[News] Starvation over submission: Testimonies from Gaza shatter Israel’s bet on hunger

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Starvation over submission: Testimonies from Gaza shatter Israel’s bet on
hunger

Monday 5-May-2025 - https://english.palinfo.com/reports/2025/05/05/338702/
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GAZA, (PIC)

“I feed my children sugar and water… but if they opened a corridor for us
to leave in exchange for raising a white flag, we wouldn’t go.”

With these words, Umm Mohammad Mushtaha, displaced from Beit Hanoun town to
the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, summarizes the steadfastness of the
people of Gaza in the face of Israel’s policy of starvation and submission.

Nineteen months of aggression, deliberate aid cuts, systematic destruction
of warehouses and bakeries, and a ban on the entry of fuel and flour — none
of this succeeded in deterring Palestinians from the path of resistance.
Instead, it created a new layer of “martyrs of hunger,” and icons of
dignity whose names are repeated like those of fallen fighters.


*We ate tree leaves*Abu Hassan Musabeh, a resident of Jabalia who was
deprived of aid, said: “We had a fig tree at home. We cut its leaves and
cooked them. We ate them, then we got sick. But we don’t regret it. If the
occupation offered us food in exchange for normalization, we wouldn’t
accept it.”

In Al-Shifa Hospital lies Adam Abu Al-Qumbaz, a three-year-old child, his
body frail and barely breathing. His mother weeps: “They told us the
occupation is deliberately preventing milk and vitamins from entering for
our children. We know — they want us to weaken and surrender. But we teach
our children that hunger is more bearable than humiliation.”


*The losing bet*Observers believe that the Israeli occupation army relied
on hunger as a weapon to break the popular base of the resistance. But the
opposite happened. Hunger deepened hatred of the occupation and increased
determination to stay — especially with rising global solidarity with Gaza.

They note: “The occupation believes economic and psychological pressure can
break our willpower. But it still doesn’t understand that those who chose
to stay under bombardment won’t leave because of hunger.”


*Bread and dignity*Bread lines have turned into scenes of epic endurance.
One survivor of a massacre during aid distribution said: “We knew the
planes were watching us, but we went anyway. We’d rather die seeking a
dignified bite than stretch our hand to the enemy.”

International relief organizations, led by the World Food Program, have
described what’s happening in Gaza as the first fully documented famine in
decades.

Still, the global community remains a spectator — issuing statements of
concern, while some states indirectly participate in the siege by
restricting aid or politically justifying the aggression.


*Silence is complicity*Human rights advocate Salah Abdel-Ati, head of the
International Commission for Human Rights, told the Palestinian Information
Center: “International law prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon of
war, but in Gaza this crime is being committed daily.”

He added: “Global silence is not just complicity — it is partnership in the
crime.”


*The free pulse of Gaza*In shelters, where displacement blends with fear,
mothers speak of a different kind of pain.

Umm Youssef Nasr, a mother of five, says: “My children ask me, ‘Mama, when
will we eat bread?’ And I laugh and say, ‘Soon’… but I don’t have an
answer. Sometimes I squeeze a lemon into water and give it to them as a
meal.”

Gazan women are no longer just mothers — they are cooks from nothing,
doctors without medicine, and teachers in classrooms of pain. They are the
first line of defense for life.

>From Nuseirat refugee camp, 22-year-old Ibrahim Farajallah recounts: “I
received an offer from relatives in the West Bank to leave through Rafah
with help from an organization. But I refused. I said: I will live and die
here, on my land. Hunger is kinder than living exiled.”

Ibrahim’s words capture a pure Palestinian equation: Dying on the
homeland’s soil is better than living in tents of political exile.

Hunger may linger, and bodies may be besieged, but Gaza has proven that the
spirit born from siege does not break. What the Israeli war machine fails
to understand is that people who endure starvation in silence ignite their
power in a moment of dignity.

Gaza today is not a victim of hunger, but a mirror reflecting the moral
fragility of this world. And it cries out to history: We will not bow —
even as we die of hunger.
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