Hunger kills my brother and I cannot do anything to save them Israel’s conflict and the two star-news.press/wp

I have a large Palestinian family. I grew up in a family full of children: We are eight brothers and sisters. When my older brothers began to marry and have children, our family slept older. At the end of each week, our family’s house was filling the laughter of children.

I used to wait impatiently to come Thursday, on the day my married sisters will come to visit us with their children. My father was getting out of shopping, my mother – busy cooking the favorite dishes of her daughters, and I would play with the children. I have nine daughters and sisters in total, and I have beautiful memories that play with each of them. They are my family treasure because the house without children is like a tree without leaves.

Despite the difficult life in occupation and the siege in Gaza, my sisters and brothers made their best to provide their children and give them the best opportunity to study and follow their dreams.

Then the genocide began. The bombing that is uncomfortable, constant displacement, hunger.

I have no private children, but I feel the pain of my prominent sisters when they face the cries of their hungry children.

“I no longer have the power to bear. I am tired of thinking about how to fill my empty children’s stomachs. What can I prepare for them?” My sister Samah recently shared.

She has seven children: Abdel Aziz, 20, Sondos, 17, Ragad, 15, Ali, 11, Mahmoud Lana, 8, and Tasnim, 3. Like most other Palestinian families, they were displaced several times that they lost most of their possessions. The last time they saw their house in the Shujayea neighborhood, its walls were detonated, but its roof was still standing on the columns. The plot of land was in front of their house, which was planted with olive and lemon trees, which was shaved.

The Samah family has relied on canned food since the beginning of the war. Since Israel stopped aid in early March and stopped the distribution of aid, they have struggled to find boxes of beans or chickpeas. Now, they are lucky if they can find a bowl of lentil soup or a loaf of bread.

Day after day, Samah had to watch her children suffer, lose weight and fall.

Lana suffers more than others. It is 110 cm (3 feet 7 inches), but it weighs only 13 kg (28.7 pounds). Her parents took her to a clinic, where she was examined and affirmed of severe malnutrition. It was recorded in a program to distribute nutritional supplements, but it has not received anything yet. There is nothing available.

Lana’s yellow body is so weak that it is unable to stand for long periods or walk if they are forced suddenly to flee. All you want is sleeping and sitting without being able to play with her brother. I can’t believe what has become of it: she used to be a red girl full of energy, who used to play with her brothers all the time.

We regularly hear news about children who die of malnutrition, and this is the worst fear of Sama: she can lose her daughter.

Despite her struggle to feed her family, Sama refuses to allow her husband, Mohamed, to go to one of the aid distribution points in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. She knows this is the trap of death. She did not risk his life on a piece of food that he might not even be able to get.

Amidst hunger, she gave birth to my other sister, Asma, her second child, Witin. She is now two months old, and because of the lack of nutrition, she suffers from jaundice. I just saw wateen in the pictures. Her weight was one and a half kilograms (5.5 pounds) when she was born. Yellow and dull appeared in all its pictures.

Doctors said that her mother, breastfeeding, cannot provide her with the nutrients she needs because she herself suffers from a lack of nutrition. Wateen needs to feed the milk of a very saturated formula, which is not available because Israel was preventing the delivery of all infant formula to Gaza.

Asmaa is now concerned that Wateen may develop malnutrition because it is unable to supply it with nourishing milk. “I am melting like a candle! When will this suffering end?” You told me recently.

My heart is separated when I talk to my sisters and hear about their pain and hunger that provokes their children.

The Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 18,000 children since they started genocide. About 1.1 million survival remains. Israel wants to make sure they have no future.

This is not an unfortunate result of the war. It is a war strategy.

Malnutrition is not just a severe weight loss. It is a destructive condition that destroys the vital internal organs of the body, such as the liver, kidneys and stomach. It affects the growth and development of children and leads to a high preparation for the disease, learning difficulties, cognitive weakness and psychological issues.

Through the hunger of Palestinian children, and depriving them of education and health care, the occupier aims to achieve one goal: create a fragile generation, weakly considering and constitutional, unable to think, without a horizon other than searching for food, drink and shelter. This means a generation that is unable to defend the right to its land and stand up to the occupier. A generation that does not understand the existential struggle of its people.

The war plan is clear, and the target was publicly mentioned by Israeli officials. The question now is, will the world allow Israel to destroy Gaza’s children?

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.