The recent airstrike error on a food aid vehicle in Gaza highlighted a certain narrative going around claiming that Israel's plan is to create a famine, starving the Gaza residents into submission, so the food aid is the only thing out there saving their lives.

Here's how bad it's gotten out there, from a sampling of the headlines:

Gaza is going hungry. Its children could face a lifetime of harm. -Washington Post

Road to Famine: Israeli Law Prof. Neve Gordon on Israel’s History of Weaponizing Food Access in Gaza -Democracy Now!

Breaking the fast in the shadow of famine -The National

José Andrés: the chef behind Gaza food aid charity that ‘moves towards disaster’ -The Guardian

Let's also not forget the eurotrash and their top ally, Joe Biden, who are also promoting this "narrative":

The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, blamed Israel, saying, “Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.” And U.S. officials unveiled a United Nations ceasefire resolution that cited "famine" conditions after the IPC report came out.

But that's not what's going on at all, according to a study by two Columbia University scholars, one a professor and the other a logistics expert, in a piece featured on today's RealClearPolitics in a piece that focused on actual data:

Israel has tried for years to balance its interests with those of innocent Palestinians. Its maritime blockade did not stop Gaza from being self-sufficient in fruits and vegetables, with enough left over to potentially export.. Despite the war, three-quarters of greenhouse acres were still available as of Feb. 15, according to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, which has the latest available data. Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) indicates that bakeries can still provide “over 2 million breads, rolls, and pita breads a day.” 

Since the war began, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have engaged in what West Point Urban Warfare Studies Chairman John Spencer described as “a remarkable, historic new standard” for wartime treatment of civilians, resulting in a civilian-to-combatant mortality ratio that is “historically low for modern urban warfare.” For example, Israel regularly provides warnings of impending attacks, assists with evacuations, and even stops its attacks on a daily basis to allow humanitarian aid to arrive.

Despite the recent tragedy, the IDF tries to ensure that Gazans don’t starve throughout the war.

According to this United Nations chart, at least half the farms in Gaza are still going, their farm exports are still reaching their foreign customers, three quarters of the greenhouses are still producing, the bakeries are still baking, yet somehow, everyone in Gaza is starving to death.

That is one funny way of running a man-made famine.

The Columbia scholars didn't deny that there was hardship in some areas, but they did point out what was happening in areas where people really didn't have enough to eat and needed to rely on food aid:

Hamas is stealing all the food.

According to Columbia's Awi Federgruen and Ran Kivetz:

Hamas, which has been hoarding food and stealing from Gazans, is the root cause of Gazans’ suffering. As Congressman Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, stated in a CNN interview: “Hamas has a long history of stealing aid, and needs to stop that in the interest of the people that they purport to represent.”

How do you starve when you're still exporting food?

There's also this aid as well on top of what the Gazans already have:

Despite the recent tragedy, the IDF tries to ensure that Gazans don’t starve throughout the war. COGAT data show that 290,000 tons of food and beverages have been delivered to Gaza since October — recently as many as 200 truckloads a day. Full distribution of these supplies would deliver about 1.82 pounds of food daily for each of the 2 million people in Gaza (145 kg per person, during 175 days of war). Based on FAO estimates of the average daily consumption in Asia and Africa (where Gaza is situated), this alone would be enough to supply 50% of Gazans’ daily consumption needs – on top of the food they continue to produce themselves.

That's a lot of free food -- and hungry Gazans don't get enough of it, because Hamas takes first dibs, ripping the aid from the hands and mouths of the people they impoverished like a parasite on a host.

We had some indicators of it, in recent photos of captured Hamas fighters taken in by the Israeli Defense forces. Forced to strip naked as surrendered combatants, the beer guts were there for all to see. None of those guys ever missed a meal.

In addition, last March, Gaza residents complained about the food delivered by Joe Biden and his minions as not good enough, some of them feeding the aid to cats. That's not what people in famine do. I wrote about that here.

Now we have the data from these scholars, showing that much of the Gaza agricultural establishment has been left intact by Israeli Defense Forces, which are only looking to destroy Hamas, not every last person in Gaza. Being on a farm, of course, is hard work, so this might explain why Hamas chose to place its tunnels and hideouts elsewhere. Gotta maintain the old beer belly which must be some kind of status symbol over there.

It's wretched stuff. Obviously, food is getting there if Hamas would let them. There are ways of killing off famines, incidentally, all done through free markets. That would necessarily mean that Hamas and its reign of terror would need to be gone so that food markets can flourish. That's one more reason to destroy Hamas in addition to its heinous crimes against innocents.

Image: ProIsraeli, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED