“Every Single One of My Patients Is Malnourished”

As doctors and humanitarian aid workers point out, these hard numbers obscure the true toll of suffering. Rob Williams, CEO for War Child Alliance noted that development stops in malnourished children. 

“If that development stops, that is not reversible,” Williams added. “The trucks coming in now will do nothing to restore the injury that’s been done to the brains and the physical development of children who have been acutely malnourished for the past five months or even longer.”

And those who die from a war wound or an illness may not be recorded as a hunger-related death, though malnourishment may make it more likely that people succumb to an injury or infection, as it is harder to heal and recover – even if they can access have proper treatment – because people’s systems are so depleted. 

“What I see in the hospital is that right now, every single one of my patients is malnourished. Every single one of them is starving,” said Tarek Loubani, the Gaza-based medical director for Glia during the briefing. Even the doctors, trying to treat patients, are fainting from hunger. 

To call this a catastrophe is insufficient, because the situation in Gaza has been catastrophic for so long. About 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced, many multiple times. As of this week, at least 60,000 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 94 percent of hospitals have been damaged, according to the World Health Organization. Nine out of ten people lack access to water. 

Yet still Israel has continued its war and is restricting humanitarian access. And still the world has let them – or assisted them in doing so. As Aguilar, the former Green Beret said, “we — we, the United States — are complicit. We are involved, hand in hand, in the atrocities and the genocide that is currently undergoing in Gaza.” (The Israeli government and GHF have rejected Aguilar’s claims.) The U.S. contributed $30 million to the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, disbursed despite (the agency formerly known as) USAID raising “critical concerns” about the effort. 

This week, two Israeli human rights organizations concluded that the Israeli government is committing acts of genocide in Gaza. One of those groups, B’Tselem said that Israel’s policies – from mass killing to mass displacement to the decimation of basic infrastructure – lead to the “unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”

What Will It Take?

International pressure against Israel is building, to which Israel has responded by saying it will pause fighting in some areas to allow for more aid to flow into Gaza, including through air drops. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to deny that he is starving Gaza and instead blames Hamas for siphoning off aid – allegations that have been debunked, including by top Israeli military officials and a U.S. government review by, once again, USAID. 

Germany and France have said it will begin airlifting food into Gaza. U.S. President Donald Trump, who said Gaza is “real starvation stuff” based on what he’s seeing on TV, said he would work with European allies to set up food centers, where “people can walk in” and “there are no fences,” although he also complained the U.S. did not get sufficient enough thanks for what aid it had given so far.  

But then, on Tuesday, aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters the U.S. would work with Israel “to make sure the distribution is proper.” 

None of these meager measures will avert the famine unfolding in Gaza. “So many people are on the edge of death from starvation, that whatever happens now, we can expect to see the numbers of dead people going up. There’s nothing like enough food going in to actually stop that process from happening,” Williams, of War Child Alliance, said. 

“What continues to be surprising to us is the ability of the rest of the world to tolerate this situation – and the belief that allowing 80 trucks a day is somehow the answer to this problem is so far away from the actual truth of the situation that it’s disgraceful,” Williams added.

Air drops are also more optics than real aid, according to humanitarian groups, and they are far less effective than just opening up the borders and allowing aid trucks in. They are also dangerous: some Palestinians have been injured by the air drops when the parachuted-in pallets landed on tents. 

Humanitarian groups point out that Gaza needs more food, but it also needs better food. “A little bit of flour here and there is not food – that is not nutritious food. It’s not food that people can survive on,” Loubani said. “Hamas is not drinking baby formula.”  

Israel’s slow but persistent starvation of Gaza has been unfolding for months, in a clear and undeniable view of the world. Gaza needs to be swamped with humanitarian aid to halt this worst-case famine scenario. But these are stopgaps as long as Israel’s war continues, because Gaza’s starvation is not an accident of war, it is a deliberate strategy. 

To end this, U.S. and Israel’s other allies need to apply pressure for a ceasefire that will allow unfettered aid and ensure that Hamas – the terrorist organization whose brutal October 7 attack sparked this war – releases the remaining Israeli hostages. Europe has become slightly more forceful, with France saying it would recognize Palestine as a state in September, and now the United Kingdom saying it would do the same if no ceasefire is reached. 

That might matter little if the United States, Israel’s most important ally, stays on the sidelines. Besides Trump’s wishy-washy comments, there is not much indication that the administration has a plan to get involved. The United States Ambassador to Israel and noted Republican evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee is trolling France for backing a Palestinian state and repeating Israeli propaganda that food aid is entering Gaza. He recently said the U.S-Israel relationship is stronger than ever. Which, actually, it should be after the U.S. did Israel a solid by getting involved in its war against Iran – so now would be a good time to apply some of that U.S. leverage to Israel to stop its starvation of Gaza.

“All of the children who are currently malnourished will die, that is, unless there is an absolutely rapid and consistent reversal of what is happening,” said Loubani, the doctor with Glia. Cummings said some of the children in Save The Children’s protective services are now saying they want to die, because in heaven there is food and water. 

In the organization’s clinic recently, she said she was struck by the silence. “That is very unusual, because children cry,” she said. “But they’re so exhausted, they’re so sick, they’re no longer able to cry.”