HUNGER IN GAZA

Posted on by Kelley Kidd

KELLEY KIDD August 24, 2025

Two days ago a United Nations’ organization made the statement that many thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are suffering so severely that the situation deserves the label “famine”. The blame was levelled at the country of Israel, and the head of the UN organization called for the world to express rage at Israel. There was immediate and widespread compliance with that suggestion. Weeks ago I posted on Facebook that the Israel-Hamas conflict has obviously led to widespread hunger in Gaza, and that there could be no excuse for the US and Israel not solving the problem by delivering sufficient to Gazans to reverse the shortage of food that is obviously causing immense suffering of civilians, including many children. I will stick by that conclusion.

Lately the Israeli government has announced its intention to require the inhabitants of Gaza city to evacuate to the south, thereby leaving the area open to a full scale military operation to eliminate the Hamas terrorists located primarily in tunnels under the city. This decision has been denounced by the leadership of the Israeli Defense Force, as well as many leaders and journalists in many different nations and organizations. Apparently the remaining Israeli hostages are also located in those tunnels. Large crowds of Israelis have protested, and demanded that Netanyahu instead prioritize seeking the release of the remaining hostages and an end to this war. Simultaneously many Arab countries have publicly disassociated themselves from Hamas’ stated intention to continue the war.

There are other complicating factors. For reasons I will explore in other postings, there is no reliable source of information about what is actually happening in Gaza. The combatants, Israel and the various parties to the “resistance”, are not reliable reporters on either the extent nor the causes of the suffering in Gaza. The United Nations and its various agencies are reliably deeply biased against Israel. Much more on that topic later in another post. Nowhere is there an agency with both the enormous fact gathering apparatus needed to keep track of the lives of the people of Gaza and the objectivity needed to translate the needed data into coherent narratives. But one fact is both disturbingly clear and heart rending urgent–there is widespread hunger among the most vulnerable civilians. Children and old folks and the sick and injured people are suffering most. If the United States and Israel place highest priority on solving that problem, it can and will be solved.

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Published by Kelley Kidd

I am a public defender who became a real lawyer more than 50 years ago. Graduated from Emory College in 1964 with high honors, and from law school 3 years later after becoming the editor in chief of The Journal of Public Law. Somewhere along the way I taught school in Baltimore Maryland, was an alcohol and drug counselor, faught forest fires in Idaho, ran an educational program for federal employees engaged in Johnson's War on Poverty, agitated against the War in Vietnam, studied Hebrew and the Judeo-Christian heritage for seven decades and survived many years of drunkenness. I am a lover of baseball, dogs and cats, guitar music and a certain lady in Baltimore I have not seen in 40 years. I live in the lovable small city of Statesboro Georgia. Four times a week I attend a meeting of a famous fellowship for drunks and try to get to Mickve Israel every Saturday in Savannah. I do not hate anybody and am a passionate American patriot.

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