Gaza is starving

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“Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die.” This is the title of a statement published by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday. The association is composed of employees at the AFP, the world’s oldest news agency: Based in Paris, they’ve reported for nearly 200 years, including from present-day Gaza. And now employees are sounding the alarm on near-death conditions for both the people they cover, and the people who tell their stories.

Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation took over as the chief provider of food in Gaza on May 27th, more than 1,000 people desperately seeking nourishment have been killed by the Israeli Military, according to the United Nations. As a cancer nurse in Gaza messaged a BBC reporter on Tuesday, "Hunger is killing us faster than illness ever could.” The situation has been an intolerable humanitarian disaster since day one, and it would be unfair to say it’s gotten worse. But as the entire population is crowded into a small corner of the region and the man-made famine takes hold, it’s become impossible to ignore.

“AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip since its staff journalists left in 2024,” the Editorial Committee’s statement from Monday began. “Along with a few others, they are now the only ones left to report what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The international press has been banned from entering the territory for nearly two years. We refuse to watch them die.”

The statement goes on to describe the varying levels of destitution being experienced by their freelance colleagues. It quotes one of them, a 30-year-old named Bashar, writing on Facebook this past Saturday, “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.” 

Another named Ahlam said, “Every time I leave the tent to cover an event, do an interview or document a story, I don’t know if I’ll come back alive.” Because driving would make them a target to the Israeli army, the AFP journalists must travel either by foot or donkey cart. But despite that obvious danger, Ahlam said lack of food and water were the biggest obstacles to doing her job. 

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is a nonprofit registered in Delaware and Switzerland that has been tasked since May of this year with providing aid to the starving people of Gaza. A detailed report from The Washington Post showed they’re backed by sketchy funding with links to US and Israeli entities, and that their food supply has begun to dwindle. Ross Smith, director of the United Nation’s emergency preparedness and response, said Monday that the World Food Programme (WFP) has enough food just outside Gaza to supply the entire population for two months “if we can get a ceasefire and if we can move.” But, the UN reports, it’s nearly impossible to move. 

On top of all this cruelty, Gazans seeking food at GHF distribution centers now face deadly violence from the Israeli military. American contractors guarding the GHF sites have confirmed their Israeli counterparts fired live ammunition and stun grenades at the crowd.

“They began shooting directly at unarmed civilians,” Khalil, a 26-year-old Gazan, told The Intercept of his recent experience at a GHF center. “The bullets were chasing us as if we were targets on a shooting range, and not just hungry people. We scattered under a hail of bullets. I got closer to death that day than a piece of bread.”

The unabashed and continual starvation of Gazans has finally gotten the attention of some world leaders. A joint statement issued Monday by foreign ministers from 29 countries—including the UK and France—rebuked Israel’s treatment of starving Gazans and called for an immediate end to the war.

“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the statement reads. “The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”

In the wake of the AFP Editorial Committee’s alarming statement, AFP leadership issued a statement of their own Tuesday morning calling on Israel to allow their freelancers to be evacuated.

“For months, we have watched helplessly as their living conditions deteriorated dramatically. Their situation is now untenable, despite their exemplary courage, professional commitment, and resilience,” they wrote in a statement published Monday via X. “Since October 7, Israel has blocked access to the Gaza Strip for all international journalists. In this context, the work of our Palestinian freelancers is crucial to informing the world. But their lives are in danger, so we urge the Israeli authorities to allow them to evacuate immediately along with their families.”

The AFP freelancers in Gaza are just a few of the thousands of people being systematically starved to death, though perhaps the calls of their colleagues will help raise awareness of the situation as a whole. Sometimes putting faces to a tragedy can make people understand the consequences, but since October 7, 2023, there have been tens of thousands of faces from which too many chose to look away. 

As a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor and a generally sensitive kid, I had a hard time at school when the subject came up. Videos of emaciated people walking through concentration camps drove me to tears, and I often had to leave the classroom. I knew more than enough about that particular horror because it’s woven into my DNA, but I hoped others would have the strength to learn and bear witness. And now as a person in a position of relative safety and privilege, I’m able to bear witness to similar horrors out of Gaza, knowing that “never again” isn’t just a saying but a way of life.

Compounding this historical connection is the fact that abject human cruelty is happening right here at home. Concentration camps have been built, and continue to be built, in the United States for the purpose of torturing people who had the temerity to seek a better life. 

A Human Rights Watch report issued this week detailed the inhumane conditions within the Everglades camp (officially and shamefully named Alligator Alcatraz), which officially opened on July 1st. The report describes one incident during which “officers made men eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs after forcing the group to wait hours for lunch: ‘We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,’ one man said.”

The report says women detainees were forced to use public toilets in clear view of men, and denied feminine hygiene products. All detainees have been denied access to adequate food and showers. Starving and humiliating people is not an abstract concept to Americans, which should create an even greater impetus to speak up for Palestinian human rights.

In the past when I’ve sat down to write about Israel, I’ve had a moment where I take a deep breath and accept that it is going to be difficult; difficult in the sense that as a Jewish woman, there are so many layers of ancestral trauma and societal tension that often make nuance impossible. Today, however, there was no such moment. 

I have never been more confident in what my eyes are seeing, and what they’re seeing is a genocide fueled by a man-made famine. The world is watching as people who’ve already been stripped of nearly everything they have are being forced to hand over the one thing they have left: the very fat on their bodies. And now the people who are employed to cover the genocide are they themselves starving to death, insuring even more stories will go quietly to the grave. 

As a journalist, I’m heartbroken. Gaza was already the deadliest conflict ever for our profession, and now the pursuit of the truth is being subsumed by the need for basic human survival. And on a human level I’m devastated: devastated that this has been allowed to go on for so long, and devastated knowing there are people who still believe this an appropriate price to pay for Jewish freedom.

On top of it all, I’m outraged: outraged that an American politician’s relationship to a phrase he’s never used merits as much, if not more, attention as a live-streamed genocide; outraged that people still have the audacity to call criticism of this mass-killing antisemitic. It is long past time to say enough! Enough.

(Note: By the time I finished writing this piece, another 31 Palestinians seeking aid were killed by Israeli forces.)