An American physician working in Gaza has shared a harrowing portrayal of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the besieged enclave, where starvation and desperation have stripped even the most basic dignities from daily life. Children with grievous injuries, including amputations, no longer cry out in pain—they whisper pleas for food. “Their bodies are so depleted that pain isn’t their primary concern anymore,” the doctor recounted. “It’s hunger that consumes them.”
The doctor, affiliated with a New York-based humanitarian group, described scenes that defy comprehension: infants wasting away in overcrowded hospitals, parents rationing scraps of bread to keep their families alive, and medical staff forced to operate without anesthesia or clean water. “I’ve seen toddlers who’ve lost limbs lying listlessly in beds, their eyes hollow. When I ask where it hurts, they don’t point to their wounds—they just say, ‘I need food,’” he said.
One haunting case involved a seven-year-old boy named Omar, whose legs were crushed in an airstrike. After a double amputation, he never once screamed during wound cleanings. Instead, he clutched the doctor’s sleeve and murmured, “Can I have a banana?” His family hadn’t eaten fruit in months. Another girl, Haneen, six, barely reacted as her burned flesh was debrided. “All she asked was if I had any rice,” the doctor said, his voice breaking. “We’re supposed to heal them, but how do we heal starvation?”
The collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system has left doctors grappling with impossible choices. Supplies are so scarce that IV fluids are reused, surgeries are performed by flashlight, and infections rage unchecked. “We’ve regressed to medieval medicine,” the doctor noted. Even painkillers have become a luxury. “Children whimper silently during procedures because their bodies lack the energy to scream. But when they speak, it’s always about hunger. Always.”
Parents, too, are withering under the strain. Mothers skip meals for days to feed their children, while fathers search rubble for edible weeds. “One father handed me his son’s medical chart and a single olive,” the doctor recalled. “He said, ‘This is all I can give him.’ I didn’t know which hurt more—the boy’s shattered spine or the father’s shame.”
The doctor emphasized that Gaza’s suffering is man-made, a consequence of prolonged blockade and conflict. “This isn’t a natural disaster. It’s a starvation engineered by indifference,” he said. Aid trucks sit idle at borders while hospitals report deaths from malnutrition-related complications—a first in modern Gaza. “We’re watching children die of dehydration because we can’t spare clean water. What’s happening here isn’t just a crisis—it’s a moral failure.”
Despite the horrors, the doctor finds glimmers of resilience. He spoke of nurses who donate their own blood for transfusions and volunteers who comfort patients with stories when medicines run out. “These people cling to hope like it’s oxygen,” he said. “But hope doesn’t fill stomachs. The world cannot look away while Gaza’s children are reduced to skeletons who beg for bread instead of crying for their mothers.”
His plea is simple: recognize their humanity. “These aren’t numbers or headlines. They’re kids who deserved to laugh, play, and dream. Now they’re just trying to survive another hour. No child should ever whisper, ‘I’m hungry,’ when what they need is surgery.”
