https://jakarta.ninkilim.com/articles/the_moral_depravity_of_weaponizing_hunger/en.html
The deliberate use of hunger as a weapon - to control, coerce, or break the will of a civilian population - is one of the most egregious violations of human ethics and international law. In Gaza, this crime has been refined into a system. What has unfolded is not merely a humanitarian failure but a calculated program of domination, delivered under the pretense of aid. At the heart of this strategy is the figure of Yasser Abu Shabab, a former criminal turned collaborator, and the imposition of a militarized distribution regime that kills more than it feeds. Through false allegations, proxy warfare, and lethal control over food access, Israel has transformed humanitarian relief into a theater of suffering and submission. Palestinians are lured to aid convoys only to be gunned down - a tactic that would be considered inhumane even in the treatment of wild animals.
Yasser Abu Shabab’s story is not one of redemption but of opportunism manipulated by occupation. Once a well-known figure in Gaza’s criminal underworld, Abu Shabab was imprisoned for drug trafficking and arms smuggling until his escape in October 2023. In the chaos that followed, he reemerged as the self-appointed head of the so-called “Popular Force” - alternatively branded the “Anti-Terror Service.” Israel, eager to fracture Palestinian unity and weaken Hamas through indirect rule, reportedly armed and empowered Abu Shabab’s group to operate in IDF-controlled areas.
This relationship is not new; colonial powers have long relied on morally compromised locals to serve as enforcers of foreign control. But in Gaza, this tactic was met with immediate revulsion. Abu Shabab’s collaboration was seen as a betrayal so profound that his own tribe and family disowned him. In a society where kinship and solidarity are sacred, this public rejection rendered him a pariah. He was not merely ostracized - he became a symbol of everything that occupation seeks to corrupt: loyalty, identity, resistance. His story illustrates how the occupier turns individual ambition into communal devastation.
Central to the justification for Israel’s stranglehold on Gaza’s aid system was the accusation that Hamas was looting humanitarian supplies. These claims, which surfaced in late 2024, were used to delegitimize UNRWA and sever critical supply lines. Yet credible reports later revealed that the most egregious instance of aid theft - the looting of 109 UN trucks - was carried out not by Hamas but by Abu Shabab’s forces. Still, the narrative persisted, weaponized to dismantle the existing aid infrastructure and replace it with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a militarized apparatus erected in May 2025 with Israeli and U.S. backing.
Further contradicting Israel’s claims is the condition of Yahya Sinwar, a prominent Hamas leader, at the time of his death. Israel’s own coroner determined that Sinwar had not eaten for three days prior to his demise - a detail that raises serious questions. If Hamas were systematically stealing aid, as Israel alleges, it is implausible that their leader would be left to starve. This evidence points to a broader failure in aid distribution, suggesting that the supplies are being intercepted by other groups, such as Abu Shabab’s militia, rather than being hoarded by Hamas. The starvation of a key figure like Sinwar highlights the dire reality: aid is not reaching those it is intended to help, regardless of who controls it.
The GHF promised coordination and security. What it delivered was carnage. Distribution points became death zones. Tear gas, rubber bullets, live fire, and stampedes turned the search for food into a daily game of Russian roulette. Nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed and thousands more wounded while attempting to access aid. This system, built on false premises and sustained through violence, has not only failed to address hunger - it has institutionalized it. It reflects a logic not of relief, but of control: to eat, you must obey; to survive, you must submit.
Under international law, this is a war crime. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbids the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, including the targeting or destruction of “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.” The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court likewise criminalizes the use of starvation as a weapon. By dismantling trusted agencies, denying aid, and killing civilians at distribution sites, Israel has constructed a regime that is not humanitarian at all - it is a weapon.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this system is the way it inverts basic ethical hierarchies. In Israel, as in many countries, it is illegal to hunt wild animals over bait. The practice is considered unethical - a violation of fair chase principles that protect even non-human creatures from undue suffering. Yet in Gaza, starving civilians are drawn to food under the pretense of aid, only to be fired upon by soldiers. What is outlawed for deer is legalized against children.
This ethical reversal is no accident. It is the logical endpoint of dehumanization. When a people are no longer seen as fully human, their suffering becomes background noise; their death, administrative. The moral abyss opens widest not in the fog of war, but in the clarity of policies that treat survival itself as a privilege to be rationed by the occupier. Gaza’s hungry are not collateral damage. They are targets - baited, shot, and discarded by a system that places more legal value on the lives of animals than on the people it starves.
The weaponization of hunger in Gaza, facilitated by collaborators like Yasser Abu Shabab and institutionalized through Israel’s militarized aid system, is not merely a strategy of war - it is a desecration of human dignity. It reflects a mindset in which food becomes a tool of domination, collaboration is rewarded, and civilians are slaughtered for the crime of needing to eat. The replacement of humanitarian agencies with armed gatekeepers has turned Gaza’s aid corridors into corridors of death.
This is not just a policy failure. It is a crime against humanity. And the most damning indictment lies in the comparison that should never have to be made: that animals are afforded more ethical consideration than the starving population of Gaza. This grotesque inversion demands global outrage - not as a matter of politics, but of conscience. A world that permits this is a world in freefall - not just morally, but civilizationally.