Starving Gaza: Do not look away 

One of Pete Seeger’s lesser-known songs is titled “My name is Lisa Kalvelage,” the words and story of a woman who grew up in Nuremberg during World War II. Emigrating to the United States as a GI bride, she was asked to account for what she did and what her parents did during the Hitler years. 

At first, she rejected any guilt for the crimes proved at Nuremberg. She was a child, or a teenager. And her parents? She did not know what they thought.  

Then she begins to understand “what that verdict meant to me, when there are crimes that I can see and I can know.” She becomes active in protesting the U.S. war on Vietnam. Pete Seeger’s song came from her statement to the court when she was arrested, with others, for trying to stop a shipment of napalm 

“And perhaps I can tell my children six
And later on their own children
That at least in the future they need not be silent
When they are asked, ‘Where was your mother, when?'”

And what, I wonder, can we tell our children and grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, when they ask where were you, what did you do, while the people of Gaza were killed? 

Babies are starving in Gaza.

[The Guardian] “Mohammed’s skeletal arms stick out of a romper with a grinning emoji-face and the slogan ‘smiley boy’, which in a Gaza hospital reads as a cruel joke. He spends much of the day crying from hunger, or gnawing at his own emaciated fingers.

“At seven months old, he weighs barely 4kg (9lbs) and this is the second time he has been admitted for treatment. His face is gaunt, his limbs little more than bones covered in baggy skin and his ribs protrude painfully from his chest. …

“Mohammed was born healthy but his mother was too malnourished to produce breast milk, and the family has only been able to get two cans of baby formula since.”

Children are starving in Gaza.

[BBC] “Health officials said a 13-year-old boy, Abdul Hamid al-Ghalban, also died in the southern city of Khan Younis. Photos from AFP and Anadolu news agencies showed the teenager’s small body being prepared for burial at Nasser hospital and then carried in a white shroud.

“Palestinian media meanwhile posted a video showing the body of a six-week-old boy, Yousef al-Safadi, who health officials said died at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City due to malnutrition.

“The US-based medical humanitarian group MedGlobal also said in a statement that its nutritional teams in Gaza had witnessed five severely malnourished children, aged between three months and four years old, die within the past three days.”

[Washington Post] “After four months of a near-total Israeli siege, Gaza’s few remaining hospitals now have wards for the growing number of malnourished children whose tiny bodies are just the width of their bones.

“Doctors are famished to the point that they have dizzy spells as they make their rounds, medics say, and the journalists documenting their caseloads are often too weak to even walk to the clinics.”

Mothers and fathers are starving in Gaza.

[Washington Post] “Nearly one in three people are going multiple days without eating, according to the United Nations, and hospitals are reporting rising deaths from malnutrition and starvation. …

“In Deir al-Balah, Taghred Jumaa, a 55-year-old women’s rights activist who described herself as relatively better off than most Palestinians in Gaza because she still had a salary, said that rationing the family’s food meant her hair was falling out. Parts of her body felt numb, she said.”

Even doctors and nurses are starving in Gaza.

[The Guardian] “’Today I have been on a 24-hour shift,’ said one physician at al-Shifa hospital. ‘At [the hospital] they are supposed to give us some rice for each shift, but today they told us there was none. My colleague and I [treated] 60 neurosurgery patients and right now I can’t even stand.’

“Another general practitioner volunteering at al-Shifa hospital said: ‘I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday and my family has nothing to eat. All day, I am thinking how can I get them flour or lentils or anything to eat [but] here’s nothing in the markets. We are no longer able to walk. We don’t know what to do.’ …

“’In recent days, healthcare workers in Gaza have collectively reported unprecedented levels of food insecurity, lowered immunity, repeated infections, severe fatigue, and frequent fainting during surgeries and rescue missions,’ said Muath Alser, director of Healthcare Worker Watch, a Palestinian medical organisation. ‘We cannot afford mere condemnation. We need urgent action.’”

Journalists are starving in Gaza. 

International journalists are barred from Gaza by Israel. Palestinian journalists reporting for international news agencies are no longer able to survive. Who, then, can tell the story of what is being done to the people of Gaza?

[The Guardian] “The constant headaches and dizziness he has suffered due to lack of food and water have also afflicted AFP contributor Khadr al-Zanoun, 45, in Gaza City, who said he has even collapsed because of it.

“’Since the war began, I’ve lost about 30kg (66lbs) and become skeletal compared to how I looked before the war,’ he said.

“’I used to finish news reports and stories quickly. Now I barely manage to complete one report per day due to extreme physical and mental fatigue and near-delirium.’”

Israel keeps food aid, and all aid, out. 

[New York Times] “More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, warned on Wednesday that ‘mass starvation’ was spreading across Gaza, adding to calls for Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave. …

“The United Nations’ World Food Program said this week that nearly a third of Gaza’s population, which stands at 2.1 million, was not eating for multiple days in a row. ‘People are dying for lack of humanitarian assistance,’ it said in a statement.”

[Reuters] “The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest independent aid organisations in Gaza, told Reuters on Tuesday its supplies were exhausted and some of its staff starving, and the group accused Israel of paralysing its work.

“‘Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,’ Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the council …”

Israeli soldiers have shot and killed hundreds of people trying to get food aid at the very limited number of relief centers.

[BBC] “On Tuesday, the UN human rights office said that it had recorded the killing of 766 people by the Israeli military in the vicinity of the GHF’s aid sites since they began operating eight weeks ago. Another 288 killings had been recorded along routes of UN and other aid convoys.”

These are war crimes. These are crimes against humanity. And our tax dollars support these crimes. Official U.S. government aid to and support for Israel’s war on Gaza is unwavering. 

What can I do? What can you do? 

Damn little. But the little that we can do, we must. 

Don’t turn away. And for your friends and relatives who “don’t read the news because it is too depressing”—tell them about it anyway. 

Call your representatives? Yes, even though Republicans don’t listen and Democrats don’t have the power to change U.S. policy right now. 

Send money—World Central Kitchen is still struggling to feed people, and sometimes getting some aid through. They have had to stop and start. Their staff and volunteers have been killed in Israeli bombing. But they still keep trying. Here’s the link to their latest news release.