I'm a father in Gaza. My children wake in the middle of the night crying for food.

USA Today

01-08-2025

I write these words with the desperation of a father watching his children whimper from hunger as they try to sleep, and the urgency of a nutritionist watching his people grow emaciated and die.
I am a father of three young children and a nutritionist from northern Gaza.
Where once I advised others on the dangers of malnutrition, I now find myself and my family suffering from starvation and malnutrition imposed by Israel.
I have lost 55 pounds since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, which a growing number of human rights groups and other experts have concluded is a genocide. I feel exhausted and dizzy all the time. But I have a household to provide for and three children who are equally fatigued from hunger. They are lethargic, unable to concentrate and sleep much of the day.
I can barely find flour for my family. With the help of my wife, we divide the bread we bake among the five of us, in small quantities that are not nearly enough to stave off the intense pangs of hunger. I tell the children that this is all we have for today. Meat and fruit are completely unavailable, and we can't afford the $40 that a 2-pound bag of tomatoes costs. We usually eat the bread by itself or sometimes, if we're lucky, with some basic legumes, once or twice a day.
In the evening, my children go to sleep hungry. They wake up in the middle of the night with gnawing pain in their stomachs, asking for food. Sometimes they dream that they're eating their favorite dishes.
Our 8-year-old, Ayla, dreams about okra stew with rice and sometimes shawarma.
The pain often awakens 6-year-old Seela in the middle of the night, crying. I save some of my bread ration in order to have something to offer her, but she refuses. 'Save it for morning, Baba,' she tells me, 'So that my brother Karim can eat it with me. He's hungry, too.'
Malnutrition is rampant in Gaza. Those who don't starve will have generational wounds.
As a parent, it's heartbreaking to see my children suffer like this, and knowing it will likely have long-lasting consequences for their health and development. And as a nutritionist, I know that my family's experience is a microcosm of the catastrophic level of starvation being experienced throughout Gaza.
Extreme malnutrition is now rampant. In addition to blocking almost all food, water and other humanitarian aid from entering since March, the Israeli military has also systematically damaged, destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable the majority of Gaza's food and agricultural infrastructure.
Share your opinion: Are you concerned about starvation in Gaza? Should US do more to help? | Opinion Forum
More than 150 people have died from malnutrition since the fall of 2023, meeting the criteria for Level 5 famine.
About 90 of those who have died of malnutrition are children. If Israel continues to block the entry and distribution of food, thousands more will die or experience irreversible damage to their organs.
Those who face the highest risk are the most vulnerable among us: children, the elderly, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases.
Opinion: I run a soup kitchen in Gaza. The horrors of starvation here are indescribable.
Before the war, I had a private clinic for therapeutic nutrition and weight treatment north of Gaza City, in Beit Lahia, which the Israeli military destroyed in December 2023. When the war started, we were displaced to Rafah in the south, then again several times to other places. In January, during the ceasefire, we returned to Beit Lahia, before being displaced again four months later to Gaza City. We now live here, in a tent close to the beach.
I was injured by an Israeli missile while trying to feed my family. All we ask is to live.
A few weeks later, I was badly injured when I was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli missile while I was out searching for food for my family. I am still unable to walk due to the complex nature of the injury and nerve damage, which is untreatable due to Israel's destruction of Gaza's health sector.
Recently, I was accepted to study for a master's degree in public health at the University of Washington and received a full scholarship. However, I am unable to leave the Gaza Strip to complete my studies in the United States.
I now work as part of a team with an American nongovernmental organization providing nutritional support to displaced people.
As I make my way back to my tent at the end of each day in my wheelchair, I pass by traumatized, skeletal children. Some beg in the streets. Others search piles of garbage to scavenge what scraps of food they can. Due to decades of Israeli military occupation and blockade, Gaza had a very high rate of poverty and unemployment even before Israel's brutal war began, yet I have never witnessed anything close to this level of desperation.
Images that make it to television or newspapers can't even begin to convey our grim reality.
Opinion: People are starving in Gaza. Why are we so comfortable just letting that happen?
Israel's actions in Gaza have violated all humanitarian norms and agreements, making a mockery of international law and the very notion of a rules-based order. Though the official death toll just surpassed 60,000 people, studies done by The Lancet medical journal and others put the actual death toll at 40% higher, not accounting for those buried under the rubble, or who have died from hunger, disease and lack of access to medical care.
Despite the growing horror and outrage globally over Israel's starvation campaign and genocide, the international community, particularly the U.S. government and Israel's other Western backers, continue to refuse to do anything meaningful to pressure Israel to open the land crossings and allow unrestricted entry of food and other aid, issuing occasional statements of condemnation while maintaining the flow of weapons to Israel and diplomatic shielding.
I write these words with the desperation of a father watching his children whimper from hunger as they try to sleep. I write them with the urgency of a nutritionist watching his people grow ever more emaciated and die. Every person with humanity – every government with a conscience – must do all in their power to break Israel's cruel and illegal siege.
Let Gaza eat. Let our children live.
Mohamed Hammoudeh is a nutritionist and father of three sheltering in Gaza City.