It is not a warning.
Famine has already arrived in Gaza. It is not a metaphor or a prediction. It’s daily.
It is the child who wakes up by asking for cookies that no longer exist. The student who studies the exams when it is difficult for hunger.
It is the mother who cannot explain to her son why there is no bread.
And it is the silence of the world that makes this horror possible.
Children of the famine
Noor, the daughter of my older sister Tasneem, is three years old; She was born on May 11, 2021. The son of my sister, Ezz Aldin, was born on December 25, 2023 – in the first months of the war.
One morning, Tasneem entered our space carrying them in his arms. I looked at it and asked the question that would not leave my mind: “Do Tasneem, Noor and Ezz Aldin understand hunger? Do they know that we are in a famine? “”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Even Ezz, which is known only by war and ruins, understands. He has never seen real food in his life. He does not know what” options “are. The only thing he ever asks is bread.”
She imitated her baby voice: “Obz! Obza! Obza!” – His way of saying “Khobza” (a piece of bread).
She must have said to him: “There is no flour, darling. Your father came out to look for it.”
Ezz Aldin does not know the cease-fron, borders or politics. He does not care about military operations or diplomatic declarations.
He just wants a little piece of bread. And the world does not give him anything.
Noor learned to count and recite his mother’s alphabet. Before the war, she loved chocolate, cookies. She was the first granddaughter of our family, showing off toys, snacks and small dresses.
Now every morning she wakes up and turns to her mother with big excited eyes. “Go buy 15 chocolates and cookies,” she says.
She says 15 because it is the greatest number she knows. It seems enough; Enough to fill her stomach, enough to bring back the world she knew. But there is nothing to buy. Nothing is left.
Where is your humanity? Look at it. Then tell me what justice looks like.
[Omar Houssien/Al Jazeera]
Killed after five days of hunger
I watched a video that broke my heart. A man cried on the bodies wrapped in seven from his family. In despair, he shouted: “We are hungry.”
They had been hungry for days, then an Israeli surveillance drone hit their tent near the Al-Tabin school in Daraj, north of Gaza.
“He’s the young man I was raising,” cried the man from the video. “Look at what has become of them”, while he was touching his head one last time.
Some people still do not understand. This is not to know if we have money. This is the Total absence of food. Even if you are a millionaire in Gaza at the moment, you will not find bread. You will not find a bag of rice or a box of milk. The markets are empty. The stores are destroyed. The shopping centers have been flattened. The shelves are not naked – they left.
We used to cultivate our own food. Gaza once exported fruits and vegetables; We sent strawberries to Europe. Our prices were the cheapest in the region.
One kilo (2.2 pounds) of grapes or apples? Three shekels ($ 0.90). A kilo of chicken from Gaza farms? Nine shekels ($ 2.70). Now we can’t find a single egg.
Before: a massive watermelon by Khan Younis weighed 21 kilos (46 pounds) and cost 18 shekels ($ 5). Today: the same past will cost $ 250 – if you can find it.
Avocats, formerly considered a luxury fruit, were cultivated by the ton in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis and Rafah. They cost a dollar one kilo. We also had self -sufficiency in dairy products – cheeses and yogurts made in Shujayea by local hands.
Our children were not spoiled – they just had fundamental rights. Breakfast meant milk. A cheese sandwich. A hard egg. Now everything is cut.
And no matter how I explain to children, they cannot grasp the words “famine” or “price hike”. They just know that their belly is empty.
Even seafood – once a diet of the Gaza diet – has disappeared. Despite strict fishing restrictions, we sent fish to the West Bank. Now even our sea is silent.
And with all the respect due to the Turkish coffee, you did not taste the coffee before trying the Mazaj coffee in Gaza.
It had a strength that you could feel in your bones.
It is not a forecast. Famine is now. Most of us are moved. Unemployed. Grief.
If we manage one meal a day, we eat it at night. It’s not a party. It’s rice. Pasta. Maybe soup. Canned beans.
Things you keep as a safeguard in your pantry. Here they are luxury.
Most of the time, we drink water and nothing more. When hunger becomes too much, we scroll through old photos, photos of meals from the past, just to remind us of what life has a taste.
Hugging while passing exams
As always, our university exams are online, because the campus is rubble.
We are experiencing a genocide. And yet we try to study.
I am a second year student.
We have just completed our final exams for the first half. We have studied surrounded by hunger, by drones, by constant fear. This is not what people think the university is.
We have made an empty stomach exams, under the cry of war planes. We tried to remember the dates while forgetting the last time we tasted bread.
Every day, I speak with my friends – Huda, Mariam and Esraa – on Whatsapp. We verify each other, asking the same questions again and again:
“What have you eaten today?”
“Can you even focus?”
These are our conversations – not conferences or missions, but hungry, headaches, dizziness and how we are always standing. They say: “My stomach hurts too much to think.” Another said: “I almost collapsed when I got up.”
And yet we continue. Our last examination took place on July 15. We kept ourselves, not because we were strong, but because we had no choice. We didn’t want to lose a semester. But even to say that it is so small in relation to the truth.
Study while sampling tokens to your soul.
One day, during the exams, an air strike struck our neighbors. The explosion shook the walls.
A moment before, I thought of the hunger I felt. A moment later, I didn’t feel anything.
I did not run.
I stayed at my office and continued to study. Not because I was fine, but because there is no other choice.
They display us, then blame us
Let me be clear: the inhabitants of Gaza are hungry. We are not unlucky – we are victims of war crimes.
Open level passages. Let the help enter. Let the foods enter. Let medicine enter.
Gaza does not need sympathy. We can rebuild. We can recover. But first, stop starring.
Death, hunger and besiegations are not only conditions – these are actions imposed on us. The language reveals those who try to hide who is responsible.
We will therefore continue to say: we were killed by the Israeli occupation. We were hungry by the Israeli occupation. We were besieged by the Israeli occupation.
