“Dead or dying children in a Calcutta Street. Photograph published by the Statesman, Calcutta, on August 22nd, 1943.”, Public Domain

Even right wing newspapers now have front pages showing Palestinian children who look just like these with headlines like “For Pity’s sake stop this” (Daily Express 23/7/25) without saying how. The limitations of the Excpress approach are well explored here.

The latest UN Report states

• Gaza’s one million children continue to bear the brunt of continued bombardment, deprivation of access to life’s essentials, including food, water and adequate health care, and exposure to traumatic events. In a briefing to the UN Security Council on 16 July, Catherine Russell, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), stated that more than 17,000 children have reportedly been killed and 33,000 injured in Gaza over 21 months, which is the equivalent of a classroom of 28 children killed in Gaza on average each day. (My emphasis)

Starvation is already the common lived experience of everyone in Gaza.

Genocide by industrialised intent.

In the 1940s, the Nazi’s industrialised the mass extermination of people, mostly Jews, that they considered “untermensch”, lesser humans. Around 6 million were killed, initially by being shot by Einsatzgruppen, marching them out into the woods (see Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning) then by mass gassing, starvation and being worked to death in the extermination camps. No one kept exact records, but the scale and horror of it is in no doubt.

Genocide by neglect.

In the same decade, around 3 million colonial subjects of the British Raj in Bengal starved to death in the Bengal famine. Again, no one kept exact records, and estimates vary from just under a million to just under 4 million, but the scale and horror of it is in no doubt.

It is, however, much less well known. They died “from starvation, malaria and other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions, poor British wartime policies and lack of health care.” What Wikipedia describes as “poor British wartime policies” covers limiting food aid overall, on the argument that this was needed for the war effort, and manipulation of what food aid there was to communities that were considered politically loyal. This was a material factor in exacerbating communal tensions that were later to explode at partition.

This was not an aberation in British India. It took independence to end famines. See Mike Davies, Late Victorian holocausts.

Genocide by deliberate deprivation.

Without food, people can survive for just over two months before they starve to death. In 1981, the longest lasting IRA Hunger Striker, Kieren Doherty, survived for 73 days, the shortest, Martin Hurson, died after just 46. Most died after 60, 61 or 62 days. Two months. And these were fit young men who were able to drink clean water.

Without food, the entire population of Gaza is a risk of starving to death by the end of the summer. 43 have died in the last three days, and this is accelerating.

The deliberate, calculated, performative cruelty of the GHF “aid” operation will slow the pace of this a little, spin out the suffering, but also aims to destroy community. As Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation puts it, “You can’t approach starvation as a biological phenomenon experienced by individuals, but it is also a collective social experience. Very often that societal element – the trauma, the shame, the loss of dignity, the violation of taboos, the breaking of social bonds – is more significant in the memory of survivors than the individual biological experience. All these traumas are why the Irish took almost 150 years before they could memorialise what they experienced in the 1840s. Those who inflict starvation are aware of this.”

So are we. This cannot be allowed. Demonstrate on Friday. Let’s break our government’s complicity in it. The six demands of the Bogota Declaration are a good basis for getting beyond David Lammy’s stance of wringing his hands while passing the ammunition.

Local actions so far

Thursday, 24 July

Hastings: Murial Matters House, TN34 3UY, 6pm

Friday, 25 July

Abergavenny: St. John’s Square, 6pm

Birmingham: Barclays Bank, 79-84 High Street, B4 7TE, 5pm

Cambridge: Addenbrooke’s Roundabout, 6pm

Cardiff: UK Government Building, Central Square, CF10 1EP, 6pm

Coventry: Foleshill Road/Ring Road roundabout (near Eden School), CV1 4FS, 4.30pm

Exeter: Bedford Square, High Street, 6pm

Leeds: City Square, LS1 2ES, 6pm

Liverpool: Lime Street Station, 5.30pm

London – Hackney: Hackney Town Hall, 6pm

London – Ilford: Wes Streeting’s office, 12a High View Parade, Woodford Ave., IG4 5EP, 6pm

London – Newham: Stratford Station, 6pm

Milton Keynes: Milton Keynes Central Station, 302 Eldergate, MK9 1LA, 6pm

Newport: Jessica Morden’s office, Clarence House, NP19 7AA, 6.30pm

Oxford: Carfax Tower, Queen Street, OX1 1ET, 6pm

Portsmouth: Constituency Office, 72 Albert Road, Southsea, PO5 2SL, 6pm

Reading: Central Railway Station, RG1 1LZ, 6pm

Sheffield: Sheffield Train Station, Sheaf St., 5pm

Slough: Aldi, Farnham Road, SL1 4BX, 6pm

Worcester: Cathedral Square, WR1 2QE, 6pm

Saturday, 26 July

Brighton: Churchill Square, 12pm

Carlisle: Barclays, 33 English St, CA3 8JX, 1pm

Slough: Meet outside Empire Cinema, SL1 1DD, 11.30am; 12noon departure for march