Page 43 - Issue 72

V O L .1 E L I T E ISSUE 72

yet on the other hand, it employs the most punishment—aimed at dismantling the

heinous internationally criminalized capacity of communities to resist, fracturing
methods, the primary victims of which are social cohesion, and crushing morale by
children, using them as a tool of pressure creating a permanent state of fear and
without any real deterrence from institutions despair.
and states that claim to protect and defend Gaza’s experience shows how the
the rights of all. These same states raise a deprivation of food and water can be
global outcry if even a minor harm befalls weaponized to reshape the political
an animal, which further exposes their landscape, impose new realities on the
contradictions and the hypocrisy of the ground, and dictate the terms of any
slogans they promote. From their positions, settlement—while justifying the
we can conclude that they apply their continuation of aggression. This raises
principles mostly to everything Western, urgent questions about the effectiveness of
while excluding anything beyond that. international humanitarian law and its

ability to deter mass crimes amid profound
power imbalances.
In the face of such humanitarian collapse,
empathy alone is not enough. What is
required is to ensure that the suffering of
civilians does not become mere statistics in
news bulletins or bargaining chips in power
struggles. Ending the use of starvation as a
weapon of war is not only about saving lives
—it is about defending what remains of our
shared humanity and rejecting the
normalization of atrocity under any pretext
Food blockades have become a political or justification.
pressure tool and a means of collective
extortion, designed to weaken popular
resistance and force civilians into accepting
inhumane conditions. Despite the clarity of
these violations, the international

community has repeatedly failed to take
meaningful action—reflecting deep moral
and legal shortcomings within the global
order itself.
Starvation in Gaza is not an isolated event;
it is the continuation of repressive policies
that weaponize food, turning daily life into a
battle for survival. It is a form of slow
killing, where traditional tools of war
intersect with strategies of collective
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