‘Death has more dignity than this life’: Israel’s starvation campaign ravages Gaza
The uncle of three-month-old Fadi Al-Najjar holds his body after he died of malnutrition, Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, Gaza, 19 July 2025
Ahmed Ahmed reports in +972 on 25 July 2025:
Like all parents, 34-year-old Ahmed Draimli and his wife, Waid, held onto hope that their firstborn son, Zain, would grow up healthy, strong, and full of life. But last September, shortly after he was born in Gaza City’s Al-Sahaba Medical Complex, doctors found that Zain had a bacterial infection in his blood. They said it was likely caused by a weakened immune system — the result of malnutrition during Waid’s pregnancy.
“Throughout the pregnancy, I did my best to buy whatever food I could: eggs, potatoes, anything healthy. But it wasn’t just expensive; many times, there was simply no food in the shops at all,” Draimli told +972. “Waid lost a lot of hair during her pregnancy, and her bones hurt terribly.”
Waid also suffered from prolonged exposure to woodfire smoke used for cooking, and the ever-present dust and debris from nearby Israeli bombardments, as they sheltered in their home in the Al-Daraj area of eastern Gaza City. “They struck our neighborhood three times,” Draimli explained.
For the first months of his life, Zain’s health remained fragile. Waid struggled to breastfeed due to her own poor nutrition, and infant formula was scarce. The baby cried constantly: he was in pain, often burning with fever. Soon after his birth, Draimli recalled, “he stayed in the [Patient Friend’s Benevolent Society] hospital for 17 days, fed through an IV drip. The doctors discharged him eventually, but his fever kept returning.”
They brought him back repeatedly to the hospital in central Gaza City. Sometimes, doctors said he was stable and just needed proper nutrition. Other times, they suspected a more serious condition, but couldn’t confirm without an MRI scan — and the only machine had been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. In the end, doctors determined Zain needed an urgent medical referral abroad, an impossible request with all borders sealed.
In late March, Zain’s condition started to deteriorate. By July 17, his body began to shut down. Waid rushed him to the hospital, and doctors placed him on a ventilator.
“We thought it was like all the other times,” Draimli explained. “But just minutes later, he died. Waid called me, and I collapsed. When I reached the hospital, she was still lying on the floor, clutching his body.”
At least 122 people, including more than 83 children, have died of starvation in Gaza since Israel’s war began in October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health — 54 of them since Monday alone. Now, more than 100 international aid organizations have warned that Gaza is facing “mass starvation,” with the UN reporting that one in every five children in Gaza City is malnourished, as cases continue to rise every day.
Despite the limited entry of humanitarian aid trucks since late May, ongoing Israeli attacks on civilians seeking aid at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites — combined with the obstruction of humanitarian organizations trying to deliver life-saving assistance — have continued to drive up the death toll and left the majority of the population without access to food.
“Famine is intensifying and spreading throughout the Gaza Strip, coinciding with the Israeli occupation’s complete closure of all crossings for 145 days,” the Gaza Government Media Office wrote yesterday in an urgent statement. “We call on all countries of the world, without exception, to immediately break the blockade, permanently open the crossings, and allow the entry of baby formula and aid to more than 2.4 million people trapped in the Gaza Strip.”
Like so many in Gaza, Zain died from a combination of preventable complications, all exacerbated by a lack of food and medical supplies. “He was everything to me and my wife. He was the light of our house,” Draimli said. “I hope no child on this earth dies the way my son did.”
‘Everything hurts from hunger’
Starting on July 19, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza — men and women, young and old — to protest the world’s silence in the face of Israel’s mass starvation campaign.