TITLE: CARE warns: Babies and toddlers in North Gaza dying slow and painful death from starvation
https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/press-releases/care-warns-babies-and-toddlers-in-north-gaza-dying-slow-and-painful-death-from-starvation/
EXCERPT: “No one is suffering more in this war than those who have yet to utter their first word. This war is causing an entire generation of children to lose their childhood and future. Imagine watching your baby perish in front of your eyes, simply because you cannot get her the food she needs? Imagine hearing your children’s cries for bread, but there is nothing you can give them? The situation is simply unbearable, unjustifiable and needs to stop immediately,” says Hiba Tibi, Country Director for CARE in West Bank and Gaza.
At least 27 individuals (23 of those being children) have already died from severe acute malnutrition and dehydration in Northern Gaza, with the youngest child only a few days old. According to the UN, at least 13,000 children have been killed since the start of the war. This is higher than the number of children killed in four years of wars around the world combined,
“We see thousands of women and children in our health centres in the North of Gaza every day. Over the past weeks, we could literally see the children getting thinner and thinner. Many of them are so dehydrated and malnourished, they barely speak and have to be carried by their parents,” says Dr. Umaiyeh Khammash, Director of Juzoor. “Mothers and fathers are absolutely devastated, trying whatever they can to keep their young ones alive. Infectious diseases, lack of food and clean water, and the ongoing bombardment are a lethal cocktail for children’s health. Our staff on the ground are doing a heroic job, but if things don’t change quickly, we will see a catastrophic level of death from starvation.
Juzoor’s analysis also reveals that children under one year old are being hit the hardest and almost every second baby (45%) is malnourished.
The data, collected in Juzoor’s health centres as part of an immunization campaign for children under the age of two, is in line with other analyses of the deteriorating nutrition situation, including from the Global Nutrition Cluster. “We hear from doctors who tell us they are losing children every day. The few hospitals who still have incubators for babies will only be able to run them for a few hours every day. Mothers have to watch their child die simply because there is no fuel to run the needed machines,” says Tibi. With no fully functioning hospitals left in the North, many malnourished children are unable to receive sufficient, if any, medical support.
“Starvation is cruel. It is a slow and painful death. Hearing mothers tell us how their child’s life is vanishing before their eyes, are the most heartbreaking stories we will ever hear. We also know that those who survive starvation will suffer cognitively and physically for the years to come. Children’s bodies, hearts, and minds will be impacted for their entire future,” says Tibi.
TITLE: With aid headed to Gaza, risks remain to getting food to its starving population
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237616100/israel-hamas-war-gaza-aid-un-food-ships
EXCERPT: Abed Amin, a 35-year-old who lives in Gaza City and takes care of his three sisters, says he and his family have not received any aid since the start of the war over five months ago. Sometimes he borrows money from his friends to buy canned mushrooms or olives at a steep price on the black market. But these days, they mostly grind animal feed to a sort of flour.
"It's anything but flour," Amin says. "You can barely make a dough out of it, can't cook it and can barely swallow it. But it's all there is."
For the past two weeks, the U.S. and other countries have been airdropping aid packages, but experts say airdrops are inefficient and a last resort.
Mass starvation in Gaza has also created a big security problem, where people are desperate for any food, and usually the strongest are able to access what little aid gets in.
Taghreed Al Khoudary, a mother of four daughters in northern Gaza, says before the war she spoiled her children and made whatever they wanted for dinner. Now, she has had to teach her daughters to survive on one loaf of bread a day.
Recently, an airdropped package landed on the roof of her two-story home. Khoudary rushed up and was elated to find boxes of food. Then, she turned around and saw a large crowd behind her, some had climbed up, many of them holding knives and some were even armed, she said.
"It felt like a scene from a zombie movie. Their eyes were laser focused, like they only saw the food packages and nothing else," she says.
"I screamed, 'Please take everything and leave us alone,' " she says, as a big fight broke out.
[Jamie] McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, says the situation has become a Catch-22.
"What we need to do is flood the north with food so it doesn't become a very prized commodity. If people in the north could see the fact that on a daily basis there was regular supplies of trucks of food, medicine and other key commodities, I think the desperation would not be there. The insecurity wouldn't be there either," McGoldrick says.
For that, McGoldrick says Israel needs to open up more border crossings, increase its ability to do inspections on aid trucks and allow aid groups access to secure roads that the Israeli military uses in northern Gaza.
TITLE: Israelis criticize a local NGO for bringing aid to Gaza: ‘Aren’t you Jews?’
https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-14/israelis-criticize-a-local-ngo-for-bringing-aid-to-gaza-arent-you-jews.html
EXCERPT: In a shopping center next to the Israeli city of Ashkelon, a woman rolls down her car window when she sees a truck and a caravan of cars. She doesn’t realize that it is an initiative — more symbolic than practical — of the Israeli pacifist NGO Omdim Beyahad (Standing Together) to bring supplies into Gaza.
When told it’s not a demonstration, but humanitarian aid, she mistakenly thinks that it is one of the small but frequent protests in the Israeli to prevent aid from entering Gaza, describing the assistance to the Palestinian territory as “shameful.”
Ashkelon is the Israeli NGO’s first stop of its trip from Tel Aviv to its destination, 80 miles further south: Kerem Shalom, the only land crossing in Israel through which food and medicine can enter Gaza. This is where all shipments are inspected. The NGO’s initiative is just made up of a truck carrying rice, flour and cans of food (donated by hundreds of Israelis) and about 20 activist cars, but their slogan in Hebrew and Arabic — “thou shalt not starve,” a play on words with The 10 Commandments — does not sit well with the feeling in Israel since the October 7 attacks.
The promoters of the campaign are aware that the police will cut them off before they reach Kerem Shalom, just as they did last Thursday, when they made their first attempt. But for the group, more than anything, the campaign is about sending a message to Israelis, the majority of whom oppose the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The group’s message is seen as betrayal, and there are tense scenes when the convoy stops at a gas station next to Kibbutz Magen, an area close to Gaza that was attacked on October 7.
– “This store was burned on October 7. You can’t stop here with those ideas. You have to understand that people died here,” says a resident of the kibbutz who everyone knows as Fiko.
– “We are only here to pick up people, it is not a provocation,” responds one of the activists.
– “I don’t believe that. Tell me their names. Nobody in this area is going to join you,” the residents hits back.
Another woman approaches to insult them and asks a border police officer: “Have you seen these shameless people?” “Yes, we just came to sort that out, what scoundrels,” the agent responds.
The police officer is one of those who shortly after, about two miles from the crossing, forces the caravan to turn around and chases them out of the area. He also repeatedly threatens to arrest the journalist for being in a “closed military zone” (he is not) when he hears that he is Spanish.
The members of the caravan turn around and park on the roadside in the other direction. A driver sees their slogan, gets out of a truck and shouts at them to leave immediately. “Is that for them [Gazans]? Are you helping them? Aren’t you Jews?” he yells.
Five months after the Hamas attacks, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 were taken hostage, the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza has become a thorny issue in Israel — a problem made clear by the hostile response to the Israeli NGO.
Last month, a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute asked participants: “Do you support or oppose the idea that Israel should allow the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents at this time, with food and medicines being transferred by international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to [the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees] UNRWA?” A total of 68% of Jewish respondents said they were opposed, including 31% of those who described themselves as left-wing. In conversations and debates, attitudes range from blaming Hamas or the U.N. to claiming Gazan children are the “terrorists of tomorrow.”