Ahmed Ashour, a 30-year-old law graduate in Gaza specializing in public law, tells Splinter that the expanding famine has forced his family to stretch out basic necessities like flour and—in order to ensure his children eat–he’s now only having one meal a day, which is often simply a loaf of bread. Despite this, Ashour, who is the father of twin girls, has adopted a 9-year-old child named Elyas, who was orphaned after Israel killed his parents. Elyas had often played near Ashour’s family tent, until one day he fell and began to cry. After being comforted by Ashour, Elyas confided that his parents had been martyred and he was being raised by his uncle. In an effort to provide him stability, Ashour offered to take Elyas into his family. Today, Elyas sleeps next to Ashour in his family’s small tent, and he takes care of him as if he were one of his own children. “I try to heal what cannot be healed, and to be a small homeland for him in this harsh diaspora.”
The passive tone with which legacy media publications have described starved children and dying patients in Gaza is designed to overwhelm the narrative and deny the brutal reality: that Israel is intentionally starving two million people to death–a majority of them children. Israel is imposing a two month blockade designed to push the people of Gaza to the very limit of human suffering. The New York Times, which has notoriously obscured and shrouded its coverage of the genocide in Gaza with deceptive language devoid of historical context, continues to minimize and whitewash what Israel openly admits is the willful and systematic deprivation of food and aid into Gaza. In the eyes of western stenographers, the people of Gaza are “facing a hunger crisis,” they are not actively being starved to death as a method of Israeli warfare.
This doublespeak—which would constitute a journalistic scandal were it not for the fact that pro-Israel coverage and lack of contextualization is a matter of policy—masks the reality on the ground of which even Israelis gleefully admit to, that they are denying Palestinians food in order to break them physically and psychologically. On April 8, a month after Israel shut down all border crossings, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed that “not even a grain of wheat will enter Gaza.” Israel’s renewed blockade, initiated on March 2, was reportedly coordinated with the Trump administration, an allegation bolstered by the White House statement confirming the administration’s decision to support the blockade of food and aid into Gaza. The escalating man-made famine in Gaza has already resulted in dozens of deaths, including a 4-month old-infant, Jenan Saleh al-Skafi. According to Euro-Med Monitor al-Skafi suffered “severe malnutrition at Al-Rantisi Hospital in western Gaza City – amid what is called the worst campaign of systematic starvation in modern history.”
Food is a constant worry for every living person in Gaza, including Ashour’s family. “Under the siege and war, securing food for my children has become an unbearable challenge,” Ashour tells Splinter. “The markets are almost empty, and prices are unbearable. We rely on whatever aid we receive, if it even arrives, or we share whatever scraps remain. Hunger has become a daily presence, and I try as much as possible to feed my children bread soaked in water or tea so they don’t feel hungry. As a result, my twin children have become malnourished due to the lack of and contamination of food.”
Ashour’s message to the outside world is that the people of Gaza have reached the highest levels of exhaustion and fatigue, which have become so intense that they can no longer even distinguish between night and day due to the horror of what they are experiencing. They have become accustomed to the sound of artillery and shelling, and to the daily loss of their loved ones, “to the point that the sight of the remains of children and women in the streets has become part of our daily lives,” Ashour says. “Pain has become our companion, hunger our constant guest, and death our ever-present neighbor. Our homes have been destroyed, our hospitals have been ruined, and our hearts have been torn apart, yet we still cling to life with all the strength we have left. My message to the world: Don’t view Gaza as a passing news story. We are human beings like you. We deserve to live, to heal, to dream, to grow. Don’t leave us alone in this hell. Your silence is killing us just as bombs do.”
His plea to the west is simple and forthright: “From the heart of the siege, from under the rubble, we call out to you. Is there anyone who listens?”
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