“Hunger” in the title above, the United Nations (UN) defines as “periods when populations are experiencing severe food insecurity.” It is “an uncomfortable or painful sensation,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, “caused by insufficient consumption of dietary energy.”
“As you go about your day, the hungrier you get, the more irritable and angrier you feel,” Camilla Nord Ph.D. stresses in her Psychology Today article Why People Get “Hangry,” citing a recent study finding. “Science is just telling us what we already know.”
Waving a red flag, the UN speaks volumes: “A quarter of Gaza’s population is one step from famine, and aid trucks are looted.”
What can be more compelling a definition of hunger than the words coming out straight from the mouths of the hungry people themselves?
“We haven’t received any food in two days…” Nasr said, adding that sometimes she had resorted to making meals out of only onions.
“Nasr went into her tent to fetch the tin of peas she said a kindly man had given her, even though he had bought it for himself. 'This is it. This can is all [my children] have for a whole day,' she said, holding it up, her voice rising in anger.”
-- Excerpted from Reuters article Gaza children dizzy from hunger as war impedes food deliveries
“I heard police sirens and came upon a crowd of people in the street. They were hungry, I learned, that they had broken into a bakery. I saw three people hide sacks of flour on a donkey cart, under a blanket. I also recognized a young man, one of my former students, in the custody of two policemen. They were holding him by the neck. ‘I want to feed my family,’ he cried. ‘You cannot do this to me’.”
“Hamza posted a photograph of what he was eating that day: a ragged brown morsel, seared black on one side and flecked with grainy bits. ‘This is the wondrous thing we call ‘bread’ – a mixture of rabbit, donkey, and pigeon feed,’ Hamza wrote in Arabic. ‘There is nothing good about it except that it fills our bellies. It is impossible to stuff it with other foods, or even break it except by biting down hard with one’s teeth.’
“A few days later, Hamza wrote on social media that he’d bought his wife a small gift of rice and beef. One plateful of uncooked white rice cost him twenty-five U.S. dollars, he said, and a fist-size heap of raw beef cost a shocking seventy dollars.”
-- Excerpted from The New Yorker article My Family’s Struggle to Find Food In Gaza
“A 42-year-old Palestinian father, Mustafa Shandojli, described a recent meal for his family of seven, displaced from Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp: He was lucky enough to find and purchase a bit of livestock feed.
“What was bought was grain intended to be given to animals,” he said. “We pounded it with stones and cooked it.”
-- Excerpted from the Los Angeles Times article In war-stricken Gaza, hunger is a constant companion.
“Al-Haw was queueing at a water station in Jabalya refugee camp, in Northern Gaza when he and dozens of others were struck by Israeli bombardment. ‘Unfortunately, many of his relatives and friends are still in the Northern Gaza Strip, suffering a lot,’ Hamouda, a father of three said. ‘They eat grass and drink polluted water’.”
-- Excerpted from CNN article “We are dying slowly:” Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza
“Horror” in the title above, on the other hand, tells of Israeli soldiers and tanks firing on a crowd of thousands waiting for desperately needed food assistance resulting in at least 112 people killed and hundreds injured. Israel has said that its forces fired at the crowd after aid trucks were stormed. But humanitarian groups have said that Israeli restrictions on food assistance to the north of Gaza have created unbearable conditions that set the stage for the incident.
Looking back, three days after Hamas terrorists launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel and infiltrated the country by air, land, and sea on October 7, I wrote my ATABAY article Mideast Conflict: A Letter To The World’s Most Powerful Nation. I reiterated what Christian author Jim Wallis wrote in his 2005 New York Times bestseller book God’s Politics.
NO SYMMETRY
“There is no ‘symmetry’, Wallis noted, “in the violence of the Middle East today. Israel violence is enormously disproportionate to Palestinian violence.” The more than 30,000 dead in Gaza vis-à-vis more than 1,200 dead in Israel since October 7 upheld Wallis’ no-symmetry assessment.
In that same article, inspired by A Letter to President Bush from Over Forty Evangelical Christian Leaders in Wallis’ book, I wrote a shoot-for-the-moon letter to President Biden on behalf of Peace-loving Citizens of the World with the following key statement:
“We urge you to employ an evenhanded policy toward Israel and Palestinian leadership so that this bloody conflict will come to a speedy close and both peoples can live without fear and in a spirit of shalom / salaam.”
We now know full well that the essence of such a persuasion of evenhandedness took a beating in the geopolitical global arena. It has resulted in more than 30,000 heart-wrenching deaths, more than 25,000 of which are women and children, after almost five months of constant Israel bombardment and mass displacement. And still counting, not only of dead bodies, but also of the days to the American body politic judgment call as to who will be the next US President.
Amid the somber drift of this article, all of a sudden, I’ve felt the need to wind this up in a hopeful tone. So, I prompted Bing to find a poignant story in the archive that looks on the bright side of the Gaza “carnage.” Here’s what my co-pilot had rolled out which I edited for length and brevity.
WE WILL RISE
In the heart of Gaza, where the sun scorched the earth and buildings bore the scars of relentless conflict, lived a young girl named Leila. Her almond eyes held both innocence and sorrow. She had known nothing but the siege – the walls that choked her city, the borders that sealed her fate.
The war had stolen her father, leaving her mother, Amina, to fend for them both. Amina’s hands, once adorned with henna, now kneaded dough in the dim light of their tiny kitchen. Bread was their lifeline – a fragile thread connecting them to survival.
One morning, Amina rushed to the neighborhood bakery. The aroma of freshly baked bread usually greeted her. But today, silence hung heavy. The bakery’s windows were dark, its ovens cold. The last loaf had been sold yesterday, and the flour bins stood empty.
Aminah’s heart sank. She clutched the empty basket, tears blurring her vision. The bakery owner, Abu Jamal, emerged from the shadows. His eyes mirrored her despair.
“Fuel shortage,” he whispered. “No more bread.”
The sun rose casting a feeble light on the rubble-strewn streets. Leila had barely slept, her ears attuned to distant sounds – the rumble of trucks and tanks. She clutched her mother’s photo, whispering prayers for safety.
And then it happened.
Aid trucks materialized like mirages – a lifeline for the starving. Leila’s heart raced; perhaps this was the turning point. She joined the throng, her empty basket a beacon of hope.
But chaos swallowed hope whole. And then the first shot rang out. Pandemonium erupted. People scattered; their hunger-fueled frenzy was replaced by horror. The aid trucks became death traps. People stumbled, trampled by their desperation.
The wounded screamed. The dead lay like discarded dolls.
As the sun climbed higher, Leila stumbled away from the carnage. Her hands were stained – blood mixed with flour.
LIKE DOUGH IN THE OVEN
She vowed to remember the day – the day when hunger collided with horror. Leila’s hunger was no longer just physical; it was a hunger for justice, for peace.
Leila vowed that when peace returned, she would become a baker. She would knead hope into every loaf, share it with neighbors, and rebuild what war had shattered. For in the hunger of Gaza, she had learned that bread was more than food – it was a symbol of resilience, a promise to endure.
And so, under the same sun that had witnessed their struggle, Leila whispered, “We will rise, like dough in the oven. We will rise.”
[Bing’s note: Leila’s story blends real experiences and fictional elements, inspired by the resilience of those facing hunger in Gaza.]
Content put together in collaboration with Bing Microsoft AI-powered Co-pilot
Head photo courtesy of Sky News
Still photos courtesy of The New Yorker and istockphoto
Video clips courtesy of YouTube
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