Top UNICEF Official Says Gaza Children 'Being Starved' by Israel

The deputy director of UNICEF returned from his most recent trip to the Gaza Strip this week and has issued a fresh warning to the world that immediate and forceful action must be taken to end the suffering that is being imposed by Israel on the children who live in the war-torn enclave that now teeters on the edge of full-blown famine as bombs continue to be dropped, nowhere is safe, and kids are dying at a rate of more than two dozen every single day.

UNICEF deputy director Ted Chaiban said in a Friday statement that he had just completed his fourth in-person visit to Gaza since the war that began "after the horrors of October 7th," but that there was no preparing for what he witnessed in recent days.

"You see the images on the news, and you know what has happened, but it is still shocking when you are there," he said. "The marks of deep suffering and hunger were visible on the faces of families and children. Over 18,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. That's an average of 28 children a day, the size of a classroom, gone. Children have lost loved ones, they are hungry and scared, and they are traumatized."

Calling the conditions that Israel has created on the ground in Gaza "inhumane," Mr. Chaiban demanded a sustained ceasefire and a political way forward. He also detailed how the United Nations has now identified two indicators showing that Gaza has "exceeded the famine threshold," and that the occupied territory "faces grave risk of famine" due to the ongoing Israeli blockade that prevents humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians, even as the number of documented deaths from acute starvation continue to mount and the killings of people trying to reach aid distribution points continues to climb.

"This simply should not be happening. The children I met are not victims of a natural disaster," Chaiban said Friday of the young Palestinians, critically malnourished, he met during his visit to Gaza in the preceding days. "They are being starved, bombed, and displaced."

Aid organizations as well as Palestinians living in Gaza are describing horrific scenes as the famine conditions grip the population and the suffering of children escalates from a situation that has been described as "hell on earth" for well over a year.

"All my children have lost nearly half of their body weight," Jamil Mughari, a 38-year-old from Maghazi in central Gaza, told the Guardian in an interview published Saturday. "My daughter, who is five years old, now weighs only 11kg. My son Mohammad has become just skin and bones. All my children are like this."

"I myself used to weigh 85kg," Mughari explained, "and now I'm down to 55."

Rejecting the misguided suggestion that airdrops should be part of the solution to the starvation crisis in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said Friday that a large number of trucks, alongside the return of experts in the distribution of humanitarian aid, is the best solution.

"As the people of Gaza are starving to death, the only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance," said Lazzarini. "UNRWA, the largest UN agency on the ground, has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck outside Gaza waiting for the green light to enter."

While UNICEF is helping some limited aid reach people in need, Chaiban said the trickle allowed by Israel is nowhere close to what's needed to save lives and that efforts to change the policies have been rebuffed, even as "children are dying at an unprecedented rate" with no end in sight.

"We are at a crossroads," he said, after calling for the entry of at least 500 trucks per day to deliver life-saving supplies. "The choices made now will determine whether tens of thousands of children live or die. We know what must be done and what can be done."

Amidst the carnage and growing global outrage over Israel's genoce in Gaza, critics of the U.S. backing of the underlying policies continue to acknowledge and decry the shameful complicity of the Trump administration, members of Congress, and influential media outlets who offer material support and political cover to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The debate over whether or not Gaza is a genocide is, effectively, over. So can we now also stop pretending that we are mere bystanders to this genocide? That our sin is one only of omission rather than commission?" asked Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan in a Guardian op-ed on Saturday.

"The inconvenient truth is that the U.S. has not just looked the other way, as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been besieged and bombed, starved and slaughtered, but helped Israel pull the trigger," argued Hasan. "We have been complicit in this genocide, which is itself a crime under article III of the Genocide convention."

On Friday, as Common Dreams reported, Human Rights Watch issued a new report on the starvation in Gaza and said it was "indefensible" for the U.S. government to continue its backing of Israel.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who led another failed effort this week in the U.S. Senate to block further military support of Israel, struck a similiar tone in the Boston Globe on Friday when he wrote that most Americans, according to recent polling, oppose what's taking place in Gaza.

"At a time when Israeli soldiers are routinely shooting civilians trying to get food, when Gaza faces mass starvation, and when extremist settlers terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank, the United States should not provide more weapons to enable these atrocities," Sanders wrote.

"Americans want this to end. They do not want to be complicit in an unfolding famine and daily massacres. Congress has the power to act—to use our leverage of billions in military aid to demand Israel end this slaughter," he added. "History will condemn those who fail to do so."

Sparing neither the current nor former U.S. administrations in his remarks, Hasan said that the history books will remember where people stood and when.

"To the Biden and Trump administrations, to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to the US media, I say this: history will judge you," Hasan wrote. "For the bombs you sent, the votes you cast, the lies you told. This will be your shameful legacy when the dust finally settles in Gaza, when all of the bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Not defending your ally or fighting terrorism, but non-stop complicity in a genocide; aiding and abetting the crime of crimes."