By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
Intro to this week’s National Briefing provided by American Community Media – “After nearly two years of war between Israel and Hamas, Gaza is in ruins. Over 60,000 people have been killed—18,000 of them children, according to UNICEF. The majority of Gaza’s 2 million residents have been displaced, left without homes, clean water, or consistent access to food. For months, many have faced what international agencies now describe as catastrophic levels of hunger.
Despite repeated denials by Israeli officials, the global consensus is clear: Gaza is on the brink of famine. Religious leaders, humanitarian groups, and global heads of state, including President Donald Trump, have acknowledged that starvation is taking place.
UNICEF, the UN Fund for Children’s emergencies, last week called for more humanitarian and commercial traffic to come into Gaza, calling for “flooding the strip with supplies using all channels and all gates” to combat the spiraling death rates that accompany aid blockades, war and hunger.”
Friday, August 8, 2025, American Community Media hosted a weekly national briefing focused on the devastation in Gaza, moderated by Pilar Marreno. Over 80 global media entities were present on the call, including The Mississippi Link newspaper. The first guest speaker was Dr. Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation; an expert on famine and mass atrocity, and a professor in the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University.
He began responding to the question, how did Gaza get to this point, where particularly the children, the older and frail, are starving. “The situation in Gaza was unusual. The nutrition and health status of the population was generally good. You didn’t have large numbers of malnourished children. You had high rates of vaccination, high rates of health, but you had a situation in which the population of about two million people was almost entirely depended upon supplies of food, medicine, water, fuel, etc., that were under the control of Israel, there was very little food that was actually produced within Gaza. After October 7th, Israel did two things: it put a complete siege on Gaza – not allowing anything in for seven weeks, then after that a partial siege – allowing some food and other commodities, day-by-day, with varying amounts.
It also launched a military campaign from the air and on the ground that attacked and destroyed objects indispensable to survival. That is a key term because in international law the prohibition on starvation is not on food as such. It is defined as objects indispensable to survival which include food, water, sanitation, housing, medical care, etc. There was mass displacement, there were evacuation orders for the population, so people had to leave their homes and were crowded into areas that were desperately overcrowded.”
Guest speaker Boudour Hassan, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and Palestine, joined the call from Ramallah. Can you briefly explain what your job is a researcher for Amnesty International asked and what are you hearing from people regarding the hunger and starvation? “We at Amnesty have been investigating the situation, I, myself since 2022. The first thing I worked on was a three day attack offensive by the Israeli forces and forty nine people were killed on those three days…unprecedented in terms of scale…we published a report that Israel is committing genocide last December….killing, seriously injuring, and physical destruction of conditions that affect like hunger and disease…witnessing thousands, sometimes tens of thousands in northern Gaza waiting for humanitarian aid trucks which were denied by the Israeli forces and people resorting to eating animal feed…denial of aid is dehumanizing…people are trying to help each other initially, but then fighting begins for survival.
People were starting to return to the rubble of their homes and trying to rebuild, to bring life from lifelessness, and then the total siege began again on the second of March … Israel established a total siege of goods coming in…nothing getting in…a week later Israel cut off the only operational desalination plant which was connected to the electricity grid.”
The final guest speaker was Afeef Nessouli, a journalist and aid worker, who just returned from 9 weeks volunteering in Gaza. Due to time constraints, he was encouraged to share his experiences with the group rather than respond to questions. “First, I just want to substantiate everything that Boudour and Alex have said, giving us a very good example of what I saw in person from March 27, 2025, to June 3, 2025… I can substantiate that with the doctors that I was working with every day who saw their patients struggling with explosive injuries while also being skin and bones…so you’re talking about people being pulled out of rubble or getting shot at or a drone quadcopter hitting them, but they’re already skin and bones…87 percent of farmland is uncultivatable, 83 percent of fishing fleets are destroyed due to the attacks…a kilo of onions was once three dollars, now each onion is three dollars…Palestine is being robbed of itself.”
The entire briefing is just over an hour and can be heard and viewed here: https://americancommunitymedia.org/media-briefings/feeding-gazas-children-when-starvation-is-a-moral-imperative.
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