Walt Rubel Commentary: Nostalgic look at childhood starvation

CNN is now airing a special series about Live Aid, the global concert held in 1985 to combat mass starvation in Ethiopia.

The series features interviews with a healthy young woman and her proud father today. She was a withered baby starving to death and her father was desperate for help when the two were first filmed by news crews during the famine.

The series isn’t over yet, so I’ll reserve final judgment. But thus far it seems to suggest the greatest rock stars in the world all came together on one day and combined their massive popularity and talent to forever end world hunger.

The horrific images of starving children in Ethiopia that shocked the world’s conscience in 1985 can be seen today in Gaza. They look exactly the same. Starvation has the same ravaging impact on the bodies of infants, regardless of where it happens to occur.

The famine in Ethiopia was caused by a combination of natural and man-made events. It started with a severe drought. The Derg rulers then used famine as a way to control the population.

The famine in Gaza is entirely man made. After the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, leaders in the Israeli government informed the world that they would respond by shutting off food, water and power to civilian populations. It was an action plan, not a threat.

U.N. food security experts reported in May that one in five people living in Gaza were facing starvation. It was reported last week that six people had died from starvation in just one day. The group Doctors Without Borders estimates that 25 percent of the women and children between the ages of six months to five years old living in Gaza are malnourished.

The leaders of Israel are responsible for this atrocity, but our leaders are certainly complicit. We’re the ones who provide the weapons that give Israel overwhelming military superiority, tilting the balance of power in the region.

And, we’re the ones who always bat down attempts by the United Nations to hold Israel accountable for the commission of war crimes.

The Israeli government boasted last week that it had started air drops of food to the starving population. A grand total of seven pallets of flour, sugar and canned goods were delivered, according to the Washington Post.



They also announced that they would turn the electricity back on for the area’s only water desalination plant, allowing fresh water for the first time in nearly two years. And, they will now aid in food distribution.

A statement by the Israeli military said those moves were, “aimed at improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip and to refute the false claim of deliberate starvation.”

Right. What better way to disprove claims of intentional starvation than by demonstrating how easily you could have ended it long ago if you had wanted to.

I can already hear the howls from the What Abouters. Yes, I understand the history of the Middle East is complicated. But feeding starving children isn’t. Nobody wants to hear your geopolitical grievances when they’re being drowned out by the anguished cries of dying kids.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected].

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