More Babies Will Have Starved to Death in Gaza By the Time You Read This Essay
We are not equipped to see such violence; we have no means of comprehending such barbarity, writes Fatima Bhutto in this deeply emotional piece.
From the time that I woke up Tuesday morning, dressed my children, fed them breakfast, and sat down at my computer to write this article, three children died of starvation in Gaza.
In the afternoon, when I send a photo of my newborn son, only 2 months old, to my brother so he can see how his nephew is growing, starting to smile and coo, I must scroll through pictures I have taken screen shots of: a skeletal 2-year-old boy in Gaza, Yazan is his name, who will almost certainly die as he has no food to eat. Israel has refused to allow established relief networks like the Norwegian Refugee Council to bring supplies into Gaza for more than 142 days. Yazan’s mother holds him in her arms, herself shrunken from hunger, lifting his shirt so the world can see the fading heartbeat of her son. But the world has seen images of Israel’s holocaust in Gaza for over 650 days, and it has done absolutely nothing.
On Monday, logging onto X, I saw a video of a father holding his bloodied child in his arms and running, screaming for help. But the young child’s legs have been shredded; where his body should be is only burning flesh mingled with the scraps of fabric that once were his trousers.
On Instagram, where I once watched my friends on vacation and the overly filtered faces of strangers, I see a post from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Mosab Abu Toha. He shares a series of WhatsApp messages he has sent to Patrick Kingsley, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. Abu Toha asks if the paper is going to cover the news of a fetus, beheaded by an Israeli strike on the Al Shati camp, and murdered along with his mother. “Thank you for the suggestion,” Kingsley replies, “I appreciate it.” In the screenshots, Abu Toha follows up, asking about the story and sending a video. Here is an ACTUAL baby, a fetus no less, beheaded by Israel. Not the Israeli hasbara of sordid lies, made up to manufacture consent for their genocide, such as the 40 beheaded phantom babies. Will they not cover this real, true case? But Kingsley doesn’t reply to Abu Toha, who writes and calls him repeatedly. He may as well be speaking into a void.
I cannot count the images of utter horror I have seen only in these last two days: a little boy called Faisal talking about how he saw Israeli soldiers shoot his pregnant mother in her stomach; a newborn baby who is all bones and has no sucking reflex – it has had no milk and is too weak to attempt that basic, instinctual attempt to feed; children and adults wading through spilled flour desperately trying to gather enough to take home to their families before they are shot by the American mercenaries or Israeli occupation forces, the latter of which routinely kill starving Palestinians at so-called “aid” points; a boy too young to be a teenager – underneath the blood that covers his face, you can see that his skin is smooth he is not old enough to grow stubble. He was killed by an Israeli sniper while trying to find food in Jabalia. I see a video of an elderly man, probably someone’s grandfather, holding a red bucket, waiting for food before he collapses. He reportedly dies right there, upright and hungry. I watch a British surgeon Nick Maynard describe how Israeli soldiers routinely shoot children in different body parts, depending on the day of the week: one day the genitals, the next the knees. I come across a video of children in a tent dancing because their brother had come back from an “aid” point alive, carrying a sack of flour on his shoulders. Every story I read, every image I see, I feel my heart will burst into a million pieces. We are not equipped to see such violence; we have no means of comprehending such barbarity.
Israel has blocked or severely restricted baby formula from entering Gaza, just as it has done with incubators – without which premature babies simply cannot breathe. It has also restricted the entry of fuel, so the incubators that do exist cannot run. But it is not just newborns who are being starved to death. The United Nations Relief Works Agency, a lifeline for the people of Gaza, has enough food to feed the entire remaining population for more than three months – 6,000 trucks worth – but Israel refuses them entry. Alex de Waal, a famine expert, told Al Jazeera that not since World War II has there been a case of starvation “so minutely designed and controlled” as what Israel is doing to Gaza.
Right now, Israel has herded all of what is left of the population – the human beings who they have not murdered by bombs, bullets, or starvation – into 12% of Gaza. A literal concentration camp.
There is no country, no state, no leader free or courageous enough to break Israel’s siege. The only people who have shown any hearts or guts are ordinary people, those with no power. Online, a movement builds calling for Pope Leo XIV to bring food, to get on a plane and land in Gaza, and save its people from certain death. The argument is that even Israel, which abides by no norms, no protocols of war, no human decency, no laws, wouldn’t shoot at the Pope. Wouldn’t they? Just last week, Israel bombed the only Catholic Church in Gaza, I suspect in revenge for Pope Francis’s stance on their genocide – he called that very parish every single night starting on October 9, 2023. There is no one Israel wouldn’t attack; we know that after watching their cruelty and inhumanity for two years straight. On Sunday, Israel not only attacked a building that housed a kindergarten while it was filled with children, it reportedly double-tapped it – hitting it twice to ensure maximum deaths.
Speaking during mass at the Holy Family Church of Gaza on Sunday, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who visited the Strip, said that ‘the devil was present and very powerful’ among us. As he delivers his homily, the sounds of Israeli explosions can be heard.
We have signed petitions, protested, fundraised, crowd-funded, gathered, wept, and prayed. Will Israel ever be stopped? I fear they will continue until they have killed everyone left in Gaza. I do not say this with any hyperbole. I fear it deeply.
Where is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya? The pediatrician and neonatologist whose young son Israel murdered in cold blood in an airstrike on the hospital. Abu Saifya himself was injured in an Israeli drone strike, when he refused to leave his hospital and patients. They took him into their terrifying custody in December. His lawyers say he is being tortured and has lost about 40 kg of body weight. They kill or arrest the doctors, so there will be no one left to save the survivors. They shoot journalists, so there will be no one left to tell the story of their crimes.
By the time you read this article, more newborn babies will have died from starvation in Gaza. The bodies of more of God’s precious children will be torn apart by weaponry paid for by your tax dollars and sent by politicians you elected. But we will remember. We will never be able to forget what Israel has done in Gaza. And if we cannot stop them, they will have done more than destroy Gaza; they will have broken the world.
Fatima Bhutto is an award-winning author and journalist. Her upcoming books include the memoir, The Hour of the Wolf, and a collection of essays she co-edited titled Gaza: The Story of a Genocide.
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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the doctor mentioned in Fatima’s piece, was featured in the film that Zeteo recently acquired. Watch the film by clicking the link below and check out Zeteo’s other coverage of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza:
Fatima, we came here to live by choice. Back then, the US had morality and values that we were proud of. We recalled the horrors of the Holocaust and pledged, Never again, never again meant for no one with no exceptions.
Dr. Omer Bartov (a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University) published an opinion piece with the same heading, Never Again n N Y Times, is very clear that he has seen enough, and he knows Genocide and Israel is committing Genocide with full US Support.
Some of the countries have started talking about it, but I am sorry to say that not enough pressure is being put on the Israelis by the West, particularly our country, the US, to change the Israeli calculation.
Blood is on the hands of all Western countries that have only put out “statements”. That includes Canada and Mark Carney. Where is the fucking outrage? How many kids must die before Israel is stopped.