The World Is Letting Gaza Starve

Mahmoud Abu Hamda/Anadolu, via Getty Images

The ground shook as another airstrike slammed down nearby, a thunderclap ripping through the makeshift field clinic. Inside, panic surged. A baby wailed from one corner; a mother screamed for help in another.

Amid toppled boxes of therapeutic food, I held a skeletal boy no older than 4 — limbs limp, eyes sunken. Just moments before, I had managed to feed him a spoonful of nutritional, peanut-rich paste. As I was readying another, an explosion knocked the food from my hands and scattered dust into the boy’s open mouth. He didn’t flinch; he was too weak even to cry.

It was the end of June. I cradled the boy in silence, surrounded by war.

I am a senior nutrition manager with the International Rescue Committee, one of the few organizations that is still able to deliver aid in Gaza. On a typical day, my colleagues and I screen hundreds of children for malnutrition at mobile clinics across the territory. We provide therapeutic food for kids who are at risk of starvation and counsel parents who are doing their best to care for their daughters and sons under unimaginable conditions.

Nearly half a million Gazans now face catastrophic levels of food insecurity, one of the worst hunger crises in the world today. They are on the brink of starvation; roughly 100,000 children and women are facing severe acute malnutrition, the harshest diagnosis. After the Israeli government imposed a blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza in March, I saw a sharp rise in hunger, especially among infants and toddlers, that has not abated. More and more mothers sit beside their sick children, clinging to hope. More and more fathers come to me with empty hands and tired eyes, asking if there’s anything — anything — we can give.

Gaza’s entire humanitarian infrastructure is under siege. Officially, Israel’s aid blockade ended in May. But the new system of food distribution that Israel has set up isn’t working and is making it harder for us to do our work. Increasing hostilities, Palestinians who are waiting for aid being killed in the hundreds, blocked crossings, delays in permissions and critical shortages of fuel, medical supplies, water and food are making it nearly impossible to reach families in need.

Mothers arrive at our clinics exhausted, often after walking for hours carrying malnourished babies in their arms. They ask, “Will my child survive?” or “Do you have any milk or food?”

These are questions we can’t always answer. Today, many children in Gaza are so hungry they may never recover, and our supplies are critically low. Therapeutic food, high-energy biscuits and basic medicine arrive sporadically and must be rationed. Sometimes we are forced to turn families away or ask them to return later, knowing later may be too late. I often think of a 2-year-old boy whom we tried to help this month. He was severely malnourished, his condition deteriorated quickly, and he passed away because we didn’t have enough to give. We had so little then. We have less now.

It’s not just children who are starving; parents tell me they’ve gone days without proper food. They skip meals so that their children can eat, even if it’s just a few bites of bread, if they can find any. They are not statistics to me. These are people I see each day, the people I live with. They tell me, “We’ve lost everything, but we can’t lose our children.”

Before the war, my family lived an ordinary life in Gaza City. My older daughter, Sela, went to school each morning with a backpack nearly her size. After work, we would visit relatives, share meals or take evening walks. Our lives were not without hardship, but they had structure, dignity and dreams. Now those days are distant.

Since our home was destroyed in an airstrike, we’ve spent months in tents and temporary shelters, exposed to the cold and heat, with little access to clean water or electricity. The markets are nearly empty. I used to be able to buy 15 loaves of bread for $1; now just one loaf costs $3 or $4. On many days, we eat once. On some, not at all.

Sela, who is now 8, hasn’t seen a classroom since the war began. She often asks, “Baba, when can I go back to school?” This is another question I can’t answer. Some 645,000 children in Gaza are out of school. I don’t know of any playgrounds left — only ruins. Sela and my other daughter, Ayla, who is 19 months old, flinch at every loud noise.

Most days, I work in an overcrowded shelter in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, with barely enough phone signal to send an email or join a call. The shelters, packed by the thousands, are loud and filled with uncertainty, but they are the only safe places left. Like us, about 90 percent of Gazans have been displaced, many of them several times. I do my best to serve people who are simply trying to survive. I coordinate with our teams across Gaza to keep programs running despite the war, despite shortages, despite power cuts.

I haven’t seen my mother in months; she lives in the south, closer to Rafah, and needs care. I worry constantly about her, but the roads are unsafe, and movement is restricted. She still calls to check on me. Her calm voice on the other end of the line gives me strength. “Don’t give up,” she says. “They need you.”

She’s right. People need us. Every colleague I know is carrying a personal trauma. Some have lost homes. Some have lost family members. Some are grieving while still showing up for others. That, to me, is the definition of courage.

I want Sela and Ayla and all of the children we see at our clinics to grow up in a place where they feel safe and cared for, where textbooks replace rubble, where sleep comes easily without fear of what the night might bring, and where they go to bed with full bellies — not from scraps, but from real, nourishing food. Every child deserves that, regardless of who they are or where they live.

We need the world to see us. Gaza is fading from the headlines, but the suffering continues. Every day, quietly, relentlessly. The international community must act: to open access to aid, to protect civilians and to demand an end to this devastation.

We are exhausted, but we endure. We have to. Our children are watching.

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(c) 2025, The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/opinion/gaza-hunger-children-rescue.html