October 6, 2025: Alex de Waal tells Democracy Now that famine is "one of the simplest problems in the world to resolve," and that Israel "can solve the starvation crisis...in a matter of days, should it want to do so."
In January 2024, he told Owen Jones the opposite. Even if the fighting stopped that day and Gaza were flooded with aid, the people "mainly children of course" dying of hunger would "continue to rise, will peak, and will decline over a much longer period of time." Unstoppable then. A matter of days now.
Alex de Waal wrote the standard textbook on famine, runs the World Peace Foundation, and helped write starvation crimes into international law. When the media says "famine experts warn," this is who they mean.
In January 2024, he gave Gaza until "probably by early February." On March 19, 2024, he told CBS famine was expected between then and May. On March 25, 2024, he told Democracy Now children were already dying "likely in thousands." In April 2024, he told a Harvard webinar it was already the most intense famine since records began. In June 2024, the IPC's Famine Review Committee—the body he had called "the ultimate arbiter, the High Court"—ruled the claims "not plausible." On October 6, 2025, four days before the ceasefire, Democracy Now had him back.
0:00 The introduction: his new Foreign Affairs piece, "The Return of the Starvation Weapon"
0:20 "Famine is one of the simplest problems in the world to resolve"
0:32 Every famine of the last 30 years has been "man-made, the result of political or military action"
0:45 Israel "can solve the starvation crisis or at least ameliorate starvation in Gaza in a matter of days, should it want to do so"
0:59 "It is a choice that Israel has, whether to feed the people or whether to starve them"
1:30 The children who survive "will suffer physical and cognitive harm for the rest of their lives"
1:38 There is an obligation "on those who perpetrated the crime"
2:03 Discusses his article in Jewish Currents: "the obligation of the Jewish community as a whole globally" to repair the damage of "this planned starvation"
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What actually happened:
The IPC's own Famine Review Committee, June 2024: the famine claims were "not plausible," and "the available evidence does not indicate that Famine is currently occurring."
reliefweb.int/report/occupie…
Gaza's recorded malnutrition death rate in 2025 (74 deaths through late July, per the WHO) works out to roughly the same per-capita rate as the United States, where the CDC counted over 20,000 malnutrition deaths in 2022.
emro.who.int/media/news/maln…
Four days after this interview the ceasefire took effect. A UNICEF-led survey then found 0.5 percent acute child malnutrition in Gaza, one of the lowest rates in the region.
thefp.com/p/unicef-data-unde…
In his own words, January 23, 2024:
piped.video/0pGgFZovlAw?t=1209
Full show, October 6, 2025:
democracynow.org/shows/2025/…
Gaza segment:
democracynow.org/2025/10/6/f…
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In January 2024, nothing could stop the famine, and the deaths were on Israel.
In October 2025, Israel could stop it in days, and the choice was Israel's.
Four days later the fighting stopped. The survey found 0.5 percent.