Feeding the Enemy: A Search for Truth

There’s a photo that has stayed with me, of a child in Gaza, fragile and gaunt. It appeared in a recent New York Times story and has been shared widely, often accompanied by a single devastating message that Israel is starving Gaza.

It came out later that there was evidence the photo was altered. But is was seen already and the damage was done. Yet, the suffering it depicts is still real. What’s missing in so much of the reporting and the images we see, is the full story, the one of confusion, contradiction, and deliberate omission.

At the Jewish school I lead, we teach our students to grapple with moral complexity, to search for truth even when it’s obscured, and to act with compassion in the face of suffering. This war has tested all of that. Trying to understand what’s really happening with hunger and malnutrition in Gaza feels, at times, like an impossible task.

Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre when more than 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, women raped, homes torched, and entire families taken hostage, Israel has been at war with a terror group embedded in civilian infrastructure and uninterested in peace. The humanitarian toll in Gaza has been devastating. But the narrative of starvation, and who is to blame, as I’ve learned through careful research, is far more complicated than most are willing to admit.

There is food. Hundreds of trucks filled with supplies have been entering Gaza. The problem is not the food itself, but the collapse of the system needed to distribute it. And that collapse has led to impossible choices the world would rather ignore.

A fragile aid system once existed. The UN and NGOs, mostly through UNRWA, managed distribution, but they relied on local Palestinian police to escort convoys and deter looting. It was flawed, but it functioned. That system fell apart when Israel, rightly targeting Hamas’s infrastructure, began dismantling these police forces, viewing them as Hamas affiliates. The police disappeared, and with them, any semblance of order. Armed gangs, some linked to Hamas, now control the streets, looting aid, attacking convoys, and spreading terror. Even the UN acknowledges this.

Here’s where the next layer of complexity begins. Why can’t the UN and NGOs work with the IDF to secure aid deliveries? That seemed logical to me at first, and I assumed they were simply refusing out of hostility toward Israel. But the answer is more complicated and more tragic.

Aid organizations insist on operating under strict neutrality. If they are perceived as working with the IDF, a combatant in this war, they become military targets, especially from Hamas. And in Gaza, that’s a life and death risk. From their perspective, cooperating with Israel could turn their staff into targets, while operating without security guarantees leads to looting and more chaos, which ultimately benefits Hamas.

And yet, to me, this explanation rings hollow when applied to UNRWA. UNRWA is not neutral. Its complicity with Hamas is well documented. UNRWA employees participated in October 7, Hamas members are on the payroll, and terror tunnels have been found beneath UNRWA buildings. To claim neutrality now seems like an act of moral fraud. But even organizations with better records, like the World Food Programme or Doctors Without Borders, now find themselves caught between working with a discredited agency, or taking a risk they believe is suicidal. Israel has opened new corridors and is working to restore order, but until security is restored, these NGOs remain resistant.

Sooner or later, though, those organizations will have to make a choice to partner with the IDF and feed people, or to maintain their neutrality and do nothing. The choice, from a moral perspective, shouldn’t be that hard. The IDF is a legitimate military defending a democracy. Hamas is a terrorist group. The world may insist on fraudulent moral equivalence, but humanitarian agencies should not.

And yet, Israel is blamed entirely. As Matti Friedman recently wrote in The Free Press, the global narrative continues to suggest that Israel is using starvation as a weapon. Friedman is clear, “There is hunger in Gaza, and it is real. But the claim that Israel is using starvation as a weapon is not supported by the evidence.” Israel, he notes, has allowed in more aid than any other country in a comparable conflict. The bottlenecks are the result of Hamas interference, the breakdown of civil order, Israel’s military operations, and the paralysis of international agencies caused by real chaos.

None of this means Israel has acted flawlessly. There have been serious missteps. When we speak with moral integrity, we must acknowledge that. Doing so makes our defense of Israel more credible. But if Israel is allowing aid in, if the system for distributing that aid has been destroyed by a combination of Hamas’s lawlessness and Israel’s necessary military actions, then the blame must be shared. This is the crucial distinction, the hunger in Gaza is the tragic outcome of a security vacuum and a logistical nightmare, not the result of a deliberate sustained Israeli policy of starvation. The charge of using food as a weapon implies intent, but the evidence points to chaos. To ignore Hamas’s role or the refusal of international organizations to adapt is to tell only half the story.

And perhaps that’s the point. The full story is too messy, too morally ambiguous. It’s easier to cast Israel as the singular villain than to wrestle with shared responsibility, and uncertainty about what is really happening in Gaza at any given time.

That failure of moral clarity has become its own reward system. Just days after Hamas obstructed yet another ceasefire deal with new demands, French President Emmanuel Macron announced his intention to recognize a Palestinian state and now the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer threatens to do the same, not after peace, not after hostages are returned, not even after disarmament. Now, in the middle of war, with Hamas still in power. The message is unmistakable that terrorism works. Kill civilians, hide behind children, prolong war and get rewarded. This is appeasement and it defies all moral logic. As I write this, the UN General Assembly is convening to discuss a two state solution. This demonstrates a complete moral blindness to the atrocities of Hamas. Have this conversation when Hamas has released the hostages and surrendered. Have this conversation when Israel is guaranteed secured borders so October 7 can never happen again. 

What makes it worse is the glaring double standard. Where is the outage for Sudan, where over 500,000 have died in a civil war? Yemen, where famine and siege have killed thousands? These stories go largely untold. But Gaza is consistently front-page news with Israel as the villain. And increasingly, not just Israel, but Jews around the world.

I wonder why. Why, in a world full of atrocity, is Gaza’s suffering the only one that draws global outrage, protests, and endless coverage? Why are Jews expected to apologize for defending themselves, while others can commit war crimes with impunity? The answers are uncomfortable. But they’re not unfamiliar.

This selective outrage isn’t just dishonest. It’s dangerous. It distorts the truth, fuels antisemitism, and discredits the very institutions that claim to uphold human rights. It reveals the uncomfortable truth that for many, anti-zionism has become the primary vehicle for modern antisemitism. The world’s oldest hatred has always been flexible. In the Middle Ages, we were hated for our religion. In the 20th century, we were hated for our supposed race. Today, in an age of anti-colonialism, we are hated for our statehood and our collective right to self-determination. When Israel, the region’s only democracy, is held to a standard no other nation is asked to meet, we must ask what’s really driving that judgment.

And still, even in the face of all of this hypocrisy, we must not forget who we are. Jewish tradition doesn’t glorify war, it teaches restraint. Our sages instructed us to feed the hungry, even our enemies. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z’l, reminded us that Jewish ethics do not end at the battlefield’s edge.

We know what it is to be hated, to be hunted, to be hungry. That history demands that even in our pain, even when we are vilified, we must not surrender our empathy. Children in Gaza need food. That isn’t about Hamas. It isn’t about blame. It’s about who we are. 

So yes, Israel must do better to feed the enemy’s children. Not because the enemy deserves it. But because that’s who we are. And who we must remain, even when the world refuses to see us.

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Author’s Note: This article and its thesis are my own. I used AI tools to assist with research, fact-checking, and to test my arguments, but the words and convictions here are fully my own.