In Gaza, hunger has become a weapon of war. Infants and toddlers—innocent lives under five—are wasting away. Mothers count days of starvation in lost kisses and whispered prayers.
Zainab Abu Halib’s baby girl, Esraa, weighed less at her death than when she was born. Her final kiss was a mother’s farewell in a world where reason had collapsed before her infant’s first year. Countless families now endure the same tragedy, as food lines disappear, infants fade from life into emaciation, and hope slips away.
Manufacturing Starvation
Since early March 2025, Israel has sharply restricted access to Gaza: aid trucks blocked and crossings sealed. As a result, 470,000 people face catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5), including 71,000 children and 17,000 mothers needing urgent treatment for acute malnutrition .
In May alone, 5,119 children aged six months to five were admitted for malnutrition treatment, with 636 suffering severe acute malnutrition (SAM)—the deadliest form—representing a 150% increase from February. In July, 18 children under five died from hunger-related causes, and one in five children in Gaza City now shows signs of acute malnutrition. Even WHO warns that more than one in three people go days without eating, and 320,000 children under five are at risk of acute malnutrition, with health services collapsing fast.
Aid Sabotage and Deadly Distribution Lines
Aid exists—but it is stranded at borders or delivered in deadly conditions. The Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has become a flashpoint. Between May and August, over 850 people were shot and killed near GHF sites while seeking food; in one incident, 18 people died, including eight near waiting lines . Reports describe elders and children shot while standing in queues, despite efforts to follow rules. Airdrops, promoted as a humanitarian gesture, have proven “inefficient, dangerous, and inadequate” compared to reliable overland aid convoys . Ultimately, local people report that while supplies sit just miles away, they are refused safe access and left to die in desperation.
International Law Calls Genocide
Human rights organizations, UN authorities, and international legal experts have repeatedly emphasized that this is not hunger—it is a policy. In December 2023, Human Rights Watch detailed the starvation tactics. In May 2025, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child condemned the “mass starvation of children” amid blockade policies. The ICC has issued arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for war crimes related to starvation as a method of warfare.
UN agencies officially confirm that two out of three famine thresholds are breached in Gaza, with large parts of southern Gaza now experiencing full-scale famine conditions . This is a humanitarian emergency of moral and legal proportions.
What Must the World Do: A Human Call to Action
Gaza’s children are starving not because food is scarce—but because borders are closed, and lives are deprioritized. The blockade must end, immediately and unconditionally.
- Reopen All Crossings Without Delay
Governments must insist on full, unimpeded aid access, including fuel, water, medical and infant supplies. Prepositioned pallets and ready-to-use therapeutic foods must be delivered without delay.
- End All Violence at Aid Sites
International observers must be placed at distribution points. Anyone shooting at queues of desperate civilians—especially children and elderly—must be held accountable.
- Treat This as an Emergency of International Law
Legal institutions—ICJ, ICC, UN Human Rights Council—must move beyond rhetoric. The targeting of children via starvation is a potential crime against humanity; investigations must follow.
- Mobilize a Humanitarian Surge
Nations—especially Muslim-majority countries—should coordinate a massive educational, nutritional, and psychosocial intervention. Provide supplemental feeding, baby formulas, mobile clinics, clean water, and schooling.
- Amplify Palestinian Voices
Let their stories be heard. Abeer Sobh, feeding her baby lentil soup mixed with seawater, or families risking their lives for scraps of food: these are not statistics—they are our shared humanity.
Conclusion: Preventable Deaths, Preventable Future Lost
What is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis—it is the slow, deliberate erasure of a people through hunger. Children are dying not because of a natural disaster or failed crops, but because they are being denied food by a military force with full awareness of the consequences. Babies like Esraa—whose tiny bodies grow weaker by the hour—are dying while the world debates definitions.
This is not just collective punishment; it is collective abandonment. And the silence of powerful nations is as deafening as the drone strikes overhead.
The world must no longer treat starvation as a side-effect of war. It is a weapon, deliberately wielded, and it must be condemned and stopped as such.
Governments must demand the opening of land crossings for continuous humanitarian aid. Relief organizations must be allowed to operate safely. And ordinary people around the world must speak out louder than ever, pressuring their leaders to end their complicity and stand on the side of human life.
To do nothing is to be part of the machinery that allows this to happen.
Because no child should starve while the world watches.
And because we will be asked one day:
Did you speak up, or did you stay silent?
