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famine
Van Jones Ripped for 'Absolutely Sickening' Remarks About Gaza Baby Starved by Israel
"The baby had a genetic issue AND was being starved by Israel AND the starvation exacerbated the condition," said journalist Ryan Grim.
Aug 20, 2026
In remarks condemned as "absolutely disgusting atrocity propaganda," US political analyst Van Jones used an image posted by Israeli actor and activist Noa Tishby in a bid to deny that Israel's annihilation and siege of Gaza—which fueled a famine officially declared by the world's top hunger authority—caused many Palestinian children to starve to death.
A video posted by Tishby on Instagram features Jones—who served as then-President Barack Obama's special adviser for green jobs—saying that "we now have this world where, when you see something on social media, you have to ask yourself the question, is this real?"
"The people who want to divide, who want to distract, who want to turn people against each other, have super weapons to do so now," he continued. "Somebody looks at their phone, they assume that what they're seeing is real. I think that's why we have to take a lot more seriously this information war."
"For instance... the picture that broke everybody's heart of the so-called starving baby turned out to not be a starving child," Jones said against a backdrop of a July 2025 New York Times article on the Gaza famine showing a woman cradling an emaciated child, while Tishby nodded approvingly.
"That child had a genetic issue. It was not being starved by Israel," Jones continued. "So when you have the mainstream media that is falling for propaganda or promoting propaganda and won't apologize, and then you have this fringe media that's massively bigger, it requires a different approach to the information war."
Yes, the child—18-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq—"had pre-existing health problems affecting his brain and his muscle development." This is known because the authors of the Times article used that exact language while issuing a correction acknowledging their initial omission of the information.
As investigative journalist Ryan Grim noted on Thursday, "the baby had a genetic issue AND was being starved by Israel AND the starvation exacerbated the condition."
Starvation in Gaza is a fact acknowledged even by US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Trump, Vance, and Huckabee are not famine experts. But the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—the UN-aided top global authority on hunger crises—officially declared a Phase 5 famine in Gaza, the most serious category of starvation, in August 2025.
The IPC lifted Gaza’s famine designation in December 2025, citing improved—but still highly restricted—access to humanitarian aid in the exclave following a nominal ceasefire agreement reached two months earlier. However, the IPC recently published an analysis showing that from mid-April to the end of June, more than 1.2 million people, or 59% of Gaza’s population, were experiencing Phase 3 (crisis) or worse levels of food insecurity. This included about 212,000 people in Phase 4 (emergency).
United Nations officials and other hunger experts started sounding the alarm on looming starvation in Gaza in the weeks after Israel began annihilating the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Since then, at least 461 people in Gaza have died from malnutrition-related causes, including 157 children, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Numerous people who deny that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a quarter million Palestinians in Gaza or that Israel is committing genocide there—a conclusion reached by numerous UN officials, scholars, jurists, rights groups, and the approximately 20 nations that formally joined South Africa’s pending genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—are the same ones who have denied not only the Gaza famine, but that anyone was ever starving there.
Many Israeli and diaspora Jewish scholars, human rights defenders, and others—including some of the world's foremost Holocaust experts—say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Tishby—a former Israeli special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel—has described Palestinian solidarity activism as a “psychosis of a moral higher ground,” characterized some organizations as fundamentally interested in taking down Israel, and argued that pro-Palestinian organizations should be banned.
She and Jones have both denied the genocide and famine in Gaza, even in the face of International Criminal Court arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Last year, while the Gaza famine was still occurring, Jones apologized for aspersing "dead Gaza baby" images as a "disinformation campaign," calling his remarks "insensitive and hurtful."
“The suffering of the people of Gaza—especially the children—is not a punch line," he said. "I’m deeply sorry it came across that way. What’s happening to children in Gaza is heartbreaking."
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Genocide Deniers Call Gaza Starvation a 'Hoax' by Citing UNICEF—Which Reported Famine
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who last year admitted Gazans were starving—was among those noting a new global hunger report by the UN agency that reported the 2025 famine as it unfolded.
Aug 07, 2026
For nearly three years, Israeli officials and their US backers have denounced United Nations agencies reporting the facts of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza as lies, but now many of them are citing the latest global hunger study by the United Nations Children's Fund as proof that last year's famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in the coastal exclave was a "hoax."
The UNICEF-led State of Palestine Nutrition Cluster Coordination Meeting report, published on July 22, shows decreased hunger rates in areas of Gaza accessible to those conducting the survey. With Israeli forces controlling the majority of Gaza's territory and much of the strip flattened and inaccessible, the report's authors warned that "the survey findings should therefore be interpreted as representative."
This did not stop the Israeli government and media, and Israel's supporters and sympathetic media abroad, from citing UNICEF—which on Thursday said that Israel is killing about one child a day in Gaza despite a so-called ceasefire—and the broader UN, which they formerly accused of "lies," "antisemitism," "blood libels," and "hoaxes" throughout a war that a UN commission of inquiry called a genocide.
"Once again, facts prevail over fiction," Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said. "UN bodies are acknowledging that the false narrative against Israel is falling apart."
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee may have forgotten his acknowledgement last year—along with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance—that Palestinians were "starving" in Gaza, aspersing the media for reporting on the starvation.
"For 3 yrs since Hamas butchered over 1200 ppl including at least 46 Americans the media has said @Israel has starved children," he said on X. "But UNICEF, no friend to Israel shows that focus should have been on the rest of the region where the real tragedy lives unnoticed."
Eylon Levy—the British-Israeli former spokesperson for Israel known for purveying disinformation like the infamous October 7 "beheaded babies" lie—also ran with the narrative, posting on X that "the 'Gaza Famine' was always a hoax."
Except it wasn't.
UN agencies and other humanitarian groups started sounding the alarm on looming starvation in Gaza in the weeks after Israel began annihilating the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. By February 2024, UNICEF warned that "famine is imminent" in Gaza as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cited the deaths of six infants from malnutrition and dehydration.
As Gaza's hunger crisis worsened under Israel's "complete siege," UN agencies, including UNICEF, regularly warned about starvation in the strip. In February 2024, UN officials were accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—one of the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Michael Fakhri, the top UN expert on the right to food, accused Israel of genocidal forced starvation of Gazans.
In August 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—the UN-aided top global authority on hunger crises—declared a Phase 5, or "catastrophic," famine in Gaza as at least hundreds of Palestinians perished from malnutrition and related causes.
“Famine is now a grim reality for children in Gaza," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said at the time. “As we have repeatedly warned, the signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying from hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children."
The IPC lifted Gaza's famine designation in December 2025, citing improved—but still highly restricted—access of humanitarian aid into Gaza following a nominal ceasefire agreement reached two months earlier. However, last month the IPC published an analysis showing that from mid-April to the end of June, more than 1.2 million people, or 59% of Gaza’s population, were experiencing Phase 3 (crisis) or worse levels of food insecurity. This included about 212,000 people in Phase 4 (emergency).
"The situation remains fragile," IPC warned.
Many of the people who deny that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a quarter million Palestinians in Gaza or that Israel is committing genocide there—a conclusion reached by numerous UN officials, scholars, jurists, rights groups, and the approximately 20 nations that formally joined South Africa's pending genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—are the same ones who have denied not only the Gaza famine, but that anyone was ever starving there.
They asked to see photos of starving Palestinians, and when shown them, they, and corporate media outlets including The New York Times, attempted to explain or even dismiss the evidence by claiming the emaciated—or often dead—children suffered from preexisting conditions, as if that somehow absolved Israel for their deaths. Others posted images of a Gaza market stocked with food or overweight Palestinians in a bid to debunk the fact of starvation in Gaza.
Still others dismissed images of starving Gazans as Hamas propaganda, with US media personality Megyn Kelly opining that Palestinians are "fine having their own children starve just as long as they can put them on camera."
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USDA Agribusiness Integration With Israel Subsidizes Settler Expansionism
While Congress advances the US-Israeli military integration plan, Israel and the US attempt to expand their “soft power” through agritechnology development across the region.
Aug 02, 2026
Congress’ proposed National Defense Authorization Act’s Section 219 ‘US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative’ would require the countries to expand intelligence sharing and grow joint weapons research and production, including artificial intelligence surveillance, lethal drones, arms, tanks, and munitions. This comes as Israel’s military decimation of Gaza, apartheid rule over the West Bank, and occupation of southern Lebanon have triggered opposition across the world. Meanwhile, a more subtle, parallel violence grows in the form of US-funded Israeli agricultural occupation of Palestinian lands. This partnership expands Israel’s regional control spatially and financially, with US backing, but with little public knowledge.
Three years into the deliberate starvation of Gaza, the US and Israel have expanded and entrenched their longstanding agricultural cooperation through the US-Israeli Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD-ISUS). Despite global allegations of genocide against Palestine, weaponizing hunger and even of food aid itself, BARD-ISUS just approved $13.2M US for research and development of Israeli agritech on Palestinian lands.
Established in 1978 by the US and Israeli governments, BARD-ISUS has granted a total of nearly $430 million USD (as of 2024) to over 1,700 projects. In the US, the USDA Agricultural Research Service is on 19% of projects and top universities include University of California Davis (11% of projects); Cornell University (7%); and University of Florida (5%). Universities or public agencies in 48 US states (all except Alaska and North Dakota) have hosted hundreds of BARD-ISUS grants over decades. Nearly $84 million USD has gone to research grants partnering with California land grant institutions alone. The US Farm Bill has allocated additional funds to BARD-ISUS to go directly to agritech research, but also to fund Israeli postdoctoral fellows to be placed at US universities and Israeli graduate students to conduct research with US teams.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives version of the Farm Bill (HR 7567—Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026), tucks in a proposed expansion of BARD to signatories of the Abraham Accords—a 2020 mechanism by which the Trump regime pressures regional countries to normalize relations with Israel, in this case with additional promises for hundreds of millions of dollars of agritech transfer. The House passed another bipartisan amendment (H.R.7587 United States-Israel Agriculture Cooperation Improvement and Expansion Act) reiterating the expansion of BARD to Abraham Accord signatories, which also fast tracks commercialization of ag tech research in and with Israeli institutions and companies, while expanding the overall budget of BARD to $12M each year until 2030. The US Senate Committee on Agriculture has approved the extension of BARD-ISUS funding until 2031, with an allocation of $20 million per year ($80 million overall), atop the lucrative annual proceedings BARD receives from its $110 million endowment. Tellingly, as of 2020, BARD funding can now go to Israeli agricultural research projects in the West Bank’s Area C and the occupied Golan Heights.
The funding increase to BARD-ISUS and expansion of eligibility to Abraham Accords nations indicate a coercion of regional powers to normalize relations with Israel at a time of mass popular support for Palestinian sovereignty.
While BARD research appears at first glance to be apolitical “basic science” efforts to “improve crop productivity and resilience,” their website contains no mention of Palestine, or even euphemistic mentions of conflicts over land in the region. The well-funded BARD-ISUS has “generated a multitude of agricultural innovations, practices, and patents, impacting economies, industries, academia, and human health in both countries and beyond, with a high return on investment”—a claim that erases Palestinian land and agriculture, and distracts from the violence of settler occupation and genocide.
This year’s BARD grants were the “the highest funding amount awarded in the last 20 years,” indicating an entrenchment of US and Israeli academia and agrobiotech industries. The domestic relevance for this BARD expansion becomes acute amid the Farm Bill’s deference to the 2025 HR 1’s $187 Billion cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Even atop the ongoing deprivations in Gaza, BARD expansion comes as millions of people in the US in need are being kicked off SNAP, USDA employees are facing mass layoffs, and US farmers are reeling from the impacts that US and Israel’s attacks on Iran have had on fertilizers and fuel prices. Increasing funding for Israeli ag tech redirects resources away from urgent domestic agrifood needs.
The BARD-ISUS expansion also comes at a time when Israel and the US rapidly expand their targeting and destruction of not just Palestinian food systems and agricultural production, but rural and agrarian communities across Southwest Asia, in what Paul Kohlbry has termed “agrarian annihilation.” Israel continues to target Palestinian and Lebanese farmers and food systems, from the deliberate starvation of Gaza documented by international law and global civil society to the destruction of farms and waterways in the Occupied West Bank and now southern Lebanon. Israeli forces, funded by the US, continue to attack Palestinian villages, destroy agricultural lands, capture waterways, and kill farmers and pastoralists throughout the West Bank—with settler attacks hitting an “all-time high” in July 2026 according to the United Nations. The West Bank’s Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills have long endured Israeli settlements and violence—all of which have proliferated in recent years and especially in recent months. In the Jordan Valley, where an estimated 65,000 Palestinians farm some of the most fertile land in the West Bank, B’Tselem has recorded repeated demolitions of Palestinian water cisterns—structures that families build to collect rainwater because they are legally barred from connecting to piped water networks.
The expansion of USDA-funded agritechnologies—and BARD pressure for corporate commercialization—undermines the viability of Palestinian and Lebanese food security and food sovereignty; unchecked, it jeopardizes the long-term stability and viability of rural communities in the region who are increasingly displaced with these US-subsidized high-tech ag research projects. Rather than establish accountability for Israeli forces’ years of deliberate famine in Gaza, such funding subsidizes more land dispossession and obscures the well-documented starvation of Palestine with claims of agribiotechnology research for Global Food Security. BARD-ISUS just launched a new Food Security Technology Accelerator to “support collaborative R&D projects between Israeli and American agritech researchers and corporations, so as to “foster innovation in food security.” How can the countries responsible for massive food insecurity and famine across the region claim to be able to “foster food security”?
While Congress advances the US-Israeli military integration plan, Israel and the US attempt to expand their “soft power” through agritechnology development across the region. The funding increase to BARD-ISUS and expansion of eligibility to Abraham Accords nations indicate a coercion of regional powers to normalize relations with Israel at a time of mass popular support for Palestinian sovereignty. This would deploy more USDA funds to agritech development in countries willing to support an Israeli regime perpetrating genocide in Palestine, invading Lebanon, and initiating a war with Iran. In short, this USDA multimillion dollar agribusiness integration with Israel subsidizes expansionism and impunity—further undermining any authentic peace in the region.
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World Famine Authorities Warn Most Gazans Still Suffering 'Crisis'-Level Hunger
"The October 2025 ceasefire has led to measurable gains in humanitarian access and overall conditions across the Gaza Strip. However, the situation remains deeply fragile."
Jul 23, 2026
Although the Gaza Strip is no longer officially enduring famine, a majority of Palestinians there are suffering "crisis or worse" levels of hunger in an emergency that is expected to worsen in the coming months if Israel's bombardment and siege—which many experts say is a key component of an ongoing genocide—continue.
The Integrated Phase Food Security Classification—which ranks food security levels on a scale of 1 to 5—on Thursday published an analysis showing that from mid-April to the end of June, more than 1.2 million people, or 59% of Gaza’s population, were experiencing IPC Phase 3 (crisis) or worse levels of food insecurity. This included about 212,000 people in IPC Phase 4 (emergency). All five Gaza governorates were classified as being in Phase 3.
"After two years of conflict, the October 2025 ceasefire has led to measurable gains in humanitarian access and overall conditions across the Gaza Strip," IPC said in a statement. "However, the situation remains deeply fragile, with civilians continuing to endure harsh conditions."
#Gaza Strip The Oct 2025 ceasefire has led to measurable gains in humanitarian access & conditions across the Gaza Strip, yet the situation remains deeply fragile. 1.4 million people are facing high levels of acute food insecurity through Dec 2026. More: www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-webs...
[image or embed]
— The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (@theipcinfo.bsky.social) July 23, 2026 at 5:43 AM
This marks an improvement from a year ago, when a "worst-case scenario" was developing into a Phase 5 (catastrophe) famine that was formally declared by the IPC in August 2025. At least hundreds of Palestinians, many of them children, have died from malnutrition since Israel launched its US-backed war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
The IPC declared last December that while Gaza was no longer in a famine, the situation remained critical for the war-ravaged Palestinians there. The new IPC report warns that two-thirds of Gaza's population are projected to face Phase 3 crisis conditions by the end of the year.
The organization also said that 74,200 Palestinian children under the age of 5 in Gaza will likely need treatment for acute malnutrition through next April.
(Image by Integrated Phase Food Security Classification)
Responding to the new IPC data, United Nations Children's Fund Executive Director Catherine Russell said Thursday that “acute malnutrition has fallen, but many children are still going hungry, and some children may never fully recover from prolonged lack of proper nutrition."
"This progress shows that when humanitarian access improves and aid gets through, children can be pulled back from the brink," she added. "But it rests on a supplementary feeding program that doesn’t reach all children, and where funding is running out."
Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians since then, and forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened over 2 million others since then, resulting in worldwide allegations of genocide embodied in an International Court of Justice case filed by South Africa at the end of 2023 and now formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
Leading global famine experts accused Israel of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza. The International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued in late 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister who ordered the "complete siege" of Gaza, accuse the pair of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Like many members of their public, Israeli and US officials under both the Biden and Trump administrations initially denied that Israel was starving Gazans. However, Israeli officials warned in private that Gaza was facing starvation, while US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other administration figures have acknowledged that Palestinians were starving to death in the strip. That did not stop them from continuing to give billions of dollars in US armed aid to Israel.
In response to the new IPC report, acting United Nations World Food Program Executive Director Carl Skau said that “there is progress on food security in Gaza, but it is fragile and can easily be reversed."
"The overall humanitarian situation remains brutal: Families lack water, sanitation, and medicine," Skau added. "We need sustained access, funding, and stability so people of Gaza can begin recovery.”
The heads of various United Nations agencies concurred that a lasting peace—which Israel is not allowing as it continues bombing and besieging Gaza despite a nominal nine-month ceasefire—is imperative for that recovery.
“Food security in Gaza cannot recover unless local food production starts again and farmers, herders, fishers, and other producers can rebuild their livelihoods,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu said on Thursday. “Producers need access to farmland and the sea, and to seeds, tools, livestock supplies, and other agricultural inputs, as well as technical support."
"Restrictions on agricultural imports and humanitarian supplies must be lifted," Qu added. "Without these essentials, food production, and security will remain a pressing situation."
The IPC said that "recent gains remain fragile," and that "advancing peace plans is essential to support recovery, enable the safe return of displaced populations, and help households rebuild their livelihoods."
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1,000 Days of Genocide: The Legend of Gaza That Puts the World to Shame
What we have gone through and are still going through is an entire history that needs to be documented and taught to entire future generations.
Jul 06, 2026
As a journalist from the Gaza Strip, I have lived through the conditions of genocide since the first day, and I am still trying to remain just as strong, not for myself, but for the message I believe I was created and born in the Gaza Strip for, a message that goes beyond individual pain to become testimony to an entire era in which the human being is being erased before the world.
We cannot reduce what we have gone through in the Gaza Strip since October 7, until today to a set of phrases or words or even a journalistic article. What we have gone through and are still going through is an entire history that needs to be documented and taught to entire future generations. Our resilience in Gaza is no longer just passing news; it has become a human condition mentioned in international forums, not as an exception, but as a harsh test of the very meaning of humanity itself.
No family in Gaza has gone through this without experiencing displacement, hunger, fear, pain, and loss. All homes in Gaza have been touched by grief, terror, and fear without exception, even those homes that once believed they would be safe. There is no family that has not lived in tents, and has not been burned by the fire of separation, the heat of summer, the cold of winter, and the weight of a long waiting that seems endless.
In Gaza, displacement is no longer an emergency event; it has become an entire life lived on the edge. Moving from one place to another is no longer about seeking safety alone, but about a fragile chance to survive. And every time we thought we had reached a "safer place," fear followed us like an ever-present shadow.
Israel in this war has crossed all red lines, not only in the scale of destruction, but in the very nature of targeting itself, and in the insistence on continuing this scene despite its full exposure before the world.
What Israel has done to us, before the eyes and ears of the world and the international community, has made us in Gaza reorder global concepts from the beginning, word by word and meaning by meaning. Silence and complicity have made the question even more painful and profound: What does justice mean? What do international laws mean? And for whom are they written if they do not protect those being crushed before their eyes?
In Gaza, these are no longer philosophical questions; they have become daily questions asked under bombardment, among the rubble, in bread and water lines, and inside tents that protect nothing. We have begun searching for the meaning of the world itself, not merely an explanation of what is happening in it.
Journalists, doctors, ambulance workers, children, civil defense personnel, the elderly, women, and people with Down syndrome… no one has been spared from this occupation. Everyone has been inside the circle of danger, as if life in Gaza has turned into an open target without exception.
In any place in the world, is it permitted to enter hospitals, vandalize them, destroy them, and burn them in front of cameras, and then ask the world to remain silent? In any place are doctors and hospital directors arrested and tried simply for trying to fulfill their humanitarian duty? And in what world are journalists killed, and even targeted in their homes with their families, because they carried a camera instead of a weapon?
Israel in this war has crossed all red lines, not only in the scale of destruction, but in the very nature of targeting itself, and in the insistence on continuing this scene despite its full exposure before the world. And it is still continuing, as if time means nothing, as if pain can be consumed without end.
In the whole world, we had never heard of a child dying of hunger. But Israel did it in Gaza. Hunger here was not a passing feeling, but a collective state seen in faces before words, in eyes before bodies. We walked through the streets barely able to hold ourselves together from the severity of hunger, and children cried day and night from a famine imposed on us, with no choice but patience or collapse.
We complied with their orders and went to the areas they called "humanitarian," and yet we were killed there, and the tents were burned with those inside them. As if the idea of a "refuge" itself was part of the illusion, as if safety was merely a word said in statements, not in reality.
Do you remember the little girl Warda Jalal Al-Sheikh, who appeared amid flames, fire, and bodies after her tent was burned by Israeli shelling, and all her family members were killed, while she tried to survive in an unbearable scene? An image that summarizes what it means for a human being to be born in the heart of fire without choosing it.
Do you remember our colleague journalist Ayman Al-Jadi, who was waiting for his wife in the delivery room to give birth to their child, when Israel killed him while he was waiting, in a moment that was supposed to be the beginning of life, not its end? How can the world comprehend that death has reached even these smallest details?
All of this is not exceptions, but repeated scenes in a time in which exception itself has become survival.
This legendary resilience after 1,000 days of genocide cannot be read as a news item, nor summarized in a report. It must be taught in history books, not only as a sad story, but as an open indictment of the entire world, and as testimony to a people who have not stopped living despite all attempts to erase them.
And in the end, we are still here… trying to write, to bear witness, and to say that what has not yet been told is far more than what has been said.
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Trillionaire Elon Musk's Destruction of USAID Takes Food Aid From Millions Facing Deadly Hunger
"Now in its third consecutive year of famine, Sudan received nothing."
Jun 14, 2026
Elon Musk's vault to trillionaire status following the public debut of his rocket company SpaceX came on the heels of an analysis showing the devastating impact of his destruction of the US Agency for International Development on millions of people in countries facing or on the brink of famine.
The analysis, authored by Council on Foreign Relations expert and longtime aid worker Sam Vigersky, noted that Musk's targeting of USAID during his tenure as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resulted in the transfer of the Food for Peace program to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), an agency "without international humanitarian or disaster-response expertise."
Vigersky found that the USDA this year chose just seven countries to receive American grain under the Food for Peace program: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, El Salvador, and Rwanda. The latter two countries, Vigersky noted, "do not meet an emergency threshold" for assistance.
"Meanwhile, the country facing the largest hunger crisis in the world—Sudan—did not make the list. Now in its third consecutive year of famine, Sudan received nothing. In fact, more than 40% of Sudan’s community kitchens, a lifeline for the displaced, have closed in the past six months as funding dried up, according to Islamic Relief," Vigersky reported. "Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Yemen were also passed over. Millions of people in those countries live one step from famine, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the UN-backed monitoring system that uses a standardized five-point scale (five being famine) to measure the severity of food insecurity."
Experts assessing the global impact of USAID's decimation at the hands of billionaire US President Donald Trump and the world's first trillionaire, who bragged publicly about "feeding USAID into the wood chipper," estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have already died as a result of the large-scale loss of humanitarian assistance—and millions more will die in the coming years if swift action is not taken to restore aid.
"The impacts of the cuts were immediate and tragic," Nicholas Enrich, a former USAID employee who became a whistleblower, wrote in The Boston Globe on Friday. "Health clinics and emergency ambulance services shuttered overnight. Clinical trials were deserted. Thousands of healthcare workers lost their jobs. Lifesaving food and medicine was left to expire in warehouses. According to conservative estimates, in the year since USAID was dismantled, 750,000 people have died as a result of the cuts. For the first time in a generation, more children died in one year — 2025—than in the previous year."
Oxfam has estimated that a 10% tax on Musk's $1 trillion fortune would generate enough revenue to end extreme poverty worldwide for a year.
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'Children Are Dying': Trump-Musk Gutting of USAID Helps Push Somalia to Brink of Famine
"Without urgent action now, Somalia risks becoming one of the clearest examples of what happens when early warnings are ignored and humanitarian systems are allowed to erode."
May 15, 2026
A report released Thursday showing that Somalia is rapidly descending into famine underscored the harms done by the illegal dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, a department that President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk targeted as part of a broader assault on the federal government.
New data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) showed that more than six million people—around a third of Somalia's population—are facing acute hunger as drought and conflict combine with humanitarian aid cuts to create a devastating humanitarian emergency. Around 1.9 million children in Somalia "are now expected to require treatment for acute malnutrition in 2026," according to IPC, and regions of the country are at severe risk of famine.
"Humanitarian assistance remains a lifeline but is far from sufficient, reaching only 12% of people in Phase 3 or above," said IPC, a partnership of aid organizations and United Nations agencies. "A rapid and sustained scale‑up of multisectoral assistance—particularly in hotspot areas such as Burhakaba—is urgently needed to prevent further deterioration and loss of life."
Reuters noted that "global cuts to foreign aid, including by the United States, have substantially reduced support to Somalia." The outlet added that "impacts of the US-Israeli war on Iran are complicating efforts to respond to food shortages caused by multiple failed rain seasons and ongoing insecurity."
Mohamed Mohamud Hassan, Save the Children's Somalia director, said in a statement Thursday that the country is "in the grip of a deepening humanitarian catastrophe" and the "window to prevent famine... is closing fast."
"Children are dying from preventable causes—malnutrition, disease, displacement—while funding falls far short of what is urgently needed," said Hassan. "We call on the international community to act now, scale up lifesaving assistance, and ensure that no child dies because the world looked away."
"Somalia is once again standing at the edge of catastrophe. This is a crisis of access, affordability, and global political failure."
The US has historically been the largest contributor of humanitarian aid to Somalia, but the Trump administration's shuttering of USAID cut off much of the American food and medical aid that was flowing to the East African nation. The Trump administration's dismantling of USAID has also severely harmed Somalia's economy.
"Somalia is once again standing at the edge of catastrophe," Richard Crothers, Somalia country director at the International Rescue Committee, said Friday. "This is a crisis of access, affordability, and global political failure. Without urgent action now, Somalia risks becoming one of the clearest examples of what happens when early warnings are ignored and humanitarian systems are allowed to erode."
Experts say the closure of USAID last year is already responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, and researchers have warned that millions more could die by 2030 if the aid is not restored.
In addition to sounding the alarm about Somalia, IPC released reports this week detailing increasingly dire hunger in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan—countries that were also devastated by the gutting of USAID.
"USAID was the leading donor in the country and most aid agencies relied on its funding to help people survive and rebuild their lives," said Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam International's DRC country director. "Without it, agencies have been forced to make terrible triage decisions including who gets to live and who might needlessly die."
"The world cannot continue to look the other way—the situation is dire," Mangundu added.
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How the US Weaponizes Starvation and Aid in Gaza and Cuba
In both Cuba and Palestine, the United States is deploying its barbaric methods of producing mass suffering in order to bring about political and economic submission.
Feb 10, 2026
Last week, the US government announced it would be sending $6 million in aid to Cuba, on top of the $3 million it sent in January after Hurricane Melissa. This aid package might appear contrary to the significant escalation of the 66-year-long US criminal blockade, which has expanded to an all-out fuel blockade since December, with attacks on Venezuela, but it is in fact a core tenet of it.
This maneuver seeks to exploit the US-manufactured energy and fuel crisis to bolster opposition groups, substantiate propaganda against the Cuban government and revolution, and force the island into total dependency and submission to the United States. This frankly genocidal strategy closely mirrors that of the US and Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” and the weaponization of starvation and aid for colonial and imperialist ends. In both Cuba and Gaza, this is a deliberate strategy by the US to make people suffer from its actions, then place blame on the governing authority to justify regime change.
In November of last year, the US first announced an aid package to Cuba in response to Hurricane Melissa. While the hurricane hit the east of the island with force, Cuba did not suffer mass casualties and crisis because of the people-first policies of the Cuban government, which continues to distribute resources and prevent casualties from natural disasters, despite US suffocation.
Hurricane Melissa killed over 54 people in Jamaica, at least 43 people in Haiti, four in the Dominican Republic, yet only one person in Cuba. The success of the Cuban government’s response is not only totally ignored by the US organizations, but also used to justify operations and propaganda. For instance, the Archdiocese of Miami said about its aid distribution: “Dozens were killed, mostly in Jamaica and Haiti, but Cuba’s weakening economic situation prompted action from a small group of donors.” Surely, when a country’s response to a natural disaster is to successfully evacuate 735,000 people, prevent a major death toll, and prioritize people’s survival, it is worthy of praise. Of course, this would be in total opposition to the US propaganda line that Cuba is a “failed state.”
In Cuba and Palestine, the US is manufacturing a crisis in order to push blame onto the governments that the imperialist power seeks to topple.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the US in 2005, Cuba offered a medical brigade of 1,586 doctors and 37 tons of medical supplies. The US refused outright. The hurricane and lack of response led to the deaths of over 1,800 people, many due to a lack of medical assistance and supplies, some of which Cuba could have provided, and 1.5 million people were displaced—many have never returned. The US government was happy to let people die rather than to accept the unconditional help of a Cuban medical brigade, which underscores its willingness to sacrifice its own population to pursue its aggression against Cuba. The stark difference between the US and Cuba in responding to natural disasters is at its core the polarity between a war economy based on extraction and profit, and a peace economy based on solidarity and common well-being.
Siege on Cuba, Siege on Gaza
The same genocidal motivations for the US-Israeli siege on Gaza have been imposed to isolate and suffocate Cuba. The US has banned the entry of goods into Cuba, imposed a total blockade on oil, and increased sanctions, which cause billions of dollars in losses each year, which is impoverishing the country. While it suffocates the infrastructure of even and efficient food distribution in Cuba, the US aid is being given only to the Catholic Church and US-backed NGOs, specifically to bypass distribution through the state. This is eerily consistent with the US and Israel’s horrific and deadly “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).” In Gaza, they laid a total barbaric siege on Gaza, refused the entry of any goods and aid, and banned international aid groups in order to justify US mercenaries providing meager amounts of aid between firing bullets. The US and Israel massacred at least 2,603 people and wounded 19,034 more at GHF distribution points. There was absolutely no accountability for or action against these barbaric killing fields.
In both Palestine and Cuba, the US is overtly and brazenly violating the humanitarian principle of working with governments in affected countries. It is using the same propaganda lines to do so. For Cuba, the US says it is “bypassing regime interference, and ensuring transparency and accountability” and that the aid is “part of a broader effort to stand with the Cuban people as they seek a better future.” For Gaza, the US says it is “the only viable way to get aid into Gaza without empowering Hamas” and “is a results-focused alternative to a broken aid system.”
In both places, the US openly claims it is undermining governments and organizations that it claims “steal” the aid. This accusation is a confession. Israeli occupation forces (IOF) set on fire, burnt, and buried more than 1,000 trucks of aid in Gaza as Israel manufactured a famine that killed at least 10,000 people, and for which the United Nations described as the “failure of humanity itself.” An IOF reservist said he “accompanied aid convoys supplying a militia in Rafah” and Israeli security added “closed boxes with unknown contents” to justify lies that Hamas was weaponizing aid. Israel also funded and coordinated militia groups in Gaza to loot aid, and protected Israeli settlers looting and destroying aid from trucks. Not to mention the many videos of IOF soldiers gleefully and jeeringly consuming this food aid. All of these actions, with the brazen refusal to allow passage for thousands of aid trucks in Gaza, provided the conditions to justify the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” and its killing fields.
Similarly, it is the United States that is stopping goods from entering Cuba. Since 1962, the US has imposed a blockade that bans all trade and economic activity with Cuba. This is banned outright in the US with severe consequences, and spans the entire world, as the US imposes secondary sanctions, tariffs, and other punitive measures against any country, organization, company, or individual that does not comply with its blockade. In recent weeks and months, this has been tightened further. No oil has entered Cuba since December, and the government has rolled out a plan to ration limited energy for only the most urgent uses, such as hospitals, schools, and food. Cuba can no longer fuel airplanes, which may halt all air travel. The US, on one hand, is threatening tariffs and sanctions on any country that tries to trade oil and goods with Cuba, and on the other, it is pushing propaganda that the country is not able to feed and provide energy for its people. In Cuba and Palestine, the US is manufacturing a crisis in order to push blame onto the governments that the imperialist power seeks to topple.
Made in Israel and Miami
The aid is also political at its source. All supplies through the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” were from Israeli suppliers, directly creating profit for Israeli venture capitalists, tech investors, and other occupation personnel like Michael Eisenberg, Liran Tancman, and Yotam HaCohen. It also funneled public funds into private and shady mercenary companies, UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions. This strategy utilizes aid as a weapon of colonial regime-change efforts, with the US aiming to install its proxies firmly in power in Cuba and Palestine, in opposition to the interests and will of the people.
For those of us invested in a better world based on humanity, it is imperative we stand steadfast with Palestinians and Cubans as they struggle against the most barbarous face of the US empire.
The US aid supplies to Cuba originate in Miami, Florida, long known as the site of the most vocal and brazen pro-US, fascist sentiments in the Cuban diaspora. The aid is being distributed by the Catholic Church and Caritas, a US-funded NGO set up in 1991 during the ‘Special Period’ in Cuba, which has funded regime-change operations on the island. Catholic Relief Services, one of the three organizations in Caritas North America, receives over half of its funding ($1.5 billion) directly from the US government. The other organization involved is the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, which was the architect of the covert CIA “Operation Pedro Pan,” where over 14,000 Cuban children were taken from their homes to the US in the years after the revolution. Also included on the board of the charity is Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, John Couriel. The headline $9 million figure of aid to Cuba is being absorbed by organizations like this. In fact, in 2024, over 72% of all US aid to Cuba went to US organizations. This must pose the urgent question of how much of this aid is a way to direct resources to opposition groups in Cuba under the guise of sending food.
Gathering Intelligence
The strategy of deploying aid also pertains to a significant element of covert surveillance and intelligence. At the end of January last year, the US deployed around 100 mercenaries, mostly former US Special Forces soldiers, to patrol Gaza and set up the deadly “aid hubs.” US soldiers shot and killed starving Palestinians seeking aid while cheering and ordering Domino’s Pizza. These sites were death traps, used to lure Palestinians into an area where they were surveiled and shot at. People risked their lives to receive a meager amount of aid that was often rotten. It has been revealed that a significant element of this operation was surveillance. A UG Solutions contractor revealed that American and Israeli soldier-spies are using facial recognition software “on top of real-time footage of distribution sites” from CCTV and aerial surveillance footage. This was beyond merely a method of massacre, but of surveillance through the proxy of “aid.” The US and Israel confirmed there was surveillance after specifically recruiting intelligence operatives.
Similarly, the State Department announced that US government officials have been “making sure that the regime does not take the assistance, divert it, try to politicize it.” They went on to explain that “we have been watching” and “speaking with everyday Cubans…understanding the challenges they have been facing, both in the wake of the hurricane and due to the broader humanitarian crisis in Cuba.” This is worrying, as it is clear the US is using this as an opportunity, in tandem with NGO networks, to collect intelligence and push pro-US propaganda and lies across the country under the guise of “aid.”
In both Cuba and Palestine, the United States is deploying its barbaric methods of producing mass suffering in order to bring about political and economic submission. The tactics being used in distributing aid in Cuba now are a softer model of the killing fields in Gaza that seek to force the entire population into submission and occupy the entirety of Palestine.
Beyond this playbook, it is important to recognize the historic connections between Palestine and Cuba, particularly as they resist the violence of the US empire that seeks to starve them into submission. Cuba was one of 13 countries to vote against the UN partition of Palestine in 1947; in the months after the triumph of the revolution, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro traveled to Gaza; they were one of the first to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964; they severed all ties with Israel in 1973; and labelled Israel’s action a genocide in 1979. Since 1982, Cuba has been providing education for Palestinian students in Cuba; it helped to get Palestine observer status at the United Nations in 2012; it supported South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice in 2024; and has been one of Palestine’s staunchest supporters diplomatically and materially.
This historic friendship and solidarity are what the United States fears. This is why it is hellbent on destroying the Cuban Revolution and its continued ability to provide for its people, while refusing to let US companies pillage and extract from the island and its inhabitants. For those of us invested in a better world based on humanity, it is imperative we stand steadfast with Palestinians and Cubans as they struggle against the most barbarous face of the US empire. The situation is urgent and requires action. Like Fidel Castro said to the UN in 1979: “If we do not resolve today’s injustices and inequalities peacefully and wisely, the future will be apocalyptic.”
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The World Must Act Now to Abort the Next Phase of Extermination in Gaza
Another Israeli genocide is not a distant threat; it is an encroaching reality that will be finalized unless it is stopped.
Dec 31, 2025
Suppose we accept the fiction that none of us expected Israel to launch a full-scale genocide in Gaza—a premeditated campaign to erase the Strip and exterminate a significant portion of its inhabitants. Let us pretend that nearly 80 years of relentless massacres were not a prelude to this moment, and that Israel had never before sought the physical destruction of the Palestinian people as outlined by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
If we go so far as to accept the sterile, ahistoric claim that the Nakba of 1948 was "merely" ethnic cleansing rather than genocide—ignoring the mass graves and the forced erasure of a civilization—we are still left with a terrifying reality. Having witnessed the unmasked extermination that began on October 7, 2023, who can dare to argue that its perpetrators lack the intent to repeat it?
The question itself is an act of charity, as it assumes the genocide has actually stopped. In reality, the carnage has merely shifted tactics. Since the implementation of the fragile ceasefire on October 10, Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. Others have perished in the frozen mud of their tents. They include infants like 8-month-old Fahar Abu Jazar, who, like others, froze to death. These are not mere tragedies; they are the inevitable results of a calculated Israeli policy of destruction targeting the most vulnerable.
During this two-year campaign of extermination, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were murdered, accounting for a staggering 30% of the total victims. This blood-soaked tally ignores the thousands of souls entrapped beneath the concrete wasteland of Gaza, and those currently being consumed by the silent killers of famine and engineered epidemics.
In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed, and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world's "largest open-air prison."
The horrifying statistics aside, we bear witness to the final agonies of a people. We have watched their extermination in real time, broadcast to every handheld screen on Earth. No one can claim ignorance; no one can claim innocence. Even now, we watch as 1.3 million Palestinians endure a precarious existence in tents ravaged by winter floods. We share the screams of mothers, the hollowed-out faces of broken fathers, and the haunted stares of children, and yet, the world’s political and moral institutions remain paralyzed.
If Israel resumes the full, unrestrained intensity of this genocide, will we stop it? I fear the answer is no, because the world refuses to dismantle the circumstances that permitted this slaughter in the first place. Israeli officials never bothered to hide their intent. The systematic dehumanization of Palestinians was a primary export of Israeli media, even as Western corporate outlets worked tirelessly to sanitize this criminal discourse.
The record of intent is undeniable. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly championed the "encouragement of migration" and demanded that "not an ounce of humanitarian aid" reach Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the starvation of 2 million people could be "just and moral" in the pursuit of military aims. From the halls of the Knesset to the pop charts, the refrain was the same: "Erase Gaza," "Leave no one there." When military leaders refer to an entire population as "human animals," they are not using metaphors; they are issuing a license for extermination.
This was preceded by the hermetic siege—a decades-long experiment in human misery that began in 2006. Despite every Palestinian plea for the world to break this death grip, the blockade was allowed to persist. This was followed by successive wars targeting a besieged, impoverished population under the banner of "security," always shielded by the Western mantra of Israel’s "right to defend itself."
In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed, and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world's "largest open-air prison." Whether they utilized armed resistance, threw rocks at tanks, or marched unarmed toward snipers, they were branded "terrorists" and "militants" whose very existence was framed as a threat to their occupier.
Years before the first bomb of this genocide fell, the United Nations declared Gaza "uninhabitable." Its water was a toxin, its land a graveyard, and its people were dying of curable diseases. Yet, aside from the typical ritual of humanitarian reports, the international community did nothing to offer a political horizon, a just peace.
This criminal neglect provided the vacuum for the events of October 7, allowing Israel to weaponize its victimhood to execute a genocide of sadistic proportions. Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant explicitly stripped Palestinians of their humanity, launching a collective slaughter directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The stage is being set for the next phase of extermination. The siege is now absolute, the violence more concentrated, and the dehumanization of Palestinians more widespread than ever. As the international media drifts toward other distractions, Israel’s image is being rehabilitated as if the genocide never happened.
Tragically, the conditions that fueled the first wave of genocide are being meticulously reconstructed. Indeed, another Israeli genocide is not a distant threat; it is an encroaching reality that will be finalized unless it is stopped.
The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was a legal vow to "liberate mankind from such an odious scourge." If those words possess a shred of integrity, the world must act now to abort the next phase of extermination. This requires absolute accountability and a political process that finally severs the grip of Israeli colonialism and violence. The clock is ticking, and our collective voice—or our silence—will make the difference.
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Gaza No Longer Officially Facing Famine—But 1.6 Million Palestinians Still in 'Man-Made Hunger Crisis'
"To end this catastrophe, supplies must be let in at scale and humanitarians allowed to do their job," said the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Dec 19, 2025
While the global initiative that tracks hunger crises concluded Friday that the Gaza Strip is no longer facing "famine," the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report echoed warnings from United Nations leaders and humanitarian groups that "the situation remains critical" for Palestinians who have endured over two years of an Israeli assault and blockade.
Famine was declared in August, sparking a worldwide outrage over what one research group called "genocidal starvation." The new IPC report—released after an October ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel—says that "following a significant reduction in conflict, a proposed peace plan, and improved access for both humanitarian and commercial food deliveries, food security conditions have improved in the Gaza Strip."
However, the report also notes that between mid-October and the end of November, "around 1.6 million people (77% of the population analyzed) faced high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above)," including "more than half a million people in emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 100,000 people in catastrophe (IPC Phase 5)."
Those conditions—over three-quarters of Gaza's population at risk of famine—are expected to continue through April. In other words, as Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), put it, "Gaza remains in a man-made hunger crisis."
The latest IPC report "underscores how fragile the gains have been since the ceasefire began in October," he said on social media. "To end this catastrophe, supplies must be let in at scale and humanitarians allowed to do their job. UNRWA has food parcels for 1.1 million people and flour for the entire population waiting to enter the Gaza Strip."
As the Associated Press reported Friday, while Israeli government agencies rejected the IPC findings, humanitarian leaders and Palestinians have highlighted all that the people of Gaza continue to endure because of Israel's war on the strip:
"This is not a debate about truck numbers or calories on paper. It's about whether people can actually access food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare safely and consistently. Right now, they cannot," said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
People must be able to rebuild their homes, grow food, and recover, and the conditions for that are still being denied, she said.
Even with more products in the markets, Palestinians say they can't afford it. "There is food and meat, but no one has money," said Hany al-Shamali, who was displaced from Gaza City. "How can we live?"
Earlier this week, the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which brings together heads of UN entities and over 200 nongovernmental organizations, urged the international community to "take immediate and concrete actions to press the Israeli authorities to lift all impediments," including a new registration process for NGOs, that continue to undermine lifesaving operations, "or risk the collapse of the humanitarian response, particularly in the Gaza Strip."
The team emphasized that "humanitarian access is not optional, conditional, or political. It is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law, particularly in Gaza, where Israel has failed to ensure that the population is adequately supplied. Israeli authorities must allow and facilitate rapid, unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. They must immediately reverse policies that obstruct humanitarian operations and ensure that humanitarian organizations are able to operate without compromising humanitarian principles. Lifesaving assistance must be allowed to reach Palestinians without further delay."
Israel has killed at least 70,669 Palestinians in the strip and wounded 171,165 others since launching its retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday. Experts have warned that the true death toll is likely far higher.
Winter storms are exacerbating already dire conditions in Gaza, including by damaging and destroying shelters of displaced people. Oxfam's humanitarian director, Marta Valdes García, said Friday that "with 1.6 million people found to be facing acute food insecurity... we are incredibly concerned that winter is already bringing flooding and more misery to thousands of hungry people with little or no money, who are now exposed in terrible living conditions."
Multiple infants have died of hypothermia in recent days, including a 14-day-old named Mohammed, whose family is living in a tent after being displaced from their home in the east of Khan Younis. His mother, Eman Abu al-Khair, told Al Jazeera that "I can still hear his tiny cries in my ears... I sleep and drift off, unable to believe that his crying and waking me at night will never happen again."
"His body was cold as ice. His hands and feet were frozen, his face stiff and yellowish, and he was barely breathing... I woke my husband immediately so we could take him to the hospital, but he couldn't find any means of transportation to get us there," the 34-year-old recalled. "As soon as daylight broke, we rushed with an animal-drawn cart towards the hospital... But unfortunately, we arrived too late. His condition was already critical."
Another 29-day-old baby, Saeed Eseid Abdeen, was declared dead at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, according to Drop Site News and Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
A fourth child has frozen to death in Gaza in just 10 days—two of them babies—as Israel continues blocking tents and winter shelter aid, despite UN supplies pre-positioned at the border that could immediately shelter more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians.
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) December 18, 2025 at 7:41 PM
"Children are losing their lives because they lack the most basic items for survival," Bilal Abu Saada, nursing team supervisor at Nasser Hospital, said in a statement from MSF. "Babies are arriving to the hospital cold, with near-death vital signs: Even our best efforts are not enough. They say the war has ended, but people are still having to fight for their lives."
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