When I published my book, “Exterminations” in 2024, I didn’t imagine it could have been so prophetic when I noted the historical trend of minorities to be exterminated by larger groups. It is exactly what we are seeing in Gaza. There, we may soon be seeing the effects of the “refeeding syndrome” that causes people to die quickly after an extended starvation period, even if they are provided with food. It is one more example of the Seneca Effect expressed as “Ruin is Rapid.” (Caution: you may not really want to read this post.)
In the “De Bello Judaico” (1st century AD), Flavius Josephus (Yosef ben Matityahu) (*) tells us the story of the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman Army in 70 AD. It was the culminating event of the Jewish revolt that started in 66 AD and was completely quelled after the fall of Masada in 73 AD. Among other things, it is one of the first detailed reports of starvation as a siege weapon. From Book 5, chapter 12
Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine, and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead, wheresoever their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come. ... A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city.
If that were not bad enough, Flavius Josephus also tells us of the fate of those Jews who deserted to the Romans during the siege.
…. a worse fate accompanied these than what they had found within the city; and they met with a quicker despatch from the too great abundance they had among the Romans, than they could have done from the famine among the Jews; for when they came first to the Romans, they were puffed up by the famine, and swelled like men in a dropsy; after which they all on the sudden overfilled those bodies that were before empty, and so burst asunder, excepting such only as were skillful enough to restrain their appetites, and by degrees took in their food into bodies unaccustomed thereto.
Josephus was surely not the first to note the effect that we call today the “refeeding syndrome,” but he may have been the first to describe it in writing. The phenomenon was not systematically studied until during and after World War II, particularly in studies of malnourished prisoners of war and concentration camp survivors. The combined stress of electrolyte imbalances, fluid shifts, and other effects can lead to multi-organ failure, particularly affecting the heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver. Put simply, people can’t regain their metabolic balance when they are given food again after an extended period of starvation.
It was the tragedy of the Jews who escaped from Jerusalem in 70 AD. And it risks being the tragedy of the Gazans today, starving, who not only desperately need food, but risk succumbing to the refeeding syndrome if they are not cured and taken care of. The situation is described by Dan White as a comment to a post on “Bracing Views,” the blog of Bill Astore. Note how he says that “starvation death rates have a funny shaped curve” which we can interpret as the Seneca Curve, shown here.
From “Bracing Views” the blog of Bill Astore
Using Old Tools of War
A reader, Dan White, brought this lesson home to me, and I’d like to quote his message to me at length:
I can’t think of a better word than the etiology of starvation. It hasn’t been adequately addressed by the snoozemedia. Starvation death rates have a funny shaped curve. During the first stages of starvation–can’t give any figures on a time period for this or any other part of the process/curve, due to there being varying levels of food deprivation–there are few deaths, generally (but not always) those persons with compromised health/preexisting health problems that make them more susceptible to death than others in the population. After some (varying length) period of starvation, people start to die in larger numbers, and then all of a sudden, everyone is dying, and then everyone is dead. This period of death is fairly short compared to the period of starvation. Again, due to varying levels of starvation and varying levels of preexisting health and varying levels of surplus consumable body tissue in the starved group, this period has no fixed length, but it happens all of a sudden, and it doesn’t take long for everyone to die once it starts–couple of weeks seems common.
The starving residents of Gaza haven’t reached the mass-death stage of starvation, but it could well start happening tomorrow. I can’t say because I don’t know the food reserves preexisting, the food delivery figures since the ‘war’ started, and nobody in the news biz has bothered to look for them, either. There really should have been some government or multistate agency who has looked for them and published them, but nobody has.
When the mass-death stage hits, people in Gaza will be dying by the tens of thousands a week. Stopping the mass-death by all of a sudden providing food isn’t going to work very well, on account of logistical delivery problems and the medical problems of alleviating starvation at this advanced stage–folks’ digestive tracts may well not work well enough even if they get food. That will be the real genocide, and I’d bet money it happens, and bet more money that this is the real objective of Israel’s ‘war’ in Gaza. The notion of Israel’s war objective is displacement of Gazans is an absurdity–you want someone to leave, well they have to be able to walk, right? And they have to have a place to go. Israel is counting on the rest of the world to all of a sudden do a mass-evacuation of Gazans combined with a mass feeding and mass medical intervention all at the same time in order to prevent this mass death of Gazans from occurring? NFW–Israel’s leaders have accepted mass killing as an official state policy, and have commenced doing it, and do it as we speak. And Israeli hasbara [propaganda] will blame us for it, and a whole lot of whored-out American and European politicians, as well as Israel-worshipping American Jews, will go along with it.
It is not just Dan White who noted the imminent disaster. There have been plenty of warnings of the perfect storm that’s going to hit Gaza: decimated hospitals, no IV electrolytes/vitamins, and sporadic aid drops. Health experts wrote on Deutsche Welle (DW) a news article on Aug 9, 2025, that “preventing refeeding syndrome is almost impossible" without aid workers and beds—Gaza has neither. Al Jazeera noted on Aug 14 that controlled refeeding starts with supplements before calories; otherwise, "thousands will possibly die from refeeding syndrome." NPR (Jul 29) highlighted kids' risks: feeding tubes needed, but they are not available in Gaza. There are fears of mass deaths starting soon.
I must say that I had missed how famine as a weapon really works, but this text by Dan White has enlightened me (or, more correctly, has darkened me). I hadn’t realized that, just like in many other cases, the “Seneca Effect” (Growth is slow, but ruin is rapid) also describes starvation. It starts slowly to weaken the body, then it reaches a point from which collapse becomes impossible to stop. Ruin is rapid. We desperately need to do something for Gaza. Fast.
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(*) Flavius Josephus was a remarkable character whose career reads as a historical novel. A Jewish aristocrat during the 1st century AD, he witnessed the Jewish revolt that started in 66 AD, and was initially in charge of preparing the defense against the Romans. At the siege of Jotapata (Yodfat) in 67 AD, he commanded the Jewish garrison defending the city. Jotapata fell, and Josephus hid in a deep pit with 40 other survivors. They agreed to commit suicide by drawing lots, but Josephus managed to survive by a combination of luck and shrewdness. This episode generated the “Josephus Problem,” in modern mathematics. Afterward, Josephus managed not only to survive but to befriend the son of Emperor Vespasian, Titus, who was leading the Roman troops together with his father. From then on, Josephus took the name of “Flavius” from the nomen of Titus and joined the Romans in their military action in Judea. Josephus participated in the siege of Jerusalem, trying to convince the rebels to submit to the Romans, but without success. During the siege, he was hit on the head by a stone shot by the defenders, barely escaping with his life. His experience is recalled in many details in the book that he wrote while he was in Rome, “De Bello Judaico.” That book was very popular in the West up to recent times, regarded as a sort of “5th gospel” describing how the Jews who had crucified Jesus were justly punished by God, which is the way Josephus told the story. By now, the book has fallen out of fashion, but it remains a precious historical document. The consequences of that remote siege in 70 AD reverberated in human history for almost two thousand years. We may only wonder what will be remembered of the siege of Gaza, and what will be its long-term consequences.
Thanks Ugo. I have forwarded this to my old college friend, Dan White, who I still see regularly here in Austin.
He had shared that quote with me when he sent it out.
I think he'll be moderately pleased that it is getting around.