This spoken word piece is based on a LinkedIn post by Mohamed Abu Mughaisib, Deputy Medical Coordinator, Médecins Sans Frontières, in Gaza.

“No one dies from hunger.”

That’s what our elders told us, a phrase passed from parent to child, like a promise, but that truth doesn’t live here anymore.

In Gaza, people are dying from hunger, real deaths, children with nothing left in their bodies, elders collapsing in silence, mothers skipping days of food so their kids can eat, until they don’t wake up the next morning.

This isn’t a famine; this is a siege, a cage, a deliberate, calculated starvation of two million people.

The crossings are closed, the aid is blocked, so now, they will drop food from the sky, parachutes falling like hope and sometimes like death.

We run to catch it, because what choice do we have?

People now in Gaza are being killed trying to get food, shot at distribution death points, crushed under aid trucks, trampled in the chaos of desperation.

We don’t just risk hunger now, we risk dying for food.

How is this humane? How is this allowed? How do you feed people like this, like throwing scraps to animals behind a fence?

We are not animals.

We are not zombies.

We are human beings with names and souls.

We need food, yes, but we also need dignity.

And yes, we miss sugar, we miss sweets, not for luxury, for energy, for feeling something that isn’t war.

Stop calling this a crisis. It’s not a crisis; It’s punishment. It’s starvation by design. People are dying of hunger in Gaza.

People are being killed while trying to get food.

Enough.

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