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There is increasing evidence that “widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease” are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths“ in Gaza, a group of United Nations and aid organizations have repeatedly warned.

A July 29, 2025, alert by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global initiative for improving food security and nutrition, reported that the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” as access to food and other essential items is dropping to an “unprecedented level.”

More than 500,000 Palestinians, one-fourth of Gaza’s population, are experiencing famine, the U.N. stated. And all 320,000 children under age 5 are “at risk of acute malnutrition, with serious lifelong physical and mental health consequences.”

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U.N. experts have accused Israel of using starvation “as a savage weapon of war and constitutes crime under international law.”

They are calling on Israel to urgently “restore the UN humanitarian system in Gaza.”

Israel is not the only government in history to cut off access to food and water as a tool of war. As an Indigenous scholar who studies Indigenous history, I know that countries — including the United States and Canada — have used starvation to conquer Indigenous peoples and acquire their land. As a descendant of ancestors who endured forced starvation by the U.S. government, I also know of its enduring consequences.

From the founding of the U.S. and Canada through the 20th century, settler colonizers often tried to destroy Indigenous communities’ access to........

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