back

by ericmay·15h ago·view on hn ↗
Distribution is hard too. It’s not as simple as “we have food and we are mean”. Look at how Hamas for example was seizing food supplies meant for starving Palestinians. Who is going to deliver food aid to, idk, Sudan and ensure only the hungry get it? What guns and soldiers will protect it? Who is going to pay for it?

Other countries have a lot of money and excess food too - EU, China, Brazil. I would look forward to hearing their proposals to solve hunger and to shake the hands of each volunteer and soldier and pilot/ship captain going to help feed people.

3 comments
> Who is going to deliver food aid to, idk, Sudan and ensure only the hungry get it?

I assume this is why in really dire circumstances with unsecured territory you airdrop stuff (at the risk of crushing a few people).

At least then the people nearest get a chance at grabbing it first.

> Look at how Hamas for example was seizing food supplies meant for starving Palestinians.

Or look at how the IDF had to stand by powerlessly as Israelis blocked supply trucks from entering the refugee camps. Or how the IDF had to indiscriminately shoot up Palestinian civilians who crowded a supply truck in Gaza. Or how the IDF had to launch targeted missile strikes against supply trucks in Gaza that had been identified to and were in continuous communication with Israeli authorities. All because Hamas forced the IDF to indiscriminately destroy practically all infrastructure in the Gaza strip, cut access to Israel-controlled utilities, lock down the border to Egypt, send a population of millions on a death march along designated routes it continued bombing, deliberately assassinate news reporters, bomb hospitals, destroy UN and NGO facilities and literally shoot hostages it mistook for Palestinians.

I have to believe you were intentionally trying to be provocative because to float "Hamas seizing food supplies for starving Palestinians" in 2026 without providing context for why those Palestinians are starving, let alone that the original claim has since pretty much been refuted, feels like a deliberate choice:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/usaid-finds-no-proof-hamas-sys...

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-officers-say-hama...

There are of course gangs stealing supplies to resell them at inflated prices on the black market but that tends to come with the territory when the only authorities in place become defunct because the entire region is turned into rubbles by a military force that considers anyone without a Jewish Israeli passport a likely terrorist unless proven otherwise.

Anyway, more on point: countries don't have excess food, economic entities do. And our economic system is generally fairly averse to making economic entities give up any property (even with fair compensation), especially when it comes to large corporations. If you want to form any plan that doesn't start with (literally) "seizing the means of (food) production", I think it would have to include the phrase "create market incentives" but I'm not sure there is a better incentive than "people are willing to give you all their money because your product has become scarce" - though of course that hinges on "all their money" being more than you make now and that doesn't tend to hold up when it comes to the resource extraction economy based parts of the world.

I'm just pointing out the logistics of delivering aid is difficult with one example terrorist group doing so and that was the first one to come to mind. There may not have been evidence of systematic aid theft but that's not the same thing as aid theft. Nevermind that not finding evidence isn't the same thing as something not happening.

But anyway, they do interfere with aid [1]. Them doing it a single time ever proves my claim. But again I'm not trying to litigate the whole Israel vs Hamas war, just pointing out how it is logistically difficult. The rest of the world needs to step up across the board, specifically China and the EU as they are the other main global economic entities, countries, whatever you want to call them.

  [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-official-says-hamas-obstructing-aid-gaza-2026-07-13/
  
  And it goes back decades:
  https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209885/
Distribution is only hard if you have to find a way to profit off of it. Hundreds food programs of all sizes can do it, from the UN food program, to states of all sizes with food assistance programs (i.e. almost every country), to a tiny charity. Heck even a ragtag bunch of Anarchists can distribute food with their Food Not Bombs charters.

The only thing preventing food being distributed to everybody that needs it is economics, specifically the type of economics which rewards exploitation, hording, and maldistribution. The people with power actually prefer it that way, some people being hungry is fine actually, as long as the rich and powerful in their own country gets to make more money.

Now I am not gonna dignify your genocide apologia with an answer. But you should feel ashamed to have written such hateful words right here on a tech forum.