Gaza's Airdrop Ordeal: Humanitarian Aid or a Squid Game Show?

Sinar Daily

3 days ago

THINK of the infamous glass bridge scene in Squid Game: a line of desperate contestants, suspended high above the ground, forced to choose between panels of glass - one tempered, the other a death trap. Each step is a gamble. Behind them, time is ticking; ahead, only fear. Below, death awaits.
Now shift that image to Gaza.
Barefoot children, limping fathers and hollow-eyed mothers race beneath parachuting aid packages in an open-air prison. The skies rain not salvation, but risk - boxes that might fall safely or crash onto a crowd.
Each run is a gamble. There is no courage here, only desperation. No winners, only survivors or casualties. The world watches - entertained, horrified or indifferent. But this is no game.
Aid packages falling from the sky over Gaza - parachutes drifting in cinematic slow motion, filmed from military aircraft and broadcast with dramatic flair - might seem like a gesture of compassion. But the reality is far darker.
This is not humanitarianism - it's a performance. And for Palestinians, it's beginning to feel like a deadly game show. This handout photo taken over Gaza and released on August 1, 2025 by the Spanish Ministry of Defence shows the release of humanitarian aid from a Spanish Air Force Airbus A400M Atlas airplane over Gaza. (Photo by HANDOUT / Spain Defence Ministry / AFP)
On July 27 this year, Israeli aircraft began dropping aid into northern Gaza after announcing limited daily pauses in its offensive. But almost immediately, the truth broke through the façade: the airdrops injured several Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera.
Crates fell in chaotic fashion, endangering the very people they were supposedly meant to help.
The image of people sprinting across bombed-out streets, risking injury or death just to grab a bag of rice, is chilling. It resembles something out of Squid Game, where survival becomes sport, and the powerless must scramble for basic needs under the watchful eye of the powerful.
Dangerous, Chaotic, and Deeply Insufficient
Each airdrop delivers only a symbolic fraction of what is actually needed. Gaza is home to over two million people. Yet scattered pallets, with no distribution system, are expected to feed entire communities.
Worse still, aid packages often land in dangerous zones, the sea or inaccessible areas. Several Palestinians have died trying to retrieve them. This is not aid. This is a deadly lottery. The weakest lose. The desperate suffer. And the powerful film it. Nine-year-old malnourished Palestinian girl Mariam Dawwas is carried by her mother in the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City on August 2, 2025. The World Health Organisation warned on July 27 that malnutrition was reaching "alarming levels" in Gaza. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Israel Prefers Airdrops - But Why?
In a stunning moment of irony, Israel publicly announced that it would allow foreign governments to airdrop aid into Gaza. Think about that: the same state that bombs aid convoys and blocks trucks at land crossings is now saying, 'Go ahead - toss food from the air.'
Why approve airlifts but restrict trucks? Because airdropping aid allows Israel to control the narrative.
It gets to appear cooperative, while continuing to restrict the kind of aid that actually reaches people effectively. Allowing airdrops is a way to avoid allowing real access.
It creates an illusion of generosity, while avoiding pressure to lift the siege, stop the bombing or allow UN convoys through. It's not a humanitarian breakthrough - it's a carefully calculated performance.
Airdrops Are Political Theatre
As shown in viral social media critiques like this one, airdrops serve more as PR (public relations) tools than real relief efforts. The visuals - parachutes over war-torn neighbourhoods - make headlines.
But the deeper truth is hidden: the same governments staging these drops are often the ones supplying weapons, blocking ceasefire resolutions or criminalising pro-Palestinian advocacy.
You can't bomb a population and expect applause for dropping them snacks.
Airdrops sanitise brutality - making it easier for the global public to consume images of 'help' instead of confronting the real images of occupation, starvation and slaughter. TOPSHOT - French military personnel load an aircraft with humanitarian aid in Jordan, before an airdropping operation over the Gaza Strip on August 2, 2025. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
Airdrops Dehumanise Palestinians
Palestinians are not props in an action film. They are not waiting for Hollywood-style rescues from the sky. They are a people - with agency, rights and dignity, being deliberately starved, bombed and cut off from the world.
Reducing them to aerial aid recipients strips them of that humanity. It shifts the narrative from one of occupation, apartheid and genocide to one of vague 'tragedy,' as if this were a natural disaster rather than a deliberate act.
These stunts reduce Palestinians to figures in a crisis simulation. They are not contestants in a survival show. They are a people enduring displacement, starvation and bombardment. Their dignity is stripped away when they are forced to chase parachutes for food while the world claps from a distance.
Humanitarian aid should empower - not humiliate.
But these airdrops do the opposite. They turn survival into spectacle, while world powers refuse to address the root cause: a brutal siege and a military campaign that has devastated Gaza's civilian population.
Gaza Needs Ceasefire - Not Cameras If the international community is serious about saving lives, it must demand:
An immediate and lasting ceasefire
Fully opened land crossings for medical and food aid
Unimpeded humanitarian access led by neutral agencies
Accountability for war crimes
And above all, justice for Palestinians, not photo ops
Until that happens, these airdrops remain what they truly are: A PR stunt for the complicit and an insult to the oppressed.
In Gaza, aid should fall through borders - not from the sky.
And certainly not like it's a scene out of a Squid Game show.
Revda Selver is Friends of Palestine Public Relation and Media Executive. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Sinar Daily.