My family in Gaza is starving – Israel wants to make things worse

When I called my brother in Gaza last week, I prepared myself for the usual fear. The usual silence between sentences, the distant rumble of drones, the broken sentences from a broken internet connection.

But I wasn’t prepared for what he told me this time. He said: ‘We prefer the bombshells. At least if we die from a bomb, we die quickly. This slow death of hunger — it’s torture. It’s humiliation. It’s not death. It’s erasure.’

I froze. My mouth opened but no words came. I wanted to scream, to cry, to beg someone — anyone — to help.

Instead, I swallowed my heartbreak and told him I loved him. That I was sorry.

But it felt like nothing. Because when your loved ones are being starved in plain sight and the world watches on — your voice begins to feel like a whisper against the roar of indifference.

What’s happening in Gaza isn’t just a war. It’s a siege. A famine that was planned. A starvation not by accident, but by design.

Now this plan is escalating. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cabinet had decided that the country will seize all of Gaza and the Strip’s 2.1million population ‘will be moved, to protect it’.

The truth is, this isn’t about protection — it’s clear to me that this is a brutal plan to conquer Gaza. Israel has never truly cared for the safety of Gaza’s people.

In just 18 months, over 52,000 Palestinians have been killed — thousands of them children. Nearly 120,000 more have been wounded. These are not just numbers; they are lives, dreams, families erased.

The plan now seems to be to push the entire population into an even smaller, unlivable strip of land — a place so cramped and broken it can barely sustain life.

As Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council told Al Jazeera, the Israeli government is using aid as a weapon — ‘militarising, manipulating, and politicising it’ — allowing only scraps to reach a handful of so-called ‘concentration hubs’ in the south.

It’s a cruel system of control, a place where people are to be screened and sorted, all under a completely inoperable and inhumane scheme. Gaza is being turned into a cage — and the world is watching it happen.

Since Israel began its latest war on Gaza, aid trucks have been choked at the border. Flour, rice, baby formula, water — everything has become rare, expensive, or nonexistent. 

Have your say in the comments belowComment Now

Community kitchens that once fed thousands are now shuttered. Families are living on stale bread and leaves, if they’re lucky. Children go to sleep crying, not because of the airstrikes, but because their bellies are empty.

Hunger is quieter than bombs. It kills more slowly, more cruelly. From my home in London, I’ve spoken to family member after family member in Gaza and they all repeat the same words: ‘We’re not living anymore. We’re just waiting to die.’

My niece, who just turned nine, has lost so much weight that her cheekbones are now sharp. 

My cousin’s baby has stopped crying because she no longer has the energy to cry. And my uncle, who once worked in agriculture and brought home olives and oranges, now scavenges for scraps in the rubble of bombed-out markets.

This isn’t just my family. Over 570,000 people in Gaza are now facing what the UN calls ‘catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation’. That’s half a million souls starving — most of them children, women, and the elderly.

According to the World Food Programme, almost the entire population of Gaza are in some level of food insecurity. Aid agencies are warning that famine is imminent, if not already here. 

But the trucks sit idle at the border, held back by politics and cruelty.

I keep thinking about how we got to this point. How the world allowed a situation where children beg for water and mothers boil grass to keep their babies alive. Where death by starvation is no longer shocking — just expected.

I recently read an account from Ibtisam Ghalia, a widow in Gaza whose husband was killed in an airstrike while trying to find food. She said, ‘Since the blockade, we’ve had to survive on whatever we can find. My children often go to bed crying from hunger. I don’t know how to comfort them anymore.’

How is this allowed to happen in 2025? How have we normalised the slow death of an entire people?

My brother’s words haunt me. ‘We prefer the bombs.’

We grew up under occupation, yes. We’ve known fear all our lives. But we still clung to life. 

We still laughed when the power came back on. We still lit candles and played card games in the dark. But this starvation is different. It strips you of dignity. It doesn’t just kill. It breaks you first.

I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do. Because I want the world to feel even a fraction of this pain. I want someone to look at their full fridge tonight and think about Gaza.

I want someone in power to feel the weight of these words and act. Not with statements or condolences, but with trucks full of food and corridors of mercy.

I know the political arguments. I’ve read the statements about ‘security’, ‘caution’ and ‘putting pressure on Hamas’.

But let me ask you this: what security is threatened by a bag of rice? What caution justifies the starvation of a child?

Whatever excuse they offer, this is not just a policy decision — it is a war crime. It is starving my family to death. It is collective punishment, plain and simple.

And whether you look at it through a legal lens or a moral one, the conclusion is the same: it is worse. It is, in the view of Amnesty International, a UN Special Committee and other international organisations, a genocidal act.

My mother, who raised 13 children in Gaza, once told me: ‘We can live without light. We can live without work. But we cannot live without dignity.’ And that’s what is being stolen now — piece by piece, calorie by calorie.

To those who still believe in humanity: speak louder. To those in power: act now. The people of Gaza are not pawns. They are poets, farmers, children with dreams. They are my family. They are your fellow human beings.

Don’t let them die in silence. Don’t let starvation become another forgotten headline. Don’t wait until Gazans all join my brother in saying, ‘We prefer the bombs’.

Because by then, it may be too late.

And if you’re reading this with a full belly — then let that fullness carry the weight of responsibility. Speak. Share. Demand. Now.

Before the last candle in Gaza burns out.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.