TU’s 7th Annual Human Rights & History Lecture: The Gaza Famine

7–11 minutes

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April 12, 2026

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This years’ Towson University (TU) Human Rights & History Lecture was with Michael Fakhri, a professor of International Law but importantly in the context of this lecture, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. Over the course of the talk, Fakhri made a compelling argument from a variety of angles on the devastating situation that Gaza is in – systematic mass starvation resulting in genocide. This research directly connect with the content of the work for my MFA thesis, and I feel very lucky I got to attend the lecture in person. Below are notes from the lecture.

Professor Fakhri received his doctorate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, LL.M. from Harvard Law School, LL.B. from Queen’s University, and B.Sc. in biology from the University of Western Ontario. He teaches in the areas of international economic law, commercial law, and food law. His research focuses on the right to food and agroecology.

In addition to authoring numerous United Nations reports on the right to food, Professor Fakhri is the author of Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law and an editor of Bandung, Global History, and International Law.

On January 16, 2024, UNOCHA reported 378,000 people in Gaza were in IPC Phase 5, or catastrophic levels of hunger. The famine in Palestine was confirmed by the UN and independent assessors in May 2025, when arrest warrants were issued for Gallant and Netanyahu for war crimes and starvation of a civilian population. The statistics around the devastation are staggering: Israel has destroyed entire food system making 95% unusable land. But how is it that this near total collapse – 90-95% of the food sector beeing destroyed – has been possible?

If we start back on October 6, 2023, a day before illegal Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens, 50% of the Palestinian population where already hungry and 80% of them dependent on humanitarian aid. Fakhri points out that how you start a story creates context. The further we go back in time, we can start to see how the starvation of the Palestinian people has been intentional.

In September 2023, Netanyahu presents a map titled, “NEW MIDDLE EAST,” which includes the total annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.

1967 – After the Israel-Arab War, Israel appropriated and annexed Palestinian territories, illegally occupying them and creating an apartheid regime. In these statements, Israel claims itself as the “Nation State of Jewish” making it specific jewish state.

1993 – the Oslo Accords enabled this by bringing Palestinian territories and economy as subservient to Israel. Palestinian Authority made the famous “land for peace” deal, but ultimately this served Israel as it allowed for more annexation of ancestral Palestinian land.
2000 – Israel begins laying siege against Gaza with a full-on illegal blockade. This includes the closure of the borders where nothing was allowed in or out. The uprooted ancient olive trees and destored. fisheries

2005 – Israel finally withdraws troops but has blockade on the border so it completely controlled
2007 – Israeel says Gaza is hostile territory. During this period they create what is known as the “Gaza diet” where Israel literally counts the calories of energy entering Palestine. The only allow just enough “calories” – not food, but calories – to keep people hungry, weak, without dignity, while not raising international alarm bells.
2014 – Israel frequently bombs Gaza; they spray herbicides on the lands to kill agriculture.

Fakhri then shifts gears in his lectures to point out one of the fundamental issues that contributed to allow this kind of violence ot happen: colonialism, imperialism with borders and mapmaking, aka Zionism.

1905- Zionist used corporations, like the Jewish National Fund, and Palestine Land Development Company (Now called the Israel Land Devevlopment Company) with “land grabs”

1910 – The first Zionist kibbutz, Degania, was established in the Ottoman-controlled Palestine. While Zionists purchased land through organizations like the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the rapid expansion and settlement policies were part of a long-term goal to establish a Jewish state, often leading to tensions, land disputes, and the displacement of indigenous Palestinian tenant farmers

1916 – The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret treaty between Britain and France, with Russian assent, that defined their future spheres of influence in the Middle East following the anticipated collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It partitioned Arab lands into British and French control, creating modern borders (such as Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon) and directly influenced regional conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

1917-1920 The British took control of Palestine.

1917 – The Balfour Declaration, a letter promising British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, was formally incorporated into the British Mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922. This action gave international legal sanction to Zionism’s aims. France was given control over Syria and Lebanon.

1947 – a partition of two states was created– Jewish and Arab – with Jewish international administration. Because of the boundaries and their interdependence, the Arab state is subordinate to the Jewish state. It was built in inequality, and created an apartheid state. Jewish state was 67% state, even tho they were the minority and 87% of agriculture would go to the Jewish state. This inequality Immediately set up tensions which led to riots, which led to the Nakba.
May 15, 1948 – The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the creation of Israel. Occurring around it involved the destruction of hundreds of villages, turning the majority of Palestinians into refugees.It expelled 90% of the indigenous population.

May 1949 – Israel is granted access to the UN although Palestine is not. Today, while Palestine recognized as a sovereign state by over 135 countries, its bid for full UN membership was vetoed by the U.S. in April 2024.
December 8, 1949 – The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 and began operations in May 1950. It was designed to provide direct relief, education, and health services to Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Why? because it was “Necessary to prevent starvation”

The problem here is Zionism as a movement. And now today, we are witnessing the worst moment of Nakba and also the largest moment of solidarity. The solution must be Land Back. “Land Back” for Palestine is a global movement advocating for the return of Indigenous Palestinian lands, the right of return for refugees, and the dismantling of colonial structures in favor of indigenous sovereignty. Some olive trees are 1,000 years old; Israel uprooting them is akin to uprooting generations of Palestinian ancestry. Ecocide is always closely linked with genocide; targeting the olive trees, the fisheries, the orange groves – this destruction gets at the heart of what it means to be Palestinian.

Question: The UN seems powerless to do anything. What do we reconstruct from the ashes of the UN?

Answer: Fakhri encouraged the audience to have faith, because he believes the immediate future will be harder. Although he is the UN Special Rapporteur, he has no faith in the UN at all.

US is creating a violation and is culpable of genocide because of its support of Israel
Israel as the occupying power, by definition is responsible for the basics of life of those that they are occupying.
So ergo the solution must be to end the occupation.

Question: How is anti-Zionism different than anti-Semitism?

Answer: Anyone should be able to able to critique states. We are entitled to have human rights, regardless of which state. To critique Israel is not anti-semitism. Being able to distinguish the two is very important, because real anti-semitism is on the rise, with hate crimese being committed against Jewish people. However, not all Jewish people are Zionist. We shouldn’t confuse the two. In fact, some anti-semitism is one the rise because Anti-Zionist Jewish groups like Jewish Voices for Peace are organizing for Palestine.

Question: Why was the GHF – Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a failure?

Answer: Food aid groups like, World Food Program (US is the main sponsor), ICRC, World Central Kitchen are all Humanitarian aid and thus they must be operated on four main principles:

1) neutrality, not favoring any side in any conflict
2) impartiality, solely on need not on identities. Trying to help everyone on both side.
3) independence, must be free from other military agendas or influence from other actors

However GHF was built to avoid this three necessities, founded in Switzerland. Then it became incorporated in Delaware, USA. They hired armed mercenaries to help distribute the aid with help of IDF. It was criticized even before they began. The chief of it resigned the day the service began. The result was mass bloodshed. Starve, die from illness, or risk death to get aid. GHF has been wound down because it was an immediate failure

Israel-Iran war now, you have to understand Gaza.Lebanon and Israeli is re-occupying southern Lebanon; similar with Syria. This isn’t about Hamas, it’s about controlling the land in the regime. What is so tragic about the systematic starvation and genocide in Gaza is because of the information we know now IN REAL TIME. Every single person with a phone knew it was happening in real time.

Some parts of the UN raised the alarm AND they knew, the legal arguments, but THEY DID NOTHING.

Every major veto power has supported famine as a weapon so they don’t want to outlaw it .

The only way to end hunger anywhere in the world, requires a political solution. We have a means to end hunger. Brazil almost eliminated hunger because they understood it as a political problem, which requires a political response. Don’t mistake starvation as a humanitarian issue.

Egypt is part of the problem. Open the border. However the root cause of this genocide and systematic starvation is the Israeli occupation. If Gaza was under the control of Palestine, we wouldn’t have this issue.

Thank you for reading and educating yourself on this issue that is often ignored by the mainstream western media. I don’t think it’s a radical position to say that starvation and genocide should not be tolerated as a weapon of war, especially when we have the means to end world hunger. For further reading, check out some of the resources:

MONICA HEISER