A letter from a Gazan friend

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Do you think, as our government would have us believe, that there is no hunger in Gaza? That no one is really suffering there as a result of this cruel war?

This week, I received a letter from a dear friend who was born in Gaza and left years ago; who has been cut off from her family for all that time.

She wrote:

“Today, two members of my family were martyred: Mohammed and Mohammed. They joined the ranks of my family’s martyrs, with Mohammed being the last remaining member of my cousin Adham’s family…Since that date, I have lost 49 family members.

The financial situation for Mohammed and Mohammed was dire; they
struggled to provide food for their children. In search of assistance,
they went to the aid trucks at the border to obtain a bag of flour.
Tragically, they became victims of the IOF’s treacherous gunfire. Today, the occupation committed a massive massacre against desperate people who were merely trying to feed their families, killing over 50 fathers and husbands who ventured out for food.

Mohammed left behind three young daughters, and his wife is pregnant with their fourth child. His kindness and heroism are irreplaceable; he faced death to provide for them.”

Please, try to imagine a situation in which you must risk your life for a bag of flour to feed your family.

We are not just starving people; we are taking away their humanity.

The news pundits splutter: “Maybe some people are hungry in some parts of Gaza. It’s all engineered by Hamas.”

I wish we had all died of hunger together

They tell us the photos of hungry people holding out empty tin plates is simply a PR campaign by the Hamas. The optics are bad.

No folks, it looks bad because it is bad. And, like it or not, it is our problem, our responsibility, our screw-up. We can prevent reporters from entering Gaza, but we can’t keep people from using the cameras on their phones. Is it a problem that the world knows what we have done? Or is the problem the fact that we use humanitarian aid as a weapon?

Our cybersecurity systems are so good they sell for billions. We spent years setting up a flashy beeper-blow-up caper to take down Hezbollah. Our air force was ready and waiting for the signal to bomb Iranian enrichment facilities, refueling midair with the precision of a neurosurgeon.

But when it comes to the business of ensuring human beings get food and medical care, our score wavers between abysmal and mediocre. Imagine for a second what would have happened if we had invested the same resources we spent on planning attacks into the logistics of caring for a population that became our responsibility as we rolled our D-9s and tanks through their cities, destroying hospitals on the way?

Please, look Mohammed and Mohammed’s family in the eye.

“Today, his wife told me, ‘I wish we had all died of hunger together,’” wrote my friend.

I asked to share her words. They speak louder than any diatribe I might write against this interminable war.  Instead of looking for ways to blame the other side, we need to agree to an agreement. When people are getting killed just for trying to feed their families, we need to stop worrying whether it looks bad and start worrying about changing the situation. We need to end this war and withdraw our troops from Gaza. Now.