Children In Gaza Are Starving. Talking Is Not Enough.

Naeema, a 30-year-old Palestinian mother, carries her malnourished 2-year-old son Yazan as they stand in their damaged home in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, on July 23, 2025. The internet is awash with heartbreaking images and videos of emaciated babies and children held by their parents – a new and devastating normal as Gaza’s famine reaches desperate levels. Children like two-year-old Yazan (pictured above) who is severely malnourished.Children like six-week-old Youssef, who died of malnutrition as his family couldn’t access formula milk.Children like Muhammad, an 18-month-old (pictured below) who faces life-threatening malnutrition having dropped from nine to six kilograms in weight.We now live in a world where Gazan children – innocent kids – are telling their parents they “want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food”. This picture pic.twitter.com/8lBFw4Q2il— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 23, 2025No child should be subjected to this level of hunger.It is especially cruel that food and aid, including much-needed formula milk, is available yet not reaching them. At the start of March, Israel blocked humanitarian aid and essential supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip as a way to force Hamas to release the remaining hostages taken after the brutal attacks on 7 October 2023, in which over 1,000 people were massacred by the terrorist organisation.The BBC reported Israel’s blockade was partially eased after almost two months, however “the shortages of food, medicine and fuel have worsened”.Earlier this week, Joseph Belliveau of US-based medical humanitarian group MedGlobal, said children had died “because there is not enough food in Gaza and not enough medicines, including IV fluids and therapeutic formula, to revive them”.Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported 113 people have already died “due to famine and malnutrition”. A senior Israeli security official denied famine claims, according to The Times of Israel, although they did admit there’s been a significant drop in the amount of aid reaching Palestinians in the Strip.The images, videos and accounts coming out of Gaza; from doctors, charity workers, parents and their children, paint a very bleak picture.More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have warned of mass starvation in Gaza, while journalists on the ground have said they are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families. Mohammed Alkhatib, Medical Aid for Palestinians’ (MAP) deputy director of programmes in south Gaza, told HuffPost UK “so far, no therapeutic supplements for malnutrition cases have been allowed in”.“Alarmingly, we have started to see a rise in deaths linked to malnutrition, not only among children but also the elderly,” he said. “People with disabilities, too, are being left with no access to tailored nutrition support.”Professor Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who volunteered with MAP in Gaza in June and July 2025, said the malnutrition he witnessed is “indescribably bad”.“It’s much, much worse now than when I was here a year ago. I have seen a seven-month-old who looked like a newborn. The expression ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do it justice.”The Daily Express newspaper even shared an image on its front page of 18-month-old Muhammad this week, with the plea: “For pity’s sake stop this now.” The Daily Express is the most right-wing mainstream newspaper in Britain.It now has a better position on Gaza than the Labour government. pic.twitter.com/7hzZUO6tKD— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) July 23, 2025In another heart-wrenching post shared on social media, Dr Zoe Williams – known for her appearances on ITV’s This Morning – revealed “the sickening, heartbreaking, despicable truth” is that for many of children in Gaza “their fate is now already set”.“This is the way starvation works, you reach a point of no return, where no amount of food or medical support can make you healthy again, because the damage to vital organs has already been done,” she wrote on Instagram.“We keep seeing the numbers who have died so far of starvation but in reality that number can already be multiplied by a big number. “Every minute and every hour that passes means children go beyond that point of no return.”Children in hunger crises experience something called “wasting”, where a child’s weight and muscle mass are disproportionate to their height because of severe malnutrition. The International Rescue Committee explains growth may also be stunted, which in turn damages physical and cognitive development.“A child experiencing wasting or stunting is 11 times more likely to die than a healthy child, with the impacts of these conditions reducing the ability of the child to fight off and recover from usually mild illnesses like diarrhoea or measles,” the committee added.MAP’s Mohammed Alkhatib said the long-term effects of malnutrition can range from stunted growth and poor physical development, to delays in children’s cognitive and functional progress.View this post on InstagramA post shared by Dr Zoe Williams (@drzoewilliams)Dr Williams shared ways members of the public can help the children of Gaza and their families, by donating to charities and advocating for political change by writing to MPs and signing petitions.But there are only so many petitions, emails and donations a person can make before we have to say: enough is enough. Our leaders – those in the UK, and across the world – need to do something. Charities want to see UK leadership demand the immediate lifting of Israel’s total blockade of Gaza to allow full and safe humanitarian access, as well as condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war.MAP said it wants the government to push for the dismantling of militarised aid distribution points, hold Israel accountable for violations of international law, and stop all arms sales and military cooperation with Israel until the atrocities cease.Olive Gray, conflict and humanitarian campaigns manager at Save The Children, told us: “We have the food, we have the aid, and we know how to treat malnutrition in children – what we don’t have is access.“There is food, water, and medical aid ready to go, but it’s being blocked at the border while families are forced to eat animal feed and leaves, taking unimaginable and dehumanising measures to survive.“This is not a crisis of supply; it’s a crisis of access. Children are dying not just from bombs and bullets, but from hunger and disease. The UK and the international community must act now to open the crossings and deliver life-saving aid.”Almost 50% of Gaza’s population are children – kids who want to play and learn, but are being starved, displaced, blown up and shot at. Their families, too.In May this year, a mother of four told charity workers at a Gaza-based health clinic: “Our children are just waiting their turn to die.”This cannot be how it ends. Related...'Shames Us All': Keir Starmer Is Now Facing Pressure Across Political Spectrum To Act On GazaMP Warns David Lammy He Could End Up In The Hague Over Gaza ‘Inaction’Israeli Soldiers 'Haunted By What They Have Done' In Gaza, UN Expert Says

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