Palestinian refugee carries injured grandchildren from Israeli bombing of Nuseirat Camp. Oct. 29, 2023. Photos by Ashraf Amra via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Palestinians Starve While Israeli Military Seizes Entire Gaza Strip
by Ashley Rogers
Philadelphia, PA
The genocide of Palestinians escalated this past July as the Israeli military forced many of those in Gaza into starvation. After at least 58 people starved to death during Israel’s blockade between March 2nd and March 25th, a new enforced famine has led to an estimated 281 Palestinians deaths so far, including of 114 children (as of the writing of this article on August 25, 2025). Israel has been attempting to starve out the population of Gaza since the beginning of the war, when it announced on October 9th 2023 that it would be blocking food and water from entering Gaza. Aid has been intermittently allowed into Gaza at different points throughout the war, but famine has intensified following Israel’s blockade of all humanitarian assistance in March of this year.
Israeli massacres of civilians seeking aid have become a near-daily occurrence. Over 1,800 civilians have been killed while seeking aid since late May. The Trump administration worked with Israel to form the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), replacing the United Nations in distributing aid in Gaza. GHF aid distribution sites have been the locations of the routine massacres of civilians by Israel. The charity Doctors Without Borders has denounced the GHF as “slaughter masquerading as aid,” and survivors of Israeli attacks have described the aid points as “traps set for the people.” Fifteen international aid groups have denounced the GHF as complicit in war crimes and genocide against Palestinians. U.S. military contractors working with the GHF have participated, with Israeli forces, in the massacring of civilians at GHF aid sites.
It has been over five months since Israel broke the ceasefire agreement with Hamas which was reached in January. During the duration of the ceasefire from January to March, Israel nevertheless continued near-daily killings of Palestinian civilians, and continued obstructing humanitarian aid from reaching Palestine. The official death toll reports over 10,000 Palestinians killed since the end of the ceasefire and over 62,000 dead in total since the Israeli invasion began though the true number of Palestinians killed is much higher.
Mass Protests Challenge Netanyahu And Call for End to War
On August 17, hundreds of thousands of Israeli protestors declared a “day of stoppage,” blocking roads and closing businesses and demanding an end to the war in Gaza and a deal to free Israeli hostages. This was coordinated in response to Netanyahu’s announcement of a military takeover of the entirety of the Gaza Strip. While the day of action in Israel included some unions and university staff going on strike, it fell short of the full nationwide strike that organizers hoped for, significantly missing the largest trade union federation in Israel. Still, it showed the growing opposition to the ongoing war in Gaza among Israelis.
The development of this wave of Israeli protests has been a long time coming. Support for Israel’s war within the country itself was high following the shock of the October 7th attack, but opinion has drifted in the other direction as Netanyahu has proven less concerned with the safety of Israeli hostages and more concerned with his political and territorial ambitions. 74% of Israelis polled in July supported a deal to end the war in Gaza. The Israeli government has attempted to tamp down on growing opposition through measures such as banning foreign journalists from the country, yet this has done little to hold back the tide of opposition.
Mass protests, including those in NYC and a 300,000-strong protest in Australia, have been organized this summer against the genocide. Supporters have also attempted to deliver aid to those in Gaza via two flotillas as well as a caravan of 14 buses, 100 vehicles, and 1,500 participants from four countries in Northern Africa, but the Israeli military arrested and detained those involved.
The US Funding of Genocide
The genocide in Palestine has been carried out with the full support of the United States. The U.S. supplies almost 70% of Israel’s arms imports. Over the last 75 years, U.S. foreign aid to Israel has totaled $305.4 billion, with 72% of that going to the Israeli military. In 2024 alone, the US sent $17.9 billion to Israel. Biden’s administration fast-tracked additional weapons shipments to Israel following the start of the war, numbering over 100 sales of weapons to Israel, using emergency powers to skip congressional review for some of them. Even as reports of atrocities and genocide in Gaza became well-known and protests mounted against U.S. support for Israel, the Biden administration approved billions of dollars of additional weapons shipments. The protests against Biden’s support for the war were harshly repressed using militarized police forces.
Trump, despite occasionally styling himself as some sort of anti-war candidate, has continued Biden’s policy on Gaza. Trump has approved more than $14 billion in additional military support for Israel. Netanyahu’s Twelve-Day War with Iran in June brought in the United States, with Trump launching air strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, escalating tensions in the region.
How To End the Genocide And Win a Palestinian State
An end to the war in Gaza must go beyond a ceasefire and hostage deal. The conflict may be paused or frozen in place for a time, but true resolution will not come without true Palestinian self-determination. This means a Palestinian state.
The September convening of the United Nations will see capitalist governments from France, Germany, UK, Canada, and other countries symbolically call for a Palestinian state. But like other resolutions by capitalist institutions, these will do little to stop the Israeli state’s ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians. How can those seeking an end to the genocide organize for the survival of the Palestinian people and for their right to a Palestinian state?
Netanyahu’s plan for a full invasion and occupation of Gaza and the ultra-nationalist idea of “Greater Israel” would see Israel expanded to include Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as parts of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. This poses a threat to working people in the Middle East. A resurgence of the Arab Spring that involves mass movements and large-scale strikes against the ongoing genocide would hamstring the Israeli war machine and make the idea of a complete occupation of Gaza untenable. This is especially the case if the working class in the US, Israel, and in the West Bank organize mass strikes as well, including the refusal to ship arms to Israel, and could help win the Palestinian people a Palestinian state that can ensure their immediate survival.
The struggle against capitalist, imperialist interests governing the region will need to take on a socialist character, with solidarity across borders, in order for there to be real self-determination, safety, rights, and good living standards for Israelis, Palestinians, and others in the Middle East and Northern Africa. A socialist federation in the region is the only way to end the wars and conflicts capitalism has generated and that have brought about the needless genocide of Palestinians today, a genocide that can be permanently erased with a socialist world that has no need for imperialist wars.
Independent Socialist Group 
