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There can be no doubt that Hamas is winning the propaganda war. Every night we see heartrending photographs of what are described as “starving children,” the victims of famine in Gaza. But some of the same videos of emaciated children are shown repeatedly; perhaps there are not so many of them to put on display after all. As the Israelis keep saying, there is no “famine” in Gaza; there is, instead, “malnutrition.” These are different things. There is “malnutrition” in Mississippi. There is “famine” in the Sudan.
An IDF soldier who served in Gaza protecting the humanitarian aid at one of the GHF distribution centers, preventing it from being seized by Hamas, has set the record straight here: “‘I saw something different’: IDF reservist refutes intl. claims of intentional starvation,” by Gabriel Colodro, The Media Line, July 27, 2025:
In the quiet outskirts of Tel Aviv, an active-duty soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who, for security reasons, will be referred to only as “Y,” is between rounds of duty after completing more than 300 days of service since October 7.
In an exclusive interview with The Media Line, he recounts what he saw during one of the most contested incidents of the war, challenging headlines that claimed Israeli soldiers opened fire on starving civilians.
Another IDF reservist who was present at the scene also spoke with The Media Line and confirmed “Y’s” account of the incident, including the sequence of events and the nature of the crowd that approached the distribution site.
Access to Gaza has been limited, and the foreign press has been unable to enter the area to tell the story accurately. Since the soldier gave this account, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has challenged Hamas’ claim of widespread starvation in Gaza with a statement on Thursday that “there is no famine in the Gaza Strip,” while acknowledging “there are issues of access to food” in certain “pockets” in Gaza.
Photos were circulated on social media showing 1,000 humanitarian aid trucks stalled outside the Gaza Strip. While the UN claims that Israel’s bureaucracy prevents distribution, Col. Abdullah Halabi of COGAT told Yahoo News, “The State of Israel allows the entry of humanitarian aid beyond the standards of international law, without restriction. As long as the international community makes an effort to bring in the aid, we will allow them to bring it in.”
The IDF announced Thursday that, in response to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, it will renew the airdrop of aid into the Gaza Strip. The effort will be coordinated by COGAT and the Israeli air force and will include seven aid pallets containing flour, sugar, and canned food provided by international organizations. In addition, the IDF said it will facilitate the movement of aid trucks within Gaza.
The much-maligned Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by both Israel and the United States, has already managed to serve 1.5 million meals in Gaza. Does that sound like Israel is trying to “starve the people of Gaza”?
While the IDF has acknowledged that mistakes occur amid the fog of war and that serious incidents are subject to internal review, “Y” emphasizes that his account is based solely on what he witnessed during his deployment. “I’m not saying everything always goes right—we’re people, and people make mistakes,” he notes. “But where I was, I didn’t see what the news is claiming. I saw something very different.”
The soldier’s latest deployment placed him not in combat with enemy terrorists, but guarding one of the war’s most controversial flashpoints: a humanitarian corridor intended to deliver aid to civilians in Gaza.
‘Trained to fight terrorists, not to manage riots’
“This was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” says “Y.” “It was disgusting. You see people fight each other over food. Trampling, throwing sand, stealing. It’s chaos. We’re not trained for that. We’re infantry. We’re supposed to fight terrorists, not manage riots.”
Assigned to a corridor, one of the three Safe Distribution Sites in southern Gaza, “Y” was part of the Israeli effort to allow aid trucks into the Strip without empowering Hamas. The system was coordinated with US aid officials and monitored by drones to weaken Hamas’s control over food distribution and, in turn, pressure the group to agree to a ceasefire and release hostages.
The IDF soldiers were there to protect aid trucks entering and inside Gaza from being seized, or looted, by Hamas, and also to keep Hamas members from waylaying Gazans who had received food from the GHF and stealing large amounts of the food they had been given.
“It made sense strategically,” he explains. “Take away their grip on aid, make life easier for civilians, and isolate Hamas. But on the ground, it turned into chaos.”
According to “Y,” thousands of civilians pour into the compound daily. “It’s the size of a football field, surrounded by sand berms and barbed wire. People arrive on foot, in cars, on motorcycles, or on horses. They carry sacks. There are no lines. No supervision. It’s a stampede. They push, they stab, they throw sand at each other. Sometimes they trample the weak. We tried to bring some order, but the system collapsed from the start.”…
The Gazans themselves, by their violent behavior directed at other Gazans when they are clamoring for food, make it almost impossible for the orderly distribution of aid. Hamas encourages this behavior, which it knows can be videotaped and presented to the world as an example of the IDF “making the desperate Gazans suffer in their desperate search for food.”
Hamas terrorists and common criminals waylay those Gazans who do manage to obtain food from the four GHF distribution points (three in Rafah, and one in northern Gaza), and steal that food for resale. That resale of humanitarian aid stolen by Hamas has become a main source of revenue for the terror group, which is especially needed now that financial aid that used to be delivered from Iran through Syria to Hamas has been cut off.