H. M. Nazmul Alam 

In an era when billionaires race each other to Mars and the West debates the ethics of lab-grown meat, nearly 2.1 million people in Gaza—a strip of scorched earth barely visible on the world map—stand at the precipice of a man-made famine. The term "civilized world" becomes a grotesque irony, a punchline in a tragic comedy, when set against the backdrop of starving children digging through garbage heaps while diplomats toast champagne to "peace efforts."

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed agency, released a chilling report this week: 93% of Gaza’s population faces acute food insecurity, with nearly 244,000 in what they define as "catastrophic" conditions. That term, however, fails to capture the stench of desperation wafting through Gaza’s ravaged alleyways. There is no poetry left in starvation. There is only the dry cough of a mother watching her child waste away, the clank of a spoon on an empty pot.

And yet, the world scrolls on.

While first-world influencers post food hauls and aesthetic brunches, the children of Gaza collect scraps of plastic and metal to exchange for stale bread. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, prime-time television debates how many olive pits a martini should contain, while across the Mediterranean, another infant dies from hunger-induced seizures. The world has become a Blakean dystopia, a place where the Lamb lies bleeding under the indifferent gaze of metallic sheep.

"Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?"

So wrote William Blake in Holy Thursday, a lament of industrial-era England that tragically echoes today. Gaza is not merely a humanitarian crisis; it is a moral indictment of modern civilization. When our technological capacity to deliver relief is boundless but our political will is starved, then the famine is not in Gaza alone. The famine is in our souls.

Israel’s continued blockade, especially since the resumption of military operations in March 2025, has prevented vital humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Food, medicine, even clean water—all denied. The justification? Leverage over Hamas to release the remaining hostages. Leverage? The word is diplomatic lipstick smeared over the lips of war crimes.

International bodies, including the UN, have condemned the blockade, and yet the crossings remain closed. Aid trucks line up at the borders like ghosts of conscience, unable to pass through the labyrinth of geopolitics. The United Nations says it has enough supplies pre-positioned to flood Gaza with help. But help, like justice, has become a hostage.

Human rights groups call it what it is: a starvation policy. A deliberate act of collective punishment on a civilian population. An atrocity that should shake the very scaffolding of international law. But the laws, too, seem to have been blockaded, their enforcers conveniently distracted by more profitable conflicts.

Meanwhile, the narrative is spun with cynical precision. Israeli officials claim that "sufficient" aid was allowed during the brief ceasefire, that the threat of famine is exaggerated. But one wonders, if half a million people are on the edge of starvation, what does "sufficient" mean? Would it be sufficient if 71,000 children under five suffer acute malnutrition over the next year? Would it be sufficient if one of them were your child?

As always, numbers are the veil. Behind each statistic lies a story, a human face. 52,862 Gazans have died since October 2023, according to Hamas-run health authorities. That is a number large enough to numb the senses, yet not large enough to stir global action. We, the observers of this massacre, have learned to metabolize mass death.

We live in a world where morality is filtered through convenience and skin color. Gaza is not Kyiv. The cameras don’t linger. The outrage is measured. The solidarity, optional. Empathy, as it turns out, is a luxury afforded by geography.

It is telling that while Gaza starves, the wealthy West contemplates the ethics of artificial intelligence and climate change rhetoric balloons into billion-dollar conferences. Leonardo DiCaprio gives speeches on rising sea levels while Gaza sinks into an abyss of hunger. SpaceX launches rockets while Gaza buries its babies in rubble.

Meanwhile, the United States, now under President Donald Trump’s second term, is once again marching through the Middle East on a vanity tour. There are photo-ops, meetings, and hints at intensified military offensives. Israel, emboldened by American indifference or support—take your pick—talks openly of plans to occupy Gaza indefinitely, displace its population, and take over aid distribution. Humanitarianism, rebranded as conquest.

This is not merely a geopolitical crisis. It is a philosophical one. What does it say about our species that we can map the human genome, predict solar flares, and grow organs in labs, but cannot find the will to feed starving children? What is the point of all this progress, if our compassion has atrophied?

Once, during the height of European Enlightenment, Blake warned of the perils of reason devoid of empathy. His poems, drenched in mysticism and moral clarity, painted a world where the innocent are crucified by the machinery of power. Gaza is that world now. We, the citizens of modernity, are the spectral figures in Blake’s lament.

"And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are fill’d with thorns,
It is eternal winter there."

Eternal winter has descended on Gaza, not from a lack of sunlight but from the shadows of global apathy. The so-called rules-based world order has revealed itself as a cafeteria where powerful nations pick and choose which rules apply and where.

But what of Hamas? Yes, they are not innocents. They initiated the October 7 attacks that left 1,200 Israelis dead and took 250 hostages. Terror is terror, whether wrapped in a flag or in rhetoric. But collective punishment is not justice. Starvation is not a strategy. You cannot bomb your way to peace, nor can you blockade your way to morality.

One of the hostages, Aidan Alexander, an American-Israeli citizen, was recently released after 580 days in captivity. While his return is rightly celebrated, the notion that his freedom came at the cost of blocking aid to millions is morally untenable. His life matters. So do theirs.

When a society accepts that some lives are worth saving and others are not, that is not civilization. That is tribalism with Wi-Fi.

There is an old Palestinian saying: To live in Gaza is to live between the sky and the fire. That fire now consumes more than bodies. It devours the global conscience.

We should all be ashamed.

Not ashamed in the way politicians apologize when caught, or corporations pretend remorse. But deeply, existentially ashamed. Because in the final reckoning, when the historians of a more humane future write about our age, they will not marvel at our AI or our iPhones. They will ask how we let children starve while we streamed cooking shows.

The famine in Gaza is not only a failure of diplomacy or politics. It is a failure of imagination. A failure of heart. And above all, a failure of us.

So let the world enjoy its foie gras and caviar.
Let the rockets fly and the cameras blink.
But let us remember Blake's question, echoing through time:

"Can such a holy thing be seen,
In a land so rich and green?"

No, Mr. Blake. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

The writer- is an Academic, Journalist, and Political Analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He can be reached at nazmulalam.rijohn@gmail.com