Famines are always man-made. This fact has been recognised at least as far back as the Victorian era; famines are never merely about a lack of access to food - they're about the active withholding of access to food, from one group of people, by another. And no famine in history has been more obviously manufactured than Israel's famine in Gaza, in which thousands of tonnes of food sit hundreds of meters away from scenes like this:
There are literally tens of thousands of trucks waiting to get food into Gaza. One phone call from Donald Trump could get them in. One order from Netanyahu could get them in. Israel, the US, and Israel's 'allies' (a better word would be accomplices) in Europe, have chosen every day since October 9th 2023 to withhold food and water from an entire population.
And this isn't the first time for Israel. Back in 2005, Israel launched Operation 'First Rain' on the people of Gaza. As the Israeli-British historian Ilan Pappé writes: "Inspired by punitive measures adopted first by colonialist powers... “First Rain” began with supersonic jets flying over Gaza to terrorize the entire population. This was followed by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from sea, sky, and land." This also involved deliberately starving Palestinians: an advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister said the intention was "to put the Palestinians on a diet".
When the world failed to strongly condemn this assault, Israel escalated things in their “Summer Rains” operation of 2006: "Israelis employed the more sinister means of imposing a tight siege on the people of the Strip through boycott and blockade" - meaning more deliberate starvation. According to a 2008 report, "Israeli officials had been calculating the minimum caloric intake needed to keep Gazans from starving while maintaining strict control over the import of food." There is no way to impose the "minimum caloric intake" on a population without starving people - and it should be obvious that all of the above constitutes a litany of crimes under international law.
The fact that Israelis can talk so openly about putting Palestinians "on a diet", or make public declarations that "we are imposing a complete siege on Gaza" in which "there will be no food" demonstrates two vital facts of famine: it is a conscious policy decision, and it occurs when regimes feel confident that nobody will stop them.
But how can anyone expect to get away with crimes of this magnitude?
Europe (Britain especially) has a bloody history of creating famines. The historian Mike Davis argues that, between 1876 and 1902, European colonial policy killed at least 30 million people using famine as a weapon - and the number could be as high as 50 million. A series of climate crises, from the failure of monsoon rains to great outbreaks of disease, set the conditions for colonial powers to impose famine. "What seemed from a metropolitan perspective the nineteenth century’s final blaze of imperial glory was, from an Asian or African viewpoint, only the hideous light of a giant funeral pyre," Davis writes.
Karl Polyani wrote in 1944 of the famines in India through that period that "Failure of crops, of course, was part of the picture, but despatch of grain by rail made it possible to send relief to the threatened areas; the trouble was that the people were unable to buy the corn at rocketing prices... under free and equal exchange Indians perished by the millions."
Before this, the British had deliberately starved almost 2 million Irish people to the point of emigration or death between 1841 and 1851, according to Tim Pat Coogan's book The Famine Plot. What Britain then imposed on its colonies in the rest of the world was merely an expansion of a process already tested on Ireland.
Given Britain's historical involvement in the creation of famines, it should not come as a surprise that Britain is willing to turn a blind eye to this one (calling a situation "intolerable" and then changing exactly zero policies in response to it does not constitute action). But what motivates the active support? What motivates Britain's continued criminalisation of non-violent activism in support of Palestine, Britain's continued arms sales to Israel, the RAF's continued recon flights on behalf of Israel, Britain's continued export of F-35 fighter jet parts?
The answer is simple: resources and land.
Imperialists do not create famines for nothing: as Davis writes, when 30 million people were dying worldwide of man-made famine in the late 19th century, the "European empires, together with Japan and the United States, rapaciously exploited the opportunity to wrest new colonies, expropriate communal lands, and tap novel sources of plantation and mine labor."
Imperialism, and settler-colonialism, require expansion into new territories. In order to control the resources of a new territory, imperial regimes must totally subjugate the people who live there. This subjugation is much easier when the population are half-starved and totally demoralised.
This process is further magnified in settler-colonial regimes. As Pappé writes: "unlike conventional colonial projects conducted in the service of an empire or a mother country, settler colonialists were refugees of a kind seeking not just a home, but a homeland. The problem was that the new “homelands” were already inhabited by other people. In response, the settler communities argued that the new land was theirs by divine or moral right, even if, in cases other than Zionism, they did not claim to have lived there thousands of years ago. In many cases, the accepted method for overcoming such obstacles was the genocide of the indigenous locals."
And this is what we see today. Britain established the settler-colonial state of Israel in order to gain imperial control over the (oil) resources in the Middle East, assuming that Israelis would be more willing to facilitate their empire than the indigenous Palestinians. The Zionist settlers in Israel then set about attempting to rid the entire land of its native inhabitants, to create an ethnic homeland for Jewish people - despite the fact that most Jewish people did not want such an ethno-state.
For as long as Israel remains a settler-colonial project (i.e. as long as it continues to be a "Jewish state" rather than a state with equal rights for Jewish and Palestinian people), structural factors will constantly pull Israeli governments to attempt to wipe the Palestinians off their own land. And for as long as America, Britain and the rest of 'The West' cling to capitalist imperialism, the long genocide of the Palestinians will go unpunished and will not relent. It can, and will, get worse than this.
It also can, and must, get better. Israeli society is showing signs of great instability; its international propaganda machine cannot keep pace with the daily atrocities of the Israeli 'Defence' Force; hundreds are showing up in Britain in defiance of weaponised terrorism legislation; a great global consensus of condemnation is bubbling up even into Western governments, who are still, however authoritarian they attempt to be, beholden to the will of their people.
Which bestows upon every single citizen of a country facilitating this genocidal famine the immense responsibility to do what we can, where we can, and how we can, to force governmental action. To make it stop.
In the UK, that currently looks like supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, joining Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn in the Your Party project, and continuing to protest, petition and educate others about this genocide.
Free Palestine. From the river to the sea.
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