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<h1 class="gmail-single_title">Gaza is starving and the world
looks away</h1>
<div class="gmail-article-author">
<h3>By <a href="https://english.palinfo.com/?p=251660"
moz-do-not-send="true"> Adnan Hmidan </a></h3>
</div>
<p class="gmail-single_date">Monday 21-July-2025 - <font size="1"><a
href="https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/gaza-is-starving-and-the-world-looks-away/"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/gaza-is-starving-and-the-world-looks-away/</a></font></p>
<div class="gmail-post_content">
<p>In Gaza, mornings no longer begin with the sound of
explosions \u2014 but with the quiet, urgent cries of hunger.</p>
<p>Mothers wake to infants with no milk. Children search for
scraps to ease empty stomachs before the bombs return to
flatten what little hope remains.</p>
<p>This isn\u2019t exaggeration. It\u2019s a grim, documented reality.
Gaza is not only under bombardment \u2014 it\u2019s under siege. And the
weapon now cutting deepest is starvation. Because hunger is
silent, the world looks away, as if a slow death does not
count.</p>
<p>For months, Gazans have faced a dual siege: daily airstrikes
and international indifference. Border crossings remain
closed. Those searching for food are shot. Humanitarian supply
lines are systematically broken. Bread has become a fantasy.
Water is a daily fight. Medicine, a rare miracle.</p>
<p>\u201cHumanitarian catastrophe\u201d no longer captures it. What\u2019s
unfolding now is a deliberate campaign of starvation \u2014 one
that meets every definition, legal and moral, of genocide.</p>
<p>Footage smuggled out of Gaza shows children collapsing while
queuing for bread, families surviving on weeds, mothers
dividing a single loaf between four hungry children. It\u2019s not
the bombs killing them \u2014 it\u2019s the slow wasting of malnourished
bodies.</p>
<p>The people of Gaza are not asking for the impossible. They
are asking for a shred of global conscience.</p>
<p>But what hurts even more than the hunger is the silence.</p>
<p>In the early days of the assault, Western leaders issued
cautious statements: calls for restraint, reminders of
international law, expressions of concern. But those voices
have since faded. Forgotten. Buried in old press releases. No
action followed. No policies changed.</p>
<p>Instead, support for Israel intensified. Some governments
even suspended funding to the UN\u2019s main relief agency, UNRWA \u2014
in the middle of Gaza\u2019s collapse.</p>
<p>Have you ever heard of a government withdrawing aid from a
humanitarian agency while children are starving?</p>
<p>It happened. And it happened quietly.</p>
<p>As Nelson Mandela once said:</p>
<p>\u201cTo deny people their human rights is to challenge their very
humanity.\u201d</p>
<p>Today, Gaza is being punished not only with bombs, but with
hunger \u2014 a form of collective punishment enabled by an
international consensus too timid to speak out. You won\u2019t find
this consensus in official statements, but you\u2019ll see it in
every sealed border, every empty bowl, and every child who
cries from thirst.</p>
<p>According to UN agencies:</p>
<p>Food insecurity has reached catastrophic levels.</p>
<p>Over 90 per cent of children in Gaza are malnourished.</p>
<p>Infant deaths from starvation and dehydration are now a daily
reality.</p>
<p>Yet the world remains still.</p>
<p>Worse still, some governments continue to justify Israel\u2019s
actions under the banner of \u201cself-defense\u201d \u2014 as if using
starvation as a weapon were somehow legitimate.</p>
<p>But it isn\u2019t just the West that bears responsibility.</p>
<p>Egypt too must answer for its role. The Rafah crossing \u2014
Gaza\u2019s only exit not controlled by Israel \u2014 has been shut for
months. Cairo waits for Tel Aviv\u2019s permission to let aid in or
patients out. When will we stop pretending this is neutrality?
This is complicity.</p>
<p>And what of the Arab governments who have normalized ties
with Israel? Some have remained silent. Others have gone
further, publicly strengthening relations while Gaza starves.
At least the West doesn\u2019t claim kinship. But these regimes do
\u2014 while doing nothing to stop the suffering of fellow
Palestinians.</p>
<p>As former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once warned:</p>
<p>\u201cWhen food becomes a weapon, humanity itself has collapsed.\u201d</p>
<p>Gaza is facing that collapse \u2014 and the international system
is allowing it to happen.</p>
<p>Yet despite everything, Gaza endures. Its people turn hunger
into defiance. They resist, even when stripped of everything.
In Gaza, dignity isn\u2019t found in comfort \u2014 it\u2019s found in
survival.</p>
<p><strong>B</strong>ut let\u2019s be honest: Israel cannot sustain
this alone. It relies on silence. On selective outrage. On
diplomatic cover. And that is exactly what it gets from world
powers who claim to care about human rights \u2014 but choose which
victims matter.</p>
<p>So who is really standing with Gaza?</p>
<p>Not governments. Not institutions. But ordinary people.
Protesters. Citizens. The ones who still have a conscience and
refuse to look away.</p>
<p>Gaza doesn\u2019t want pity. It wants justice. It demands an end
to the genocide \u2014 and accountability for those who enable it.</p>
<p>The question is no longer: What is happening?</p>
<p>We know.</p>
<p>The question is: Who will act?</p>
<p>And when history is written \u2014 who will be remembered for
their silence?</p>
<p>Because silence, in the face of starvation, is not
neutrality.</p>
<p>It is complicity.</p>
<p><em>-Adnan Hmidan is a Presenter, Consultant & Trainer.
His article appeared in MEMO.</em></p>
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