Image by Levi Meir Clancy.
The children of Gaza are not hungry—they are starving. They are dying slowly and visibly, not because of a natural disaster, but because Israel has deliberately blocked food and medicine from reaching them. As 2.3 million people face the horror of the Israeli engineered famine, the world watches, shakes its head—and does nothing. This is a humanitarian catastrophe being broadcast live to a complicit world.
The United Nations World Food Program has warned it has run out of food in Gaza. Hospitals have ceased to function. Parents are “boiling weeds in seawater,” feeding their children animal fodder, and grinding date pits in desperate attempts to stave off hunger. And while international institutions issue statements, the U.S. disinformation media machine and the Trump administration work to normalize Israeli crimes. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have abandoned euphemism, openly declaring that starvation is a tool of collective punishment aimed at realizing “Trump’s vision” for Gaza.
This starvation is no accident of war; it is a deliberate, methodically employed and clearly defined under international law as a war crime. Not since Nazi Germany, have we witnessed such a sanctioned and systematic denial of survival necessities to an entire civilian population. The denial of food, water, and medicine is being carried out with precision, and without consequence.
Almost 40 countries presented arguments last week before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocidal conduct. The legal framing is important. But what followed is equally telling: not a single one of those countries is willing to take meaningful action to physically challenge the siege. The condemnation is loud—and empty.
The one exception is Yemen, a nation under attack for more than 10 years. While not present at the ICJ hearings, Yemen has used what limited means it has—symbolically and materially—to pressure Israel and teach the world the meaning of moral clarity. Compare that to the inaction of regional powers with far more capacity and leverage.
Egypt, which controls the Rafah crossing, could have done more. Instead, it has largely acted as an enforcer of Israel’s siege on Gaza. While publicly condemning the Israeli genocide, some countries in the region has facilitated the delivery of Israel’s genocidal tools—such as Egypt allowing the German-flagged MV Kathrin, loaded with RDX explosives destined for Israeli military manufacturers to dock in Alexandria, Egypt, or Turkey opening the port of Mersin to the Nexoe Maersk carrying F-35 components bound for Israel. Rather than enabling genocide, these countries should launch a humanitarian flotilla to break the siege and deliver food and medical aid to Gaza’s children.
As the Netanyahu government prepares to escalate its brutal military war crimes in Gaza, the time for mere statements of concern has long passed. Those who profess to oppose Israel’s genocidal campaign must now transform their rhetoric into meaningful action—through political pressure, grassroots mobilization, and unequivocal demands for accountability.
At the same time, it would be a profound moral failure for Saudi Arabia to extend a welcome to Donald Trump, as expected later this month—the very man who empowered Netanyahu to act with impunity in Gaza. Trump’s administration not only provided Israel with unwavering political cover but also supplied the very weapons used to massacre civilians, enforce a suffocating blockade on helpless children.
But perhaps the most cynical display of hypocrisy comes from the meek Jordanian King, Abdullah II. Last year, he eagerly seized the opportunity for a photo op, donning full military regalia and participating in an airlift dropping aid over Gaza. Yet the imagery would have been far more honest had it shown him overseeing shipments of Jordanian tomatoes feeding Israeli markets, while Gaza’s children resorting to eating weed. Empty gestures of solidarity mean little to the starving, especially when Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates continue to profit from trading with Israel at the expense of Palestinian lives.
So let us ask: Why can’t Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and the almost 40 countries that denounced Israel’s actions at the ICJ organize a coalition to break the siege? Why don’t they, at a minimum, cut their economic relations with Israel? Why not launch a coordinated humanitarian airlift? Why not send ships, medical teams, legal observers? Why not act, if you are truly sincere?
It is not only the leaders who are failing the Children of Gaza. The silence of the Arab and Muslim street is equally ominous. Unlike protests in Western cities, demonstrations in Arab and Muslim communities have shown an inexplicable fatigue. This passivity enables authoritarian regimes to maintain their complicity without challenge. When the people do not demand justice, their leaders dismiss Gaza as a political inconvenience—or worse, a distraction. The absence of sustained pressure from below emboldens betrayal from above.
To the leaders of the European Union and the United Kingdom: stop issuing vain statements on Israel’s “obligations” to allow food and medicine into Gaza. Without concrete legal accountability, your words are morally bankrupt. This is not diplomacy; it is complicity. Just as your silence before World War II enabled the Nazi atrocities, your inaction today enables a siege that starves children and denies medical care to millions.
The truth is hard to hear. Gaza’s children are starving not only because of Israel’s cruelty, but because of a eunuch world conscience. International law means nothing without enforcement. Arab and Moslem solidarity is meaningless without action. And the countless statements, speeches, and meetings are as hollow as the stomachs of Gaza’s children.
Words will not save them. Food will. Medicine will. Human decency—backed by political courage—will.
One day, it will be the Arabs and Muslims of this generation—as well as the Western—who are remembered for their complicity. History will not record the siege of Gaza solely as a crime perpetrated by Israel with American military might, but as a profound betrayal by those who professed to uphold universal human rights.
