Should EAs Focus More on the Starvation and Human Rights Crisis in Gaza?
It is heartbreaking to see the ongoing atrocities and humanitarian crisis unfold in Gaza. I am surprised (at least somewhat) to not hear many EAs discuss this—online or in in-person conversations.
I’m interested in peoples’ views about why there might be a lack of discussion in this community, and what people should be doing to support Gazans from afar.
I think if you focus on conflicts it’s just smaller than other conflicts:
Russia/Ukraine war: ~150-250K killed on the Russian side, 50K to 100K killed on the Ukrainian side; source
Sudanese civil war: “Likely significantly more than 150,000 total killed[44] More than 700,000 children with acute malnutrition[45] 8,856,313 internally displaced 3,506,383 refugees[46]” per Wikipedia. Also at risk of famine
Here is a related tweet.
I agree that with the risk of famine losses rise to, potentially, 2.1M. But the whole population of Gaza being killed seems very unlikely. The conflict also seems particularly intractable to affect, although international pressure probably does help on the margins.
Comparing to other causes is trickier, but estimating the number of deaths you could avoid in expectation seems like a good start.
(I might delete this post later if it derails the thread, I’m not sure how useful or constructive it is—please let me know!)
I think this inadvertently highlights why an ‘EA’ (utilitarian) framing might downplay the badness of the conflict. I think the badness falls into five buckets (opinions follow; and not claiming that you do or don’t agree with these):
The direct number of deaths and ongoing suffering is high.
The systematic bombing and killing of civilians, coupled with the eradicationist rhetoric of the Israeli government, almost certainly constitutes a genocide. A genocide carries a quality of horror and depravity to it that, in my opinion, multiplies the harm of the deaths. Even a pure utilitarian may be able to see that a genocide causes fear and suffering well beyond the time, place, and people it affects (for example, Jewish people continue to suffer from the harms of the Holocaust today).
Such a genocide being paid for and propped up by Western governments greatly erodes global security and trust (last year alone, the U.S. paid for $17B in military aid to Israel; Israel’s military budget was $47B). It was already difficult, and will get more difficult, for smaller countries to trust that the West will honour their commitments to security, or intervene if attacked by the wrong country (we are already seeing this with Lebanon and Syria). But worse, they can’t trust that the West will not even stay out of it!
Similarly, the massive public support for non-intervention in Western countries contradicts the stances of their governments. Every time a democracy fails to produce a democratic outcome, it bends a little. I think it’s safe to say we have seen (U.S. 2024) and will continue to see (U.K. 2029) the electoral consequences of a pattern of these outcomes (but not to pin these results specifically on Gaza).
Consequentially, every time the West has behaved like this with another country, they have experienced significant blowback. By its nature, it’s hard to predict what the blowback will be this time, but it’s reasonable to assume that restraining Iran’s nuclear capabilities will now be permanently harder.
Many policy-minded EAs seem directly invested in (3, 4, 5). So I think the issue is tractability, but to be clear, the Western governments paying for this war are the ones with the power to end it. It is telling that non-U.S. Western governments have supported Gaza around the same time as developments in tariff negotiations; it seems pretty clear that the benefits of U.S. trade have been used as a cudgel against trading partners (especially when, in the U.K., France, and Australia, their left-wing leaders have historically supported Palestine up until forming government). I doubt that relationship can be changed by a well-placed EA policy organisation. Nor do I suspect that the U.S.’ relationship with Israel could similarly be changed, as any Democrat or Republican who openly supports Palestine instantly becomes a pariah and loses much of their standing with the party even if all of their other policies are indistinguishable from FDR (see: Zohran, Ilhan Omar).
Just addressing part of your comment, I think additional non-death badness seems similar for Sudan and Ukraine.
I largely agree with you but I want to point to a small issue with terminology: what does “supporting Palestine” mean here?
I think it’s both vague (do you mean a current entity? A future state? Something else? And what does supporting it mean?) and unnecessary (in my view strongly objecting to what Israel’s doing in Gaza and in the West Bank is consistent with most political views other than those who for some reason put extremely low value on the lives of Palestinians compared to Israelis).
Mmm, good point. In the paragraph I was implicitly trying to talk about supporting material changes to the Gaza conflict specifically and the military occupation and forced settlements of Gaza and the West Bank broadly (i.e. not sending offensive military aid to Israel; as opposed to recognition of a Palestinian state represented by the PLO at the U.N.). In general my point was to highlight the tension between:
In the U.S., U.K., Australia, (and likely other countries I’m less familiar with), the two largest parties both support continuation of direct military support for Israel’s offensive capabilities (including via providing maintenance and support through the F-35 programme). Opposing this generally gets you directly removed from the party, or ostracised in a way that hurts people’s political careers (although, I’ll note this situation is changing rapidly as starvation kicks in).
There is plurality (U.S., 2024), and otherwise broad public support for directly ending or reducing military aid to Israel (U.K.) in Western countries.
I think the Sudanese civil war is a relevant comparison. I’d take the typical EA point to be something like:
“If Western diplomats spent as much time as they’ve (ineffectively) spent trying to avert famine / improve aid in Gaza as ending the war in Sudan, it seems like there would have been much more progress—fewer dead, starving, maimed, irreparably emotionally harmed.”
Or one level deeper, there are probably conflicts that are not yet happening that we could decrease the likelihood of and that are probably even more neglected. I’m thinking of Ethiopia and Tigray, which seems like it could flare up again. It’s probably easier to avert a war than stop it, and fewer people are focused on it for normal reasons related to attention and incentives (preventing things that aren’t naturally inevitable is always undersupplied because you rarely if ever get credit).
To a broader formulation of the question: “Should more EAs be focusing on reducing conflicts given their role in causing suffering and sapping the potential of sentient life?”—I am deeply sympathetic to this. But between conflicts I think we should still apply the prioritization lens.
FWIW the latest estimate I heard from Gaza was 100,000 dead (many of which haven’t been reported by Hamas) (sorry for the paywall) which is on the same order of magnitude—and as opposed to the Ukraine war, most of them aren’t combatants. It’s up to you what to make of that.
It’s odd to say this when you don’t give a comparable casualty figure for Gaza, which would be 77,000 to 109,000 for May 2025, and when you estimate that, with a famine, casualties could reach 2,100,000.
FWIW my team, Sentinel, is indeed tracking Gaza in our weekly briefs.
Thanks for raising this. A large‑scale, preventable humanitarian crisis with mass civilian suffering clearly belongs on the EA radar—at minimum as a candidate problem for more systematic investigation. Right now the post reads more like a signal (“why aren’t we talking about this?”) than a case, so it may not spark the engagement you’re hoping for.
Two quick suggestions that could help:
Recast as a Quick Take or add a two‑paragraph “why this matters” section. Even a concise sketch—e.g. expected mortality, tractable intervention channels (cash relief, medical supply corridors, policy advocacy), and how they compare on cost‑effectiveness to other EA global‑health staples—would give readers a foothold.
Pose a few concrete questions for the community. For example:
What existing orgs have the logistical reach to deliver aid inside Gaza right now, and what are their marginal funding gaps?
How do political‑risk–adjusted cost‑effectiveness estimates compare with GiveWell‑style benchmarks?
Are there neglected advocacy levers (e.g. U.S. or EU policy pressure) where an additional EA dollar or career choice could move substantial resources?
Framing it this way signals that you recognise the need for the usual EA toolkit—scale, neglectedness, tractability—while inviting others to help fill in the numbers. I’d be keen to see a deeper dive or a collaborative back‑of‑the‑envelope if you (or anyone reading) has the bandwidth.
Not sure this should be tagged community, seems an object level cause prioritisation question
You’re right, I’ve untagged it.
Why are people downvoting this I think it’s a reasonable question.
I think a single-digit karma score is right here—I do not have a vote in either direction. The question is asked in good faith, but the post doesn’t really move the discussion forward. That discussion was happened before, so I don’t think the post as currently written adds much value for the median Forum user (which is a major purpose of karma).
As Brad mentioned, an analysis of a specific intervention that OP thinks might be effective would make the post more useful. The potential intervention wouldn’t need to approach GiveWell levels to worth discussing if it included a plausible theory of impact that increased the impact of dollars already committed to this cause.
I also think someone reading about core EA principles would be able to guess some of the reasons this isn’t talked about as much as one might think from the level of broader public interest—lots of eyeballs / interest / resources already on the situation, questions about how tractable the situation is given the major actors at play, etc. So for a higher karma post, I’d like to see someone grapple with those reasons and explain why they aren’t as convincing as they might first seem.
I agree, karma was −5 when I voted.
Just wanted to say this is a fantastic comment—thank you.
Not neglected—probably an OOM more effort/money on this by American public (but not gov) compared to any other conflict.
Not tractable—US might have enough leverage to stop the violence temporarily but there is no clear solution long term. Israels demographics are unfortunately probably cooked because the orthodox have more kids than the reformed jews so I don’t really see a long term vision of a dovish israel but not confident. Plus even if US could exert leverage on Israel that would require republicans/trump on board and there is no clear path to doing this.
Scale is real (esp if you take HUW’s claims about this being a genocide and eroding western credibility) but doesn’t seem to be on a different tier than the other existing or possible- future conflicts.
I’m ofc open to suggestions about why the effort spent by so many people has been through the wrong channels and how their are really effective TOC that haven’t been tapped but my default in the absence is that people are doing what they can and this is a really hard problem with moderate payoff. The best reason for EA to engage in this is probably to try to improve our reputation with the left.
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