“My family’s situation is very difficult, my sister. I couldn’t afford food. It’s all expensive here.” These words sent me Ramez, a 17-year-old boy who lived in Gaza on March 15th. “I have nothing to eat tomorrow. I don’t know what to do. Hunger is back.”
Three days later, just before Suhoor, the last meal before the daily fast start during the Holy Month of Ramadan, Israel released a huge campaign of bombing, killing more than 430 Palestinians, including more than 180 children.
“Only God knows what we are going through,” Ramez told me the next day. “We went without anything with us, and now we are on the street. The situation is extremely bad. It all happened suddenly, and we didn’t expect it. The massacre happened in front of us and they asked us to evacuate ourselves under shelling.”
Last year, Ramez reached out to me on Instagram, a platform that became a rescue line for countless people in Gaza who called the world to help. I do not know Ramez’s family personally, nor have I have a historic relationship with Gaza. Still, from a million Instagram accounts, his message found the way to mine.
In the coming months, his messages became a window into the daily suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The consent of the fire was offered by a temporary break from the bombing and allowed Ramez to return to his home. Then, on the second day of Ramadan, Israel interrupted all the help, restarting the starvation. 18. Holy Day Days renewed his mass late.
While I break my quickly, here in Berlin, I mean all the Palestinian families who have almost nothing at their iftar tables, which instead of calling for prayer they hear Israeli bombing.
This can’t be a real life, right? People, only a few thousand kilometers, literally starve and die under bombs. And here I am in the heart of the Western world, which confesses the values of democracy and freedom, and yet, directly contributes to the mass murder of the Gaza people.
The taxes I pay as a German citizen go directly to the Government, which fully supports Israel in its genocidal war to Palestinians. The thought of it makes me horrible.
Hunger and genocide in gauze
Ramez wrote sporadically. I hesitated to ask him for more details, unable to endure the suffering they encounter every day.
I know there were days when he ate a few balls for Falafel and asks for bread.
His dreams have finished high school and study accounting. Instead, day by day, he is forced to reach for Instagram users, asking them to donate and share their relationship to raise funds.
His father injured himself before the war and now lives in constant pain, urgently needed to replace his shoulders. Rameza left responsible for the family.
Ramez has two brothers, aged 15 and 14, and three sisters, 20, 12 and 8, his father worked as water and an electric mechanic, while his mother is a housewife.
“Destruction and hunger remains in Gaza,” Ramez announced a few weeks after a ceasefire was announced. The situation of his family was still difficult. Although they received some donations from humanitarian organizations, it was not enough to meet their needs.
They returned to their house in southern Gazi, in an area where Israeli bombing equally decimated civilian infrastructure and buildings.
Ramez had to travel long distance to reach a humanitarian distribution center – often the transport costs were higher than the value of the help he received.
Although commercial goods were available on the market, his family could not always afford them. They do not have a source of income except the occasional donation they would receive from foreigners on Instagram.
After Israel blocked all the help in Gaza, food prices jumped abruptly. Humanitarian aid decreased, charity organization and kitchen with soup were closed due to lack of stock. Ramez’s family did not get any help in the weeks.
Now only canned food and some vegetables on the market, he told me. “I can’t give anything. For food I need about $ 100 because of high prices.”
On March 15, for almost two weeks in the full blockade of Israel on Gaza, UNICEF reported that the rates of children under 2 years of age in the northern gauze increased from 15.6 percent to 31 percent; 23 children died of malnutrition and dehydration in a few weeks.
The rest of the tape was also recorded by a sudden increase, with Catherine Russell, the UNICEF Executive Director, noting that “the speed at which this catastrophic crisis of the child’s failure to go in Gaza was shocking.”
Experience of malnutrition during childhood may have lifelong consequences, including more likely to develop non -comprehensive diseases and reduced functionality of the immune system. Furthermore, delays caused by malnourished may lead to irreversible deficits in cognitive and motor skills, elevated risk of behavior challenges and significantly reduced education results.
In other words, Israel starved in Gaza is currently destroying the next generation.
War criminals
In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an order for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoava Gallant. She accused the two of them – among other crimes – intentionally starving civilians in Gaza.
Western countries claiming to support international law have easily stated that they will be violated and hosting Netanyahu. Among them are Hungary, Italy, Poland and Germany.
Friedrich Merz, who should become the next German chancellor, recently stated: “Under my leadership, the Israeli Prime Minister will be able to travel to Germany without any problems. I will find ways to happen.”
These declarations signaled that the West had no intention of holding Israeli leaders to count for their crimes. Not surprisingly, after failing to face the consequences for his ICC arrest warrant, Netanyahu decided not only to renew, but to increase the starvation of genocide and non -select bombing in Gaza.
After Israel completely blocked the help of Gazi, Germany, France and the UK, they issued a joint statement stating “stopping the goods and stocks entering Gaza … They would risk a violation of the International Humanitarian Law.”
This response, which refuses to call a crime – was extremely shameful. On March 17, when the British Foreign Minister David Lammy collected the courage to highlight obviously – that Israel truly violated the international law with its blockage to help Gazi – it was deceased by its own government.
If it deliberately starving and bombarding the civilian population does not violate international law, then what is it? The attempt to the Western government to diminish and conceal Israeli crimes before the public is clear evidence of their complicity in the same crimes.
Western governments, according to international law, are obliged to take measures to stop violation of serious. They should perform diplomatic pressure on Israel, impose an embargo of weapons, limiting trade and cooperation. But they are not.
Instead of pointing to the experimentation and the failure of the Western governments to act and stop genocide, the Western mainstream media also ignored Palestinian suffering or worse – the misconception of it. Gaza starvation did not even make titles after Israel blocked all help. The shocking massacre of March 18 did this, but it was all neatly folded into the justification of Israel.
Western media regularly ignore or diminish the declarations of genocidal Israeli officials. Recently, on March 19, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz addressed the Palestinian people of Gaza, threatening to face “complete destruction and destruction” if they do not expel Hamas and return the Israeli prisoners. This genocide threat was reported as a “warning” and did not evoke any reaction of the Western allies of Israel, except for the weak condemnation of Lammy.
Watching this show of empty conversations, compassion, betrayal and gas light has been exhausted for 17 months. It is a destructive narcissistic show of manipulation and display of strength intended to worry those of us who resist the normalization of genocide – to break us.
But I reached the point where I refused to feel powerless and exhausted more in front of this irresistible injustice.
Ramadan is a time when the power of faith should be restored. It is a time of sacrifice, but also a time of joy, community and personal growth. I will not allow Israel and his allies to sabotage my belief in justice. People in Gazi taught us how to stick to faith and exist unwavering – no matter what.
I will still stick to the belief that our voices and actions, no matter how small, can contribute to change. We must not stop raising consciousness and putting pressure on our governments to take measures. Our strength lies in standing together and reminding each other to continue to believe, to continue to fight for justice.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.
