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Destruction in Gaza last week. Credit: Jehad Alshrafi/AP |
From an article by Nir Hasson in Haaretz, published on August 7, 2025, "
One of the Few Israelis With a Direct Line to Gazans Urges the Public to Confront 'Extreme' Horrors." The article is about Assaf David, an Israeli Middle East scholar, who is in contact with many people in Gaza about the horrors of starvation and suffering they are undergoing.
Quote by Assaf David in Hasson's article: "Every day we're in Gaza is a day that's erased from our future, not only from the future of the Palestinians. Every day involves the peeling off of yet another layer of our humanity. We are left in a jihadist, traumatic, vengeful situation."
This is the beginning of the article, when he realized how starvation was taking over in Gaza:
I've started writing about the starvation in Gaza on Facebook. I've received some pushback from friends, and I've lost at least one friend because of what I've written. But I don't feel that I can remain silent. When I started seeing photographs of starving children, living and dead, I realized that I could no longer persuade myself that what Israel was doing in Gaza was right. I could no longer ignore the immense suffering that Israel (together with Hamas - I'm not absolving them of responsibility) has wrought in Gaza.
I know that some people will think that I came to this realization far too late, and perhaps they are right, but one of the reasons that I held onto the solely pro-Israeli narrative was the enormous increase in antisemitism in the United States since October 7, 2023 coming from people on the left side of the political spectrum. There are people in the US who applauded the October 7 attack, including the most extreme elements of the pro-Palestinian movement (for example, Within Our Lifetime in New York City, and National Students for Justice in Palestine). Even a few students of mine argued in favor of the Hamas attack (that was the hardest blow to me personally, ruining my faith in my students).
I was also just so stunned by the Hamas attack - I suddenly realized that the Hamas genocidal rhetoric, as found in their 1988 charter, was not mere rhetoric, but was a guide for action. I saw that on the morning of October 7, watching the videos Israelis were taking of Hamas fighters in pick-up trucks on the streets of Sderot, and then later that day and into the next days learning about the murderous attacks on the kibbutzim and the Nova music festival. It was very frightening - even for me living thousands of miles away in the United States.
For many months after the Hamas attack I found it difficult if not impossible to feel compassion for Palestinians dying in Gaza under assault by Israel. I was too angry and too scared to feel compassion, although intellectually and ethically speaking I knew that I should.
Nonetheless, it seemed to me pretty early that something had changed in the Israeli rules of engagement, and that many more civilians were dying in the attacks on Hamas fighters and leaders than in earlier wars. (I know that there have been arguments that that is not true, but I have also read articles discussing the relaxation in the rules of engagement). Slowly, I began to be horrified by some of the pictures coming out of Gaza of large fields of destroyed buildings (see the photo at the top of this post). They reminded me of pictures of Warsaw after WWII - shells of buildings jutting up from the ground.
And now I am appalled by the thought that even if the fighting stopped today and massive aid flowed into Gaza, many hundreds or thousands of Gazans would still die of starvation (especially children) because it's too late for them. From today's article in the
New York Times: As Gaza Hunger Crisis Worsens, Israel Lets in Little Aid:
An international group of experts said in late July that famine thresholds had been reached across much of Gaza. Health officials there say scores of people have died from malnutrition, including dozens of children, though aid workers say that is probably an undercount. Aid workers say that number could potentially climb to the tens or hundreds of thousands without a rapid surge in aid. Weakened by months of extreme deprivation, people have few defenses left to stop illnesses as ordinary as diarrhea from killing them.
And those diseases are rampant. The number of people with acute watery diarrhea increased by 150 percent from March to June, and those with bloody diarrhea by 302 percent, health data from aid agencies shows. Those figures, which include only people who can reach medical centers, are most likely an undercount, according to Oxfam.
Staving off famine therefore depends not only on food, but also on fuel to run hospitals, cooking gas to make meals and clean water and sanitation to keep waterborne diseases in check — all of which are absent or nearly absent from Gaza, aid workers say.
Aid agencies have received 200 to 300 trucks in Gaza each day for the past several days, the Israeli agency coordinating aid said. They mainly carried flour along with prepared meals, infant formula, high-energy biscuits, diapers, vaccines and fuel, the United Nations said. Before the war, Gaza received 500 to 600 trucks a day of aid and goods for sale.
The flour provides calories, but will not save those who are severely malnourished after nearly two years of deprivation, aid workers say. Malnourished people need specialized feeding and care. Yet hospitals have few supplies left.
David M. Satterfield, who served as special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues in the Biden administration, said the only practical solution was to “flood the zone” with aid. “It’s not rocket science,” he said.
It is too late to reverse developmental and cognitive harm to young children who have been malnourished for months, experts say. “The damage is already done, and that’s going to be a lifelong impact for a lot of people,” said Beckie Ryan, the Gaza response director for CARE. “What we can do is mitigate that going forward and stop it getting worse. But it does require a huge amount of supplies and aid to be able to come in as soon as possible.”
I cannot justify how Israel is fighting this war any longer. And I especially feel this way because the Israeli cabinet decided yesterday that the IDF should conquer Gaza City, where about a million Gazans are sheltering. From what I have read, the army seems to believe that this is where the Israeli hostages are still being held, so their lives will be in even more danger than they are now. Israel will order the Palestinians in the city to evacuate - to where? so that the army can come in and find and kill the remaining Hamas fighters. If Palestinians refuse to leave they will be caught in an active war zone (although all of Gaza is a war zone) where they will have no possibility of receiving humanitarian aid. If they leave and go to the south where Israel wants them to go, they will be living in impossibly crowded conditions with no access to water, food, or sanitation.
With this decision Netanyahu and the cabinet have probably condemned the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages to death at the hands of Hamas, when Israeli soldiers get too close to them, and they have also condemned all the Palestinians in Gaza to continued to misery, and thousands or tens of thousands of them to death by bombing, injuries suffered in bombings, illness, and starvation.
I could say more, and I have said more in some of my comments on Facebook, but at this point I have to stop. Read the whole article about Assaf David. If you don't have a subscription to Haaretz, I would be happy to send it to you.