This post originally appeared on Ali Abdal Wahab’s LinkedIn account. Reposted with permission. Ali is a data analyst, MEAL specialist, and political economy researcher based in Cairo.

“Two photos. One father. One war. A policy of starvation.”

On the right: my father, in Al-Maghazi camp before October 7, 2023: (calm, proud, present)

On the left: the same man, photographed on July 20, 2025: (thinner, exhausted, with a gaze shaped by hunger. He survives on water and lentils when available). Tomorrow, like many in Gaza, there may be nothing to eat.

What you see here is not “famine” as a natural disaster. It is a weapon, a policy, a deliberate condition imposed on Gaza.

To govern Gaza, in the Foucauldian sense, is to control the minimum conditions of life — to reduce existence to statistics, calories, and permits. It is to strip away the political being and leave only the biological body, exposed to death without accountability (as the essence of biopolitics)

To the world watching silently:
This photo is not just a testimony. It is an indictment.
We are not asking for charity. We are demanding the right to exist.