Israel has been starving us for months. It cut off all aid to Gaza in March, only to recently approve a US-led, militarized aid site run by the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.” The consequences are not abstract, they are visceral, immediate and devastating. On 27 May in Rafah, thousands of hungry and desperate people surged toward the site seeking food and water. They had no option .. One image went viral: Palestinians packed tightly into fenced queues, in a space resembling a cattle chute, waiting under the burning sun for bags containing the bare minimum, flour, canned beans, dry pasta, vegetable oil. Why must we be humiliated and starved before we are killed? ..
Graphic video for the starving victims have been MASSACRED by Israeli occupation forces in Khan Younis, Jun 17 2025
It is a calculated, systematic strategy: to fracture our spirits in Gaza, strip away our dignity, and prepare us, and the world, for the next, more acceptable form of violence. It makes us long for death, convincing us it is the better option. I regularly hear people say, “They’re lucky,” when someone is killed as if finally, they got relief. I’ve even seen people outside Gaza commenting on the murder of our children with similar words. Why are we left with only two options: humiliation or death? .. We’ve been reduced to hungry and desperate people with children carrying empty plates and pots, confined to dirty, temporary shelters. This is a prelude to death. It is economic, psychological and social conditioning that makes the intolerable seem ordinary ..
At least 12 Palestinians were shot dead and dozens more injured by Israeli forces this afternoon as they attempted to reach vital humanitarian aid northwest of Gaza City. Jun 14 2025
The voices of the wounded and patients screaming in pain were terrifying. I cried in silence like I had never cried before. My life wasn’t taken from me, but my dignity was .. To understand what is happening in Gaza, one must look beyond the images of destruction and see the architecture beneath. It is an architecture built not only from the rubble of homes and infrastructure, but from the daily rituals of humiliation, the kind that teaches you to expect nothing, to never raise your head beyond a pot of tasteless food or a jug of unclean water.It conditions you to accept suffering as routine. To see yourself, eventually, the way the world sees you, as a burden, or a threat, or as the former Israeli defense minister yoav gallant put it, “human animals.”This is the kind of violence that rewrites who we are. It reshapes not just how we live, but how we dream, what we expect from life, how we remember and even how we grieve.
Malak Hijazi is a Gaza-based writer.
