Gaza’s starvation crisis: when will it end?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A choice between starvation or being shot at. That’s the decision many Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to make. More than 900 people have been killed at the GHF's aid distribution sites. Why is this happening, and what is being done to make it stop?
In this episode:
- Diana Buttu (@dianabuttu), Human Rights Lawyer and Analyst
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Tracie Hunte, Sarí el-Khalili, and Diana Ferrero, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Melanie Marich, Tamara Khandaker, and our guest host, Manuel Rapalo. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Spencer Cline, Sarí el-Khalili, Diana Ferrero, Tracie Hunte, Tamara Khandaker, Kylene Kiang, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Melanie Marich, Catherine Nouhan, Amy Walters, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Marya Khan and Kisaa Zehra. Our guest host is Manuel Rapalo. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, Israel's forced starvation of Gaza. |
| 0:15.0 | Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians |
| 0:19.0 | and has been killing civilians that have been seeking |
| 0:21.9 | aid. |
| 0:22.9 | Why the U.S. and Israel are resisting calls for more scrutiny into the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, |
| 0:30.0 | which has been tasked with feeding two million people. |
| 0:35.4 | I'm Manuel Rappalo, and this is The Take. |
| 0:44.2 | My name is Deanna Butu and I'm a lawyer. |
| 0:48.1 | Deanna, welcome back to The Take. It's nice to see you. |
| 0:51.5 | Describe for us what daily survival looks like in Gaza right now. Walk us through |
| 0:59.0 | sun up to sundown. You know, I think one of the things that people don't really understand is that when a person is starving or being starved, that all of their energy goes into survival mode. |
| 1:15.7 | And so that means they spend their entire day |
| 1:19.5 | trying to just find the means to be able to stay alive. |
| 1:24.0 | And this is what Holocaust scholars have talked about as being one of the elements of |
| 1:29.9 | genocide. Your daily activities, your entire daily activities, focused on just staying alive. |
| 1:40.0 | So in the case of Palestinians in Gaza, from the moment that they wake up to the moment that they fall asleep, |
| 1:47.2 | it's everything from looking for a source of food, whether that's going to the stores to be able to try to find, |
| 1:55.1 | whether there are any food supplies left, to going around through demolished homes and through rubble, to see if there are any fuel supplies that are available. |
| 2:08.7 | Some people have even taken to eating leaves off of trees, to grinding up whatever they can find to try to make it into some type of flower. |
| 2:21.7 | For some people, it also includes traveling several, several kilometers over rubble in no-go zones |
| 2:31.2 | to try to get to one of these, one of four food distribution sites. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Al Jazeera, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Al Jazeera and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.