Hamas Starves Children in Gaza
What kind of sick monsters stockpile baby formula in tunnels while their own people starve?
Hamas stockpiled literal tons of baby formula in guarded facilities to prevent it from reaching the infants of Gaza. The discovery was made this month by dismayed Palestinian Journalist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who was appalled by the discovery, despite being personally anti-Israel. The baby food and nutritional shakes, hidden away for months, were sequestered in clandestine warehouses labeled “Gaza Health Ministry.”
When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7th, brutally butchering over 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, they did so from a position of profound military weakness vis-à-vis Israel. Not only does Israel possess the world’s 15th most powerful military, astounding for its small size, but it is also a world leader in counterinsurgency. With no hope of combat equality, Hamas spent the past two years of war systematically exploiting the Gaza population it holds hostage as a means of delegitimizing Israel.
The recent US-brokered ceasefire has revealed how deeply this exploitation runs. As clearing efforts have begun to take place behind the yellow line of Israeli control, more evidence has begun to surface of Hamas-inflicted human suffering. Hamas hides both militants and aid stockpiles in a vast tunnel network, leaving civilians vulnerable to the conflict and starving above ground as human shields. This network is estimated to be 350-450 miles long, longer than the world’s largest subway systems, with caches, depots, and entrances directly beneath civilian infrastructure.
The United Nations (UN) has been deeply implicated in this cover-up. United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) facilities – schools, hospitals, and mosques – have frequently been identified as tunnel sites. Most notable was a command center and hostage cells, complete with a server site, found below the Al-Shifa hospital.
The UN’s role in covering for Hamas’ crimes is deeply tied to corruption and scandal within the entity, and blaming Israel has become a key tactic in avoiding accountability. On October 7th, Israeli intelligence reports that at least twelve UNRWA workers participated in the terrorist attack, and for years prior, UNRWA facilities were used to recruit, train, plan operations, and stockpile arms for Hamas operatives. With the dissolution of UNRWA in question, false reports and denials aimed at maintaining legitimacy have become increasingly frequent, and this trend is also widespread in aid distribution.
It must first be noted that, according to the UN and top official Martin Griffiths, “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us … It’s a political movement”. Because they do not differentiate between terrorists and civilians, this rhetoric is used to defend their failure in undertaking their primary duty of delivering aid. According to UN reports, more than 88% of trucks were looted between May and August 2025, and the data did not distinguish between “armed actors” and “hungry people”. As people went hungry in Hamas-controlled areas, Palestinian journalist Ayman Khaled reported on terrorists stealing the aid and selling it at inflated prices in Gaza markets to fund their crimes.
Furthermore, the UN refused to collaborate with the IDF and distribute the food to civilians. As the Israelis supplied, inspected, and transported tens of thousands of aid trucks through the Kerem Shalom crossing, UN facilities left hundreds of truckloads to rot instead of distributing them. To again deflect blame, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has been fudging the numbers. OCHA has under-reported aid delivery compared to Israel’s aid authority, in some cases by over 10,000 trucks. While the UN gave the aid to Hamas to exploit, their false numbers were then used by the International Court of Justice to shield UNRWA and libel Israel in their unsubstantiated genocide case. When the far more effective Gaza Humanitarian Foundation took over, the UN called for this entity’s dismantling.
Because the UN has a large role in administering Gaza, and because it considers Hamas a political entity and borderline partner, the UN has acted to enable these Hamas crimes. Spokespeople and officials at the UN seem happy to accept Hamas-issued’ inflated casualty reports, and to trust terrorist propaganda, as long as Israel is presented as blameworthy. To date, over 60% of “journalists” killed in Gaza have been exposed as terror operatives, according to a study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center – even as UN publications consistently leave out this context in attacking Israel.
This is just the latest calumny from the Hamas manipulation strategy, and it is part of a layered approach with no shortage of international collaboration. The idea is simple: inflict as much harm as possible to civilians and make Israel pay the price for it internationally through accusations and delegitimization.
Hamas’s exploitation of suffering continues in front of the very eyes of the West, even as the ceasefire is holding, for now. While record rains flooded the Levant, and over a dozen Gazans perished in the torrents, Hamas has been extorting displaced people by forcing them to pay rents on their beach tents. With all the steps Israel takes to safeguard Palestinian civilians–from aid deliveries, to warnings and humanitarian corridors–it is clear they care more for Gazans than Hamas.
The true scandal is not just that Hamas stole baby formula; it is that international institutions helped them launder the narrative. It is time for the world to recognize this hypocrisy and to hold the international institutions that allow it to persist accountable.
