Difficult Answers, Easy Targets: Gaza’s Humanitarian Crisis

(essay)

Last night, I scrolled through the comments on a musician friend’s Instagram post. The post itself was simple, sincere—a plea for food to reach hungry civilians in Gaza. A plea I wholeheartedly believe in. What followed in the comment thread left me stunned. Not just by its intensity, but by its ill-informed and hateful certainty: Jews who defend Israel—or even remain silent—are now compared to Nazis. And those making such claims are proud to say, “We have the receipts.”

One commenter wrote, “No one will be able to hide. No one. We know who supported this. There will be a reckoning.” Another declared, “Israelis (sic Jews) are modern-day Nazis and Zionists are the ones cheering them on. History will remember.” These weren’t outliers. They were the dominant voice in the thread.

One commenter named me directly, speculating whether I would someday disavow my views. Others implied that Jews who express support for Israel will try to hide or deny their complicity, as if some future “reckoning” were inevitable. Another invoked Germany in the 1930s, equating silence with moral failure. The bitter irony of invoking the Holocaust to shame Jews was, apparently, lost on them—or perhaps it wasn’t.

What I witnessed wasn’t a conversation about Palestinian suffering—it was a performance of outrage, divorced from context and devoid of compassion. There was no mention of Hamas. No curiosity about how food is weaponized. No concern over how aid is diverted. No acknowledgment that two things can be true at once: Gazans are starving, and Israel is fighting a terrorist regime embedded among those same civilians.

This was not debate. It was denunciation. And in some cases, it was threat.

But here’s the part they won’t say: in Gaza, whoever controls the food controls the people. That’s why the conversation about food delivery is more than a humanitarian concern—it’s also a political and military one.

Food and aid truck inside Gaza waiting to be distributed.

According to Israeli sources, over 1,000 aid trucks are currently inside Gaza, loaded with food, waiting for distribution. UN-affiliated groups, particularly UNRWA—an organization with a deeply compromised track record—have refused to distribute the supplies, claiming the conditions are unsafe. Their paralysis has left food to rot or be looted. Thousands more trucks sit at crossing points, caught in logistical and political limbo.

Hamas, for its part, has a vested interest in maintaining that chaos. It has regularly seized aid, rerouted food to fighters, and denied civilians access to aid from independent or Israeli-backed sources. In some cases, Hamas operatives have fired on their own people for lining up at non-Hamas distribution points. Because food, like guns, sustains control. Losing control over food means losing power.

IDF Arabic-language spokesperson Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee released footage on Wednesday afternoon that he said "exposes the daily life of Hamas operatives in underground tunnels during the ongoing war." (source: Ynet news.com)

This is not conjecture. This is war by starvation—not by Israel, but by the group claiming to defend the Palestinian people. By the same regime that began a war—a war-by-atrocity—that left its own civilians without shelter while it hid underground.

Feeding civilians in the midst of an active war zone is, by nearly every military account, among the most dangerous missions a soldier can undertake. Gaza presents an extreme case: Hamas fighters do not wear uniforms and often operate from within civilian populations. When soldiers are tasked with distributing food in such environments, they are placed in immediate proximity to potential attackers who are indistinguishable from those in need. The risks of ambush, diversion, or deadly stampede are not hypothetical—they have happened repeatedly. This is why militaries around the world insist on secure zones and neutral intermediaries for aid delivery. In Gaza, those conditions do not exist.

Meanwhile, the United States has attempted to bypass the impasse by backing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a third-party agency tasked with facilitating delivery outside of Hamas or UN control. But UN agencies have bristled, saying this undermines their neutrality. They would rather remain nonfunctional than cede influence.

And then, there is Israel. Yes, it enforces a blockade. Yes, its security inspections slow delivery. Yes, it can be harsh and bureaucratic, especially in wartime. But it has also allowed aid drops, opened new corridors, and coordinated efforts to deliver supplies—efforts that have repeatedly been attacked or undermined.

So when Bret Stephens of the New York Times asks in his recent piece: “If Israel were committing genocide, why isn’t the death count higher?”—he’s not being callous. He’s pointing out a truth few want to confront. If Israel wanted to annihilate Gazans, it could. It hasn’t. In fact, hundreds of Israeli soldiers have died precisely because Israel sends troops in on the ground rather than opting for easier, deadlier air campaigns. It warns civilians before strikes. It maps out evacuation corridors. Genocide—which requires an intent to destroy a people “as such,” in the words of the UN Convention—requires not just tragedy, but intent. And that intent is glaringly absent here.

Stephens writes: “Furious comments in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities hardly amount to a Wannsee conference, and I am aware of no evidence of an Israeli plan to deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians.” He reminds us, too, that the war in Gaza should end—but not at the expense of truth. “To call it genocide does nothing to advance that aim, except to dilute the meaning of a word we cannot afford to cheapen.”

Back in the Instagram comment thread, none of this was discussed. Instead, the narrative was fixed and binary: Israel is the Nazi state; Jews who support it are collaborators. And anyone who questions this view is either a coward, a racist, or a liar. This is not advocacy. This is ideological purification.

I understand rage. I understand grief. But what I saw was something else: a performance of moral superiority so absolute that it could only survive by denying others their nuance, their questions, even their right to be afraid. Because when Jews are compared to Nazis, when we’re told our names are on lists, when we’re accused of supporting genocide simply for caring about our people’s safety—something older and darker stirs beneath the rhetoric. Something we have seen before.

Innocent Gazans are suffering. They desperately need food, medicine, and peace. But those who claim to advocate on their behalf must first reckon with the uncomfortable truth that Hamas uses their suffering as a shield—broadcasts their suffering globally as a weapon. Aid will not flow freely until the terror regime that feeds on despair is dismantled—or, at the very least, circumvented.

Hamas members displaying their fresh food stockpiles from the safety of their tunnels.

And just this week—on July 24 and 25, 2025—Hamas effectively walked away from another ceasefire proposal. They submitted a revised plan that reversed key points already negotiated, including conditions for a phased hostage release. According to U.S. and Israeli officials, Hamas’s response signaled a refusal to engage in good faith. As a result, both the U.S. and Israeli negotiating teams withdrew from the talks in Qatar. One senior U.S. official put it bluntly: “Hamas showed no interest in ending the war.” This breakdown came at a moment when over 6,000 aid trucks were stalled and humanitarian conditions in Gaza had reached critical levels. And yet—amid all the outrage directed at Israel—not a single voice in those comment threads acknowledged Hamas’s role in prolonging the war and blocking both peace and food. Why the silence?

As long as we ignore that, no amount of Instagram righteousness will feed a single child.

And as long as people feel safe using Holocaust language to target Jews, no amount of progressive branding will disguise what this really is.

The answer to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis will never be found in a comment thread, but perhaps it begins by naming things clearly: Hamas is not a liberation movement. It is a regime of cruelty. And truth, not slogans, must be our starting point.

We must all work and pray not just for food to reach those in need, but for something far greater: a peace that ends the cycles of propaganda, terror, and righteous cruelty. A peace built on truth, not performance.

With love and resolve—Peter