Analysis | When the truth cries famine

Let’s talk about famine since it’s so fashionable and considered good form. And let’s recall what this term, so overused these days, really means. Famine stems from a lack of food over time. It can be endemic or occasional. Which parts of the planet are currently affected by food shortage, including acute deficiency? Let’s focus on childhood. And let’s start with France.

Many French children suffer from severe food insecurity. In 2024, UNICEF estimated that 23% of young French children (nearly one in four) did not get three meals a day. It has to be said that one in five children living on French soil is below the poverty line. Food deprivation arises from difficult economic circumstances, with 32% of French people struggling to eat healthily. According to a study conducted by hospital services, the number of children hospitalized for malnutrition and extreme deficiency between 2015 and 2023 was 74,278. After Covid—that is, from April 2020 to November 2023—there were 61,082 hospitalizations recorded for the same reasons, an increase of 20% compared with the previous period. In total, 1,059 died from causes related to their malnutrition during those years.

In Egypt, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), 9.5% of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition and 22% from stunting, while 14% of the population lives in constant food insecurity. This means that out of four and a half million Egyptian children, nearly 400,000 suffer from acute underweight and around one million from chronic stunting.

Gaza is far, very far, from the rates of food deficiency observed in Burundi, where 57% of children under five show severe stunting. Madagascar and Yemen (since the Houthis’ regime) post rates of 45%. In South Sudan, 24% of children suffer from acute malnutrition and severe underweight. In short, worldwide, 150 million children under five are severely stunted and 42 million suffer from severe hunger.

The international community demands that a country of 10 million, burdened by harsh and intense fighting on several simultaneous fronts, feed 2 million more people in Gaza. Yet this same international community does not do enough to alleviate the atrocious conditions of millions of disaster victims in countries that don’t interest the media prima donnas, stage celebrities seeking easy glory and sainthood, and the failures of politics and academia—all obsessed with a single spot on the planet. One wonders why…

Are they more foolish than wicked, or more wicked than foolish? In any case, their antisemitic obsession squanders energy and resources disproportionately—to the detriment of Israel, certainly, but above all to that of nations such as Burundi, where nearly 2 million people do not receive a tenth of the aid with which Israel floods Gaza. Too bad they don’t have Jewish neighbors! Added to this today are 120,000 refugees from the DRC, following tribal and ethnic massacres affecting the region. There, people consume 50% of the recommended daily calories. A largely cosmetic form of international aid—meant to ease consciences on the cheap—barely reaches a few million dollars a year. Certainly not the billions paid by Qatar and other Arab countries to the Palestinians, in addition to the tens of millions dispensed by the European Union. One wonders why…

But let’s talk about another famine—the one that starves the truth. The world is currently going through a humanitarian crisis even more serious than the shortage of food or energy: a dearth of intellectual honesty. You can make up for a lack of food with nourishment. But how do we remedy the cruel lack of journalistic ethics, the mettle of leaders, the discernment of the so-called intellectual and artistic circles, in the face of an overabundance of hypocrisy and false morality, carried along by a surge of stupidity and hatred? Poor hasbara, you’ll say? Telling the truth is not enough if no one wants to hear it—or rather because fools are no longer able to distinguish it from their fake news, their ritual accusations, their empty slogans, and because they let millions of children die since they are not Palestinians.