The playbook the guilty use to cover up famine

Gaza's famine is man-made. And those who are making it happen are doing their best to conceal their crime. The Israeli government is reading from the same playbook as many architects of calamity from the past 100 years.

- Alex de Waal

Step one: keep out the press

Two weeks ago, Europe and America marked the 40th anniversary of the Live Aid concert. Bob Geldof had been spurred to action when Michael Buerk and Mohamed Amin filmed a devastating - and until then, hidden - famine. Ethiopia's military regime barred journalists to avoid the embarrassment of the calamity, and because they were using food as a weapon of war.

No foreign journalists have been allowed into Gaza since 7 October 2023, except embedded in Israel Defense Forces units. Palestinian journalists report regularly, facing great danger and hardship. More than 170 have been killed and AFP is now considering withdrawing its journalists because it doesn't want them to die of hunger.

Step two: ban the word 'famine'

Faced with a famine in Bengal in 1943, Winston Churchill's war cabinet forbade newspapers to use the words "famine" or "starvation" - until the editor of the Statesman newspaper got around the ban by publishing graphic photographs that needed no words of explanation.