Using Food as a Weapon in Gaza Comes to the USA

Using food as a weapon in Gaza comes to the United States-not through bombs and blockades, but through the quiet cruelty of bureaucratic standoffs. As the federal government shutdown drags on, millions of Americans face the chilling possibility of losing access to their next meal. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which feeds more than 42 million low-income individuals, is caught in the political crossfire.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned that without new appropriations, November benefits cannot be issued. Officials have refused to use the department's $5 billion contingency fund, insisting it's reserved for natural disasters. For families living paycheck to paycheck, the message is clear: politics now determines who eats. Children, seniors, and working parents will find their EBT cards empty-not because food is unavailable, but because hunger has become a bargaining chip in a partisan power struggle.

This use of hunger as leverage echoes a darker and more deliberate practice abroad. In Gaza, Israel has been weaponizing starvation as part of its military campaign. After months of siege and bombardment and even a ceasefire, aid trucks are still blocked, crops have been destroyed, and bakeries have been leveled. Over 90 percent of Gaza's population faces acute food insecurity, with children dying not just from airstrikes but from hunger itself.

While the American context differs from Gaza's devastation, the moral thread is disturbingly similar. In both cases, hunger is manipulated as an instrument of control-one through politics, the other through military design. Both reveal how the most basic human need can be transformed into a tool of coercion.

In the United States, the weaponization of hunger is masked by procedure and policy debates. In Gaza, it is laid bare by rubble and famine. Yet the result is the same: the erosion of human dignity.

If food is the first casualty of political or military conflict, then the moral compass of society is the second. Whether in Washington or Gaza, denying people the means to eat is never just a logistical issue-it is an ethical collapse.

Using hunger to win a political advantage or a war is not strategy; it is inhumanity disguised as policy.