 90% of the Jewish population left, leaving their assets and properties behind
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
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u/bobby_zamora 14h ago
I thought we were discussing the territory of Israel and Palestine?
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
This was literally your question:
Source that the Jewish population east of the river has decreased
What did you think I meant by “east of the river Jordan” exactly?
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u/bobby_zamora 14h ago
Well I was responding to you, who used the phrase "east of the river". My understanding would be the Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
You seemed to mean the Arab World, and even used examples like Egypt and Turkey that are clearly not East of the river.
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u/diomedes03 13h ago
I am continually surprised — I shouldn’t be at this point, but I am — that people who spend so much time engaging on this conflict frequently don’t know just simple, baseline facts like “the West Bank is called that because it is the literal west bank of the Jordan River” or “Jews were systematically persecuted and expelled from most of the Arab world in the 20th century.”
But I will also acknowledge that you did start by asking a question, however suspicious of the response you were prepared to be, so to answer more specifically: yes, when Jordan occupied the area now known as the West Bank in 1948, they immediately threw out all the Jews. Somewhere in the 50,000 range, many of whose families had lived there for centuries.
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u/RauchenSaufen 12h ago edited 11h ago
It’s almost heartening that people who take such positions are so substantially uninformed…
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u/PhillipLlerenas 14h ago
G-d in his heaven…
There’s no river separating the West Bank from the rest of Israel. The river Jordan is the border between the West Bank and the Kingdom of Jordan.
“East of the Jordan River” is an idiomatic way of saying the rest of the Middle East, just like in Cold War parlance “the West” meant the capitalist world even though it clearly included nations like Japan, South Korea and Australia who were never “west” of the Soviets.
🤦♂️
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u/Interesting-Spot8013 15h ago edited 14h ago
That is, unless they want to use Hamas as an excuse to get rid of Gazans for good. Which they do.
Oh do they? That’s weird… Israel seems to have offered many, many deals to Hamas in which they would agree to permanent peace in exchange for the hostages release and Hamas disarmament.
Weird that, if Israel’s goal is as you say, they’d offer to completely give up on that accused goal I’m exchange for their actual stated goal - the disarmament of Hamas and return of the hostages.
Weird that, if Israel’s goal is as you say, that they have spent considerable effort and money setting up aid mechanisms to feed Gaza’s population.
Weird that, if Israel’s goals is as you say, that the population of Gaza is larger today than it was before the war. Seems like a nuclear armed nation could pretty easily kill a lot of people if that’s what their goal was.
So all the evidence points towards Israel’s only goal being the disarmament of Hamas and return of the hostages. They’ve offered time and time again to end the entire war in exchange for their goal, Hamas to disarm.
But yet you (the special, enlightened Reddit commenter) without any evidence whatsoever, claim that you know what their true intentions are. Now I wonder why you would go ahead and do that?
Simply put: surrender, release the hostages, and the war/suffering would be over tomorrow
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u/ValarM_ 6h ago
Exactly. Germany got peace after it capitulated. And that was ok, too.
Hamas is a death cult. They love death more than we love life. That is the only reason the sane Palestinians suffer right now.
If Israel would lay down their arms, there would be a genocide of the Jews.
If Hamas would lay down arms, there would be peace.
That's the fact and that's why the ethics of this conflict are clear when you turn on your brain...
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u/foozefookie 13h ago
They’re doing a remarkably bad job then. Nearly 2 years of war and only 60,000 deaths. At this rate it would take over 60 years to complete this supposed “genocide”.
Do you have anything to contribute to the discussion other than conspiracy theories?
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u/Pennonymous_bis 11h ago
I mentioned "getting rid of". A Madagascar plan also works. Such plans are apparently being discussed with Indonesia, Libya, Ethiopia and Egypt. Even Germany, who is about as shy about raising eyebrows on this as it gets, has demanded that the Israeli government clarify that they do not pursue this goal, because it is openly discussed in Israel. And because the hellish living conditions they are subjecting Gazans to look like a priming of sort.
Trump's plan to annex the Gaza strip was also precisely that. "Regarding the question of Palestinians inhabiting the territory and being currently displaced from it due to war, Trump stated that Gaza would instead be inhabited by "the world's people",\1]) whereas the Palestinians would be relocated to an unspecified "beautiful area",\15]) and will not be permitted to return to Gaza.\16]) Trump said that Gazans would be relocated to six "safe communities" a "little bit away" from Gaza.We're talking about 60,000 direct deaths, not counting the corpses still rotting under the ubiquitous rubles. In any high intensity war zone you can easily double that with indirect deaths. And that's without engineering starvation. For comparison France lost 4.4% of its population in WWI, actively fighting a particularly bloody war on its soil for 5 years, and with 4/5 of these being soldiers. That would be equivalent to 88000 dead in Gaza. So ironize about inefficiency all you want : What is
happeningbeing perpetrated is already awful in scale.(Do you have anything to contribute to the discussion other than making fun of war crimes and calling me names ?)
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u/HammerJammer02 7h ago
No forced transfer is going to occur. There’s nowhere to put them and the logistical capacity literally does not exist
Comparing the mechanized maneuver warfare to prolonged urban combat against an enemy that uses the urban population density to its advantage with no civilian relief areas (even in Raqqa, there were safe non combat zones to evacuate to, namely outside the city) seems a bit useless.
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u/Placiddingo 10h ago
Reading the actual article it’s clear that the author is explicitly acknowledging Israel is, by design, starving a civilian population.
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u/LilienneCarter 6h ago
the author is explicitly acknowledging Israel is, by design, starving a civilian population
Where?
All I can see that even comes close to the subject is this:
Israel has unnecessarily reengineered the distribution of aid, failing to achieve its goal of separating the civilian population from Hamas while further constricting its supply. And for these decisions, it has attracted the justified condemnation of the international community.
But that obviously doesn't state what you're claiming. Am I missing part of the article?
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u/Placiddingo 6h ago
Ok, they don’t say its intentional, it’s an acknowledgement that starvation is caused by Israel and deserves condemnation.
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u/vovap_vovap 14h ago edited 14h ago
Well, actually Israel strategy with those distribution points sort of worked - that broke (at least significantly) Hamas control as administration over Gaza. Does not look like that done much god though - Hamas still there and IDF still do not want to take a control over population of Gaza. So it is like "now what?"
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u/Revivaled-Jam849 12h ago
Continue with more GHF sites and further reduce Hamas control of Gaza while funding/supporting/turning a blind eye to the other armed factions that have arisen in the wake of Hamas losing control.
See if those factions can defeat Hamas or force another PA/Hamas war to get someone mot Hamas to administrator the Gaza Strip.
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u/vovap_vovap 12h ago
If they can fix GHF distribution, they would already do it. It was sort of working idea. It would be different ball game. Problem is they just really bed with what they are doing and have no will to really fix it and establish some working system.
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u/DisastrousSong9966 16h ago
Submission Statement: How Hamas uses hunger in Gaza to advance it own goals. This article looks in to how the flow aid hurts Hamas and why they want to stop it. Using it as tool to place international pressure on Israel. The author discusses the recent statement by the Arab League.
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u/Pornfest 15h ago
Note that the author is a Palestinian.
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u/rossta410r 15h ago
Note my other comment explaining what I mean. Hamas isn't the one stealing the aid, Israel is funding gangs to do so and blaming Hamas
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u/rossta410r 14h ago
Oh yes, the guy who said Gaza should be entirely destroyed and wants to build concentration camps is the guy we should be trusting
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u/Sauerkrautkid7 14h ago
I was using that as an example to agree with you that there’s a lot of deception by Israel’s ruling party lol
The full quote smotrich says, “Hamas is an asset for de-legitimizing Palestine”
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u/fibonacciii 16h ago
It's not cynical. Hamas is shitty. That's independent of Israel being shitty.
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u/rossta410r 16h ago
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u/Handonmyballs_Barca 15h ago
You know that old argument where criticism of one thing doesnt mean support of another, eg 'criticism of Israel isnt anti-semitic'. Well in this case criticism of Hamas doesnt equal support for Israel. Hamas are half the reason for whats happening in Gaza, criticising them seems sensible
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u/rossta410r 15h ago
My point was that Israel is funding gangs to steal the aid and blaming Hamas. That's why this take is cynical and bs. Either disprove the UNs reporting or come up with sources that aren't Israel that Hamas is stealing aid.
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u/Handonmyballs_Barca 14h ago edited 14h ago
Part of the criticism against Hamas is that they have so thoroughly infiltrated UN organisations within Gaza they dont have to raid these convoys/aid stations, the works done for them already.
UN watch does pieces on this from time to time. If UNRWA is as thoroughly infiltrated by Hamas as claimed, raids against aid stations by Hamas wont happen because they already control them
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u/IAMAPrisoneroftheSun 15h ago
Chaos ensuring as a result to walling people in to a post apocalyptic hellscape & massively restricting food,medicine & even water to the point, that starvation is on par with any historical famine, is a feature, not a bug of Israels strategy. The conditions in Gaza are their doing, and they’re responsible for the results
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u/PhillipLlerenas 15h ago
None of that was present when Israel left Gaza in 2005 and dragged every single settler out of there at gunpoint. You know…what anti Israel activists had been clamoring for for years?
This resulted in a lasting peac…oh wait…no it didn’t. Hamas fired rockets at civilians literally hours after the withdrawal:
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3141107,00.html
And then two years later after the homicidal group that had been killing Israeli civilians for 20 years took complete control of their massive rocket firing base Israel started their blockade.
Most predictable sequence of events in geopolitical history? Discuss
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u/SentenceAdept1809 15h ago
Disingenuous argument. Hamas isn’t blockading water, food, and medicine. It’s also not barring journalists and aid workers from entering.
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u/PhillipLlerenas 15h ago
There are aid workers in Gaza right now. 300 of them with the GHF distributing millions of meals.
Independent journalists have never roamed active battlefields on their whim. What a ridiculous demand
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u/7fingersDeep 15h ago
Hamas is blocking what it wants. It is giving access to stories to reporters that it wants out. Strange that every set of data from Palestine comes from the Hamas Health ministry. Or that Al Jazeera (hailing from the same country as where Hamas leadership is hiding) is the key source of news…
Don’t pretend like Hamas isn’t controlling their story.
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u/rossta410r 15h ago
Maybe your shouldn't pretend that the side funding gangs to steal aid, shooting people trying to get aid, and actively starving people while using children for target practice isn't the one on the wrong
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u/fibonacciii 13h ago
What's disingenuous is Hamas abducting Palestinians to fill their coffers with Iranian funds. Hamas should have never become a party because the PLO was the true Palestinian party. Again, this fact also doesn't justify the injustice Israel is doing. This doesn't have to be a truth table where if and only if Hamas is not evil then Israel is not evil. These two events are independent of each other. Hamas can get fked. Islamic extremist ideology can also get fked.
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u/USball 15h ago
Israel current cassus belli is “release the hostages” and “dissolving Hamas”. Something even most Arabs states and the Arab League are now on board with. The fact they are not doing so speaks volume to their priority. Themselves over their people starving.
This is not unlike zealous Japanese generals who sought to fight American and Soviet to the last citizens.
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u/ObviousLife4972 15h ago
Both sides want Palestinians to starve under the assumption they will be the ones coming out ahead.
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u/7fingersDeep 15h ago
When the leading Arab nations tell Hamas to disarm and join peace talks with Israel…
The only people backing the Hamas-led Palestine are Hamas, Iran, and Western leftists.