Opinion: Out of food and under constant attack, we Gazans are dying every day
No words can better capture the reality in Gaza in the present day than this We are dying Every day in every imaginable way we die Death comes by missile by gunshot by collapsed building by lack of medicine and by fear And now once again it will come by hunger as Israel has closed off humanitarian supplies with the agreement of not just the Trump administration but also the tacit endorsement of the people of the U S and Europe who elected governments not committed to the rule of law and to stopping atrocities Numerous are responsible for the small wasted bodies that will soon be seen again on Western television screens Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump met again this month from positions of power and comfort deciding the fate of people they will never meet In their decisions Gaza s children are reduced to collateral Mothers fathers and whole families are figures on a chessboard disposable Our kitchens used to smell like home warm spices olive oil bread baking in the early afternoon Now they smell like nothing Just metal cans and whatever dried goods we can scavenge Bare shelves Stocks that were able to come in at scale during the ceasefire have practically run out according to John Whyte of the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians For six weeks no aid has entered Gaza because of the ongoing Israeli blockade The United Nations World Food Effort disclosed Friday that it had run out of food in Gaza More than million people are trapped bombed and starved When we can eat it is only to survive not to be full Not to feel bliss Children line up for charity meals holding out plastic containers Mothers break down while trying to quiet their babies hungry cries Fathers stare at the ground ashamed to be unable to provide for their families We try to turn next to nothing into something but even the imagination is tired Fruit vegetables meat these are memories now In the past even under siege we shared what little we had But this time is different Our shelves are bare How did it come to this How did the world get to a place where the collective punishment of starvation is used as leverage to shape the terms of a ceasefire This isn t a consequence of war It s a strategy A deliberate and systematic Israeli effort with Western acceptance to make hunger a form of control A way to turn a people into a population too weakened to resist oppression This is not rationing It s removal And still we remember who we are We remember when our grandparents were forced from their homes We remember when we were uprooted again In every chapter we held onto the land planted in its soil But this time Israel has taken the fields too Israel has taken the water the seeds and the hands that once tilled them According to the human rights group Al-Haq more than of Gaza is now inaccessible to its residents with reports indicating that Israel has seized more than of the land And yet how would you know I am recounted CNN rarely covers us anymore The people of Gaza don t appear in emerging news alerts We are made invisible by the editorial decisions of people who find our lives too political too inconvenient whose audiences have accepted our suffering as unremarkable Have you seen a mother dividing a single piece of bread among five children Have you heard of the child who died from scalding after being knocked into a pot of food as a crowd scrambled for one meal The stories sound unreal but they re not Bigger than Gaza Even my cat is starving and I don t know how to help her But several people can watch entire communities starve and feel nothing The same nations that speak of human rights in news conferences remain silent when those rights are trampled in Gaza Even when South Africa brought a genocide scenario to the International Court of Justice the court responded rigorously not a judgment but a request Stop bombing civilians let aid in Related Articles Goldberg I Can t Believe Anyone Thinks Trump Definitely Cares About Antisemitism Berkeley approves watered-down Gaza peace resolution Letters Will California cuts leave seriously ill inmates with no place to go Mob of Orthodox Jewish men chased Brooklyn woman after mistaking her for protester at speech by Israeli shield minister Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new deputy in a major step in naming a successor Even that was ignored The bombs fell anyway The aid was blocked The request was drowned out by Israel s allies France Germany the U S urging the court not to say the word genocide As if language could hide the bodies This isn t just about Gaza It s about the collapse of the very idea of justice If the law bows to power what is left for those without it People must choose what kind of legacy they want to leave behind Will it be one of silence in the face of starvation and Israeli abuses Or one of courage where justice is more than just rhetoric We don t need pity We don t need sympathy We need rights We need food We need safety A ceasefire is only the beginning The siege the apartheid the multiple displacements these are not footnotes They are the story And one day when this is over when the horror is fully brought to light the world will be solicited How did you let this happen Nour Khalil AbuShammala is a Palestinian trainee lawyer and human rights advocate based in Gaza City Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency
