Israel ensures the people of Gaza receive more food aid than the United States provided occupied Germany in the years after WW2.

Israel targets 3000+ calories into the area per person. The USA targeted 1500 into Germany, and 1000 for areas where airlifts were used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_occupied_Germany

War sucks. It sucks that the government of Gaza chose to start this war with Israel, especially as that government knew that a large amount of their people's food came through Israel and that war would impact those routes. During active ongoing conflict Israel is still providing more calories per person in Gaza than the allies did for years to post war/non-active conflict Germany.

Distribution points are hours of walking away from the majority of Gazans. Then you have armed forces shooting people seeking food.

From the article: https://imgur.com/a/rqW5m3w

And the GHF isn't even a real aid distribution NGO. Those exist! They're experts at this. Let them in.

Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong, starvation as a tactic of war is horribly wrong, we all know what's happening, please have some respect for peoples' intelligence.

Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong. Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.

The CNN article gives the low calorie consumption amount as 1400.

The US, in post war Germany, doing it 'the right way' according to history, targeted (so many received lower) 1500 calories a day. Or 1000 a day when airdropped.

According to the CNN article, Israel's action during an ongoing conflict is about par with how the US did it for years in post war Germany. And remember Germany is much larger than Gaza, so people had much larger distances to cover. Those that couldn't be reached received airlifts that only targeted 1000 calories per day.

War sucks. It sucks that the government of Gaza chose to start a war. What we are seeing is the impacts of that. And it is awful. But it's also in line with the conditions in post WW2 Germany, arguable one of the best historical treatments of an aggressor by victors over it.

Germany isn't referred to as a starvation, but as a successful reconstruction. It is the 'norm' to which people speak when they speak of how to treat an aggressor population when they lose to victors. It is the literal 'norm' that people are calling for in Gaza. I only looked into it because people here were pointing to it as how Israel should be acting in Gaza on last weeks Gaza story. And I was surprised to find that Israel is acting within that established norm.

I'm not sure why this is important to the discussion. The important question is: are people in Gaza starving or not? If they are, I couldn't care less what we did during WW2.

Secondarily, just because there was a guideline during WW2 that was deemed "the right way", it's the result that counts. Were people starving in Germany post WW2? If so that was wrong then too.

It was wrong to fight to end the holocaust because nazis were starving? How is war supposed to work in your mind.

The Red Cross sets a floor of 1500 calories within the USA, lower than the floor Israel sets for Gaza. Does the Red Cross starve American's/use food as a weapon?

https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...

The UN itself has cut food distribution/caloric intake in Kenya (in need in huge part because of war refugees from Sudan) in half, is the UN using food as a weapon? The UN is saying it wants to provide aid at a much higher level to the people of Gaza than it provides to the people in Kenya.

> Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.

The problem for your argument is that Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza.

> 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.

Israel let in 0 calories for months on end. They have blocked the UN from providing food aid, and have attempted to completely destroy the main UN agency providing food in Gaza. When Israel does let food in, it is only in response to international pressure. If the Israeli government thought it could get away with killing every last Palestinian in Gaza, it would.

> Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza

To be fair, Israeli leaders can be quoted saying just about anything, same as in pretty much any democracy. What matters is which leaders are saying what, what authority they have, and what's happening on the ground.

The Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister are not just random, low-level people with no authority who are shooting the breeze.

Nobody who has followed the news over the last two years can seriously claim that this isn't Israeli policy. Did Israel block all aid shipments for months earlier this year by accident?

Sorry, didn't realise it was attributed to their comments.

> Nobody who has followed the news over the last two years can seriously claim that this isn't Israeli policy

Eh, it's fair to say there isn't an Israeli policy. Same as there isn't a Palestinian one. We have a black box in Hamas and around Netanyahu.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly."[0]

CNN: "Israel says it will block Gaza humanitarian aid until Hamas agrees to new conditions"[1]. This official announcement came directly from Netanyahu's office. After this announcement, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza for nearly 3 months. What's particularly remarkable is that this came after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange. Netanyahu exchanged the first few batches of hostages, and then refused to continue as previously agreed. He demanded that the entire deal - which both sides had already agreed to - be renegotiated, and blocked humanitarian aid as a means of applying pressure.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalael Smotrich: "No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages."[2]

I could go on, but you get the point. You can't possibly claim that this isn't Israeli government policy or that we have no way of knowing what the top Israeli leaders think about the matter.

0. https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-d...

1. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-g...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/08/israel...

All the more reason they shouldn't support doing it to others, and yet many do.

And population growth looks the same everywhere in the world: the poorer the country, with less access to health care, less job security, independence and opportunities for women, the higher the birth rate.

Palestinian children are not paragliding in and murdering people.

Even if they could, they're too malnourished to do so.

Fortunately the world has woken up and the coming generation sees the truth.

1. The "war" did not start on Oct 7.

2. Even if a country's government starts a war, that doesn't not justify war crimes. This is why they're called war crimes.

3. Pointing to what allies did 70+ years ago doesn't mean anything.

The source of the food scarcity being discussed started on Oct 7th though when the government of Gaza chose to kill over 1000 people, maim/injure/torture/rape thousands more, and kidnap many (including the approx. 6 year old girl they posted videos on the internet of themselves kidnapping from her house, they were so proud they posted video of kidnapping a little girl from her home). That all happened starting Oct 7th.

If that's true, they are doing their best to ensure it's not working. Maybe Israel should airlift it over populated areas.

The USA only target 1000 calories per day for airlifted populations in post war Germany. The CNN article lists 1400 as the low calories intake. So Gaza is still 400 calories a day above 'doing it the right way' post war German reconstruction numbers for hard to reach areas.

The 1400 calories are the number people are actually consuming, not unavailable. It is the whole point of the article.

Those are just published numbers. Doesn't matter if they're placed where they can't be gotten.

The Allied occupying powers tried as hard as they could to get food into Germany. Israel is intentionally blocking food from getting onto Gaza. There's a massive difference.

> War sucks.

That's an awfully glib way of justifying deliberately starving a civilian population. Saying "war sucks" doesn't make it okay to commit war crimes.

People keep saying Israel needs to follow the norms. The Allies actions in Germany ARE WHAT ESTABLISHED the norms. THEY ARE the norms people are calling for. I only read about them because people here on HN last week called that Israel needed to behave the same as the US in post war Germany. But now that they are inconvenient to a narrative I am downvoted/flagged/told they are irrelevant. Because I read and posted more detail on what people on HN were actively calling for.

The Allies did not. This is the number for years decided by bureaucrats, not just immediately after surrender. Go read the articles. The Allies decided on a number based on what they felt their home populations were willing to accept not on 'what they could get in'. And the Allies are considered to have been generous and done it the right way even though they made such considerations and limited supplies. It was until a year after the wars end that the allies allowed third party aid agencies for children into Germany. That was limiting aid, by choice. Just as the target calories were limited, by choice not capability/capacity.

All I know is the article's worst calorie number (1400) for a specific month is around the US allocated amount for many Germans during the initial 3-4 years of post war occupation and higher than those in remote areas of Germany.

Instead of being called crimes, what the Allies did is the basis of establishing the norms people here seem to want followed, and considered one of the better cases of treatment/outcomes. But when I point out the actual real 'norms' to have a discussion around I am downvoted, flagged, and attacked.

I don't quite understand why you keep pointing to post WW2 as a justification.

For 1 we should be looking at results and the situation on the ground, not the guidelines for what's "the proper way to do things". Were people in Germany starving or not, are people in Gaza starving or not? If the answer to either is yes, then it is / was a problem.

Secondly, what we consider ok changes over time. Go back far enough and killing prisoners, taking civilians as slaves etc were all considered ok. We frown on those now.

The Gaza thread on HN last week was talking about how Israel needed to fit to norms. That Israel needed to be like the US in Germany. Which is what got me looking into numbers. I think it's relevant as the Allies in Germany are where the current norms come from.

The Red Cross considers 1500 the floor for the US: https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...

not that much to the minimal amount of 1400 the CNN article found occurring. Horrible I agree, but not that far off from the Red Cross floor for aid distribution with the USA.

The UN provides much less calories (currently 552 to refugees from Sudan's war) yet says it can provide more than Israel in aid Gaza. Is the UN anti Sudanese/Kenyans because it claims to have food for 2 million on hand yet won't feed the starving 800,000 in Kenya? If it has food for Gaza's 2 million that is isn't giving out, how can it justify not giving at least part of that to the smaller 800,000 war refugees in Kenya? The UN itself says it's a crime not to give out food in those higher quantities if there are stocks of it. The UN has stocks. The UN does not give those stocks out to those in need, only giving 552 calories.

Maybe you should take a look at the IPC report, which details exactly how they know that Gaza is in the middle of a deliberately created, man-made famine.

Kenya has the ability to grow food. Gaza doesn't. Israel has destroyed 100% of the farmland and shoots anyone who walks around freely outside of a tiny fraction of the Gaza Strip.

The allies' crimes were 80 years ago. Israel's crimes are ongoing.

The allies did not consider 1000 calories an acceptable dietary intake post-war. Here's a report from the Berlin blockade:

https://doi.org/10.2307/4588157

Quote:

    Our clinical and other observations convinced us that 2,000 calories a day was a bare minimum and sufficed merely to keep the population at a subsistence level.

Where "bare minimum" refers to a community with high numbers of women and children doing little exercise or labor. They observed malnutrition in people consuming 1800 calories daily and recommended substantially more than 2000 calories for people doing hard labor.

Go ahead and read here and the many reports cited. The USA settled on 1000 for when airlifts were required, and 1500 otherwise. And wanted to use a lesser number originally. Your article if from 1951, not contemporary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_occupied_Germany

The Red Cross has settled on 1500 as the floor in the US.

https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...

If you had read literally the first line of the article, you would see that it discusses the 1948-1949 years of the blockade. The wikipedia article you're citing covers the 10 years after 1945, which includes those years. Even if the years didn't overlap, human nutritional needs obviously didn't double in 6 years.

Of course, if you had read the wikipedia article you would have seen these lines:

    The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force initially set the ration scale for Germans at 11,000 kJ (2,600 kcal) per day... Once the occupation of Germany commenced, it proved impossible to deliver the intended levels of food...As a result, once supplies which had been stockpiled by the German government during the war ran out, the ration scales were reduced to 4,200–5,200 kJ (1,000–1,250 kcal) per day.

So they didn't set the number to 1000 out of a principled stances about nutritional needs, it was what they could manage actually deliver given the enormous logistical and infrastructure limitations of the blockade.

The LA city (not Red Cross) document is much the same. Again, you've failed to read literally the next line in a document because the Red Cross is cited with the proper figure immediately after the "1500 calorie" figure:

    The Red Cross suggests 2,000 to 2,500 calories per person, per day.

You can also look at virtually any paper ever published on human caloric needs. A population average of 1400 calories/day is famine. For context, in 2021 they had 1800 calories/day available (https://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/redlines/r...), which is less than Somalia or South Sudan in the same period according to the latest numbers (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...).