What If Starvation Has No God — and Neither Do We?

What does it say about us, about the world, that in 2025, we are still watching people starve in Gaza… and calling it complicated? As if history is not just repeating itself, but rebranding it with worse subtitles.

I write this not only as a human rights graduate, but as someone who finds herself drawn deeply into theology these days. And the deeper I go, the more it unsettles me, how something meant to bring compassion and hope can so easily be twisted into an instrument of power, division, and punishment.

Starvation is not an accident of nature, nor an act of God. It is a choice, a deliberate policy. Under International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the starvation of civilians is strictly prohibited; it is classified as a war crime. Blocking aid, destroying infrastructure, and using hunger as leverage are not misfortunes. They are decisions, and people pay for them with their lives.

What troubles me most is how easily these choices are justified and normalized. Gaza is not a metaphor, nor a distant conflict. It is home to millions of real people: children, parents, grandparents, each with dreams and histories now overshadowed by siege and fear.

Too often, this crisis is reduced to “Muslims versus Jews,” as if faith itself demands suffering. But faith, at its essence, does not demand blood; people do. We build walls around God, codify compassion into dogma, and then bend it to fit our fears and ambitions.

And still, when I turn to the sacred texts of the Abrahamic traditions, I don’t find the distortions people claim, instead I find firm boundaries against cruelty.

Qur’an (Surah Al‑Burūj 85:10):
“Indeed, those who persecute the believing men and women and then do not repent will certainly suffer the punishment of Hell and the torment of burning.”

Torah (Exodus 23:7):
“Keep far from a false matter; and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not justify the wicked.”

Bible (Proverbs 6:16–19, WEB/NIV):
“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood…”

These three scriptures; threaded through Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, do not leave room for ambiguity. They do not say that violence is sacred. They do not obscure the worth of the powerless. They name cruelty as divine violation, not divine sanction.

So how did we get here, from these clear warnings to the acceptance of suffering as a tool? Perhaps the problem isn’t the faiths themselves, but what we’ve elevated in their names: power over people, vengeance over empathy, abstraction over accountability.

And yet, there’s still so much I don’t understand, and so much I still need to learn. But maybe that’s exactly why I’m writing this: because even in the not-knowing, something in me refuses to accept that this is just the way things are.

No scripture I’ve read justifies starving a child. No sacred text makes room for torture. The Abrahamic traditions, in all their complexity, still carry this shared command: to protect the innocent, to preserve life, to remember that every soul carries divine weight.

So maybe the question isn’t whether religion has failed us, but whether we’ve failed the parts of it that asked us to be human first.

And maybe the work, for those of us watching from far away begins with staying tender, staying awake. Not turning away. Not calling it complicated when it is also, painfully, clear.

Because even in a world that has grown numb, starvation still has no God.
And if we want to belong to something better, something sacred, maybe we start by refusing to make peace with the idea that some lives are disposable.

Bibliography

The Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Buruj (85:10).

The Torah, Exodus 23:7.

The Bible, Proverbs 6:16–19 (New International Version).

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Rule 53: Starvation as a Method of Warfare. Customary IHL Database.