Photographing famine
With much of Gaza reduced to ruins and estimates courtesy of the Gazan health ministry of 60,000 dead including 17,000 children, the battle for food and water is now a crisis:
MAN: I swear, it's been four days since we've eaten and I can't stand, look at my hands shaking.
- Deutsche Welle News/SBS, 23 July 2025
Two million people fighting for the pickings delivered by a broken and vastly inadequate aid program.
Those convoys that do get through are swamped, while hundreds of the hungry and desperate have been shot dead:
CAITRÍONA PERRY: The UN Human Rights Office says more than 500 people have been killed trying to reach those aid points which are now run by the US and Israeli governments. A UN official has described the system as 'an abomination' and 'a death trap'. Israel rejects allegations that it has committed war crimes in Gaza.
- BBC News, 25 July 2025
The UN says nearly a quarter of the 2.1 million people in Gaza are now facing famine-like conditions and last week more than 100 aid agencies and NGOs accused the Israeli Government of laying siege to Gaza and restricting the flow of aid, which Israel denies, claiming large volumes of food are being pilfered by Hamas:
DAVID MENCER: There is a man-made shortage, but it's been engineered by Hamas. That's the point. That's the end of the sentence, which you don't include. This suffering exists because Hamas made it so. Here are the facts … There is no famine in Gaza. There is a famine of the truth.
- Sky News UK, 24 July 2025
There can be little cavilling however that children in Gaza are facing hunger—the disabled and vulnerable among them hardest hit.
Powerful evidence emerging in the past week courtesy of Palestinian journalists.
But it was the images of one child which stopped the world.
And a warning, these are difficult to see.
These photographs of 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq whose emaciated body is being denied the baby formula it needs.
Captured in the rubble of Gaza City by journalist Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, the shocking photograph spurred one of the world's most proudly conservative newspapers to draw up this extraordinary edition:
FOR PITY'S SAKE STOP THIS NOW
- Daily Express, 23 July 2025
… and galvanised newspaper editors from Toronto to Sao Paolo to fill page one with similar scenes of agony and deprivation:
Forced into Famine
- Toronto Star, 24 July 2025
DON'T LOOK AWAY
- Daily Mirror, 26 July 2025
By Friday morning, Nine's The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were following suit.
The AFR ran confronting images inside the paper on Saturday, while SBS and the ABC have run similar pictures online and on TV.
We spoke to the photographer who took this harrowing image:
I saw the tent of the family … and went inside to start taking pictures. It was an incredibly difficult environment in every sense …
The woman in the photo is a widow; she lost her husband in the war. She is trying to raise her two children alone …
The war has deprived them of everything.
- Email, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, photographer, 26 July 2025
The BBC's International editor Jeremy Bowen, using a Palestinian freelancer, tracked down the boy's mother, Hedaya al-Muta'wi:
JEREMY BOWEN: His name is Mohammed, he's 18 months old and he weighs six kilos…
HEDAYA AL-MUTA'WI:
He can't stand up on his feet or sit because of the fatigue. We can't get baby formula for Mo, because the prices are too high. I go from one hospital to another trying to get him formula.
- BBC News, 26 July 2025
There are now also urgent concerns for the people behind the lens.
On Friday Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, the BBC and Reuters warned their journalists were facing the threat of starvation.
One of the ABC's own freelancers losing the ability to operate his camera and Al-arini told us he's not immune from the bleak realities either:
I fainted three times while taking photos due to hunger and thirst …
We lost our home, we are displaced, and the children cry constantly from hunger …
The displacement, the fight for survival, and the struggle between life and death experienced by the people here are beyond imagination.
- Email, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, photographer, 26 July 2025
The Sydney Morning Herald's veteran conflict photographer, Kate Geraghty, told us:
There are moments in history when an image is so powerful … that it can effect change and sometimes end wars …
… The images taken by the incredibly brave Palestinian photographers of children starving in Gaza … are such images.
- Email, Kate Geraghty, Photojournalist, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2025
So consequential, the work of these photographers, on Saturday the Israeli military announced it would allow the resumption of air drops of food and reestablish safe routes for the deployment of aid convoys into the strip.
Evidence the right image at the right time can move the world.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News AU
3 hours ago
- Sky News AU
‘Out of depth': Clover Moore slammed for support of Harbour Bridge pro-Palestine protest
Sky News host Danica De Giorgio slams the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, for her public support of holding a pro-Palestine protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 'It seems the Lord Mayor of Sydney has suffered another public hallucination – she's seemingly forgotten her core duties of roads, rates, and rubbish,' Ms De Giorgio said. 'Gee, what a gift of propaganda to Hamas. 'How out of her depth is this woman?'
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Israel accused of genocide by human rights groups
Samantha Donovan: As global concern about famine and killings in Gaza grows, two Israeli human rights groups have taken the dramatic step of accusing the Netanyahu government of genocide in the enclave. The groups have released separate damning reports, alleging Israel has carried out coordinated and deliberate action to destroy the Palestinian society. The Israeli government has dismissed the accusations as baseless. Dijana Damjanovic prepared this report. Dijana Damjanovic: Children in Gaza use their hands to collect flour off the ground and the scenes of starvation continue inside hospitals and makeshift homes. Asma: I'm so sorry to tell you, the starving people took everything. Dijana Damjanovic: One Gazan woman named Asma sent this voice note to the BBC. Asma: I can't go among thousands of people fighting each other in order to get food. I can't fight. I have never. I don't know what to tell you. This is death. If only I could get out of here. Dijana Damjanovic: In 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza have recorded another 14 deaths due to hunger and malnutrition. That takes the total number of deaths due to starvation to at least 147. Images of the suffering in Gaza sparked some concern in Israel. In this cafe in Jerusalem, this woman says she's shocked by what she's seen. Israeli: It feels difficult to me as an Israeli, as a Jew, to watch those images and feel anything but tremendous compassion and horror, to be honest. I feel horror. I'm a mother. I watch women holding their babies and it makes me feel despair. Dijana Damjanovic: In Israel, some activists are increasingly raising alarm about the actions of their government in Gaza. For the first time, human rights groups in Israel have called those actions genocide. Guy Shalev: That is what we understand, the only conclusion that we can infer from 22 months of the Israeli attack on the Gazan people. Dijana Damjanovic: Guy Shalev is the director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, one of two groups who have issued separate damning reports highlighting indiscriminate bombing campaigns, the killing of health workers and the repeated forced displacement of civilians. Guy Shalev: The attack on health care, on all life-sustaining systems is not an attack on Hamas or militants. It's clearly an attack on more than 2 million people living and their conditions of living, not allowing them to survive. Dijana Damjanovic: The Israeli government has rejected both groups' findings. Government spokesperson David Mencer says their facts are wrong. David Mencer: When it comes to this accusation of genocide, yes of course we have free speech here in Israel, but we strongly reject the accusation. It is baseless. There is no intent. Key for the charge of genocide, there is no intent. It simply doesn't make sense for a country to send in 1.9 million tonnes of aid, most of that being food, if there is an intent of genocide. It's completely incongruous. Dijana Damjanovic: Dr Eyal Mayroz is a senior lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University. He says Israelis who have previously been silent are starting to speak out. Eyal Mayroz: More and more people that were shy of looking not only at our Israeli hostages but also at the terrible toll on the Gaza population are beginning to make noises. Dijana Damjanovic: Dr Mayroz says around 70% of the Israeli public is now against the continuation of the fighting. Eyal Mayroz: Yes, I think the Israelis are realising the toll on the Israeli society, on the death of their own soldiers, on the name and reputation of Israel that has become a pariah state. Unfortunately not enough in terms of how they view the toll on the Gaza population because the trauma and the craving or desire for revenge are still dominant in some parts of the Israeli society. Dijana Damjanovic: At the United Nations headquarters in New York, political leaders from around the world are meeting for a three-day conference to discuss a path towards peace in the Palestinian territories through a two-state solution. The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mustafa, is with the Palestinian Authority, which is rival to Hamas. He's in New York for the conference and says Palestinians have been waiting years for a genuine international intervention. Mohammed Mustafa: What's happening in Gaza is its latest and most brutal manifestation and we are all more than ever compelled to act. This conference is also a message to the Israeli people that there is a path to peace and regional integration. It will be achieved through our independence, not our destruction. Dijana Damjanovic: Another issue raising concern is the role of gangs in stealing and selling aid. News outlet the Associated Press has found flour is selling for $60 a kilogram. The UN's World Food Program says it will only be able to safely deliver aid to the most vulnerable once security is restored inside Gaza. Samantha Donovan: Dijana Damjanovic reporting.
News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Gaza famine warning as Israel resists ceasefire calls
Gaza is slipping into famine, UN-backed experts warned Tuesday, as the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said the death toll in the nearly 22-month war had surpassed 60,000. The health ministry figure excludes deaths from hunger in the Palestinian territory gripped by dire humanitarian conditions made worse by Israel's total blockade of aid from March to May. This week, Israel launched a daily pause in fighting and opened secure routes to enable UN and non-governmental agencies to distribute food on Gaza's devastated streets. Hundreds of truckloads of aid have begun to arrive. But Israeli strikes continued overnight, killing 30 people in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Gaza's civil defence agency -- and experts warn a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions is imminent. "The worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip," said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a coalition of monitors tasked by the UN to warn of impending crises. - Urgent action now - The World Food Programme's emergency director, Ross Smith, likened the situation to some of the worst famines of the past century. "This is unlike anything we have seen in this century. It reminds us of previous disasters in Ethiopia or Biafra," Smith said via video-link from Rome. "We need urgent action now." In a statement released ahead of the IPC report, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office accused Hamas of distorting casualty figures and accused the group of looting food aid destined for Palestinian civilians. "While the situation in Gaza is difficult and Israel has been working to ensure aid delivery, Hamas benefits from attempting to fuel the perception of a humanitarian crisis," the statement said. "We already allow significant amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza every single day, including food, water and medicine. Unfortunately, Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population, many times by shooting Palestinians." As late as Sunday, Netanyahu had been insisting there was "no starvation in Gaza" but even his close international ally, US President Donald Trump, has now warned the situation appears to be "real starvation". Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2 after ceasefire talks broke down. In late May, it began allowing a small trickle of aid to resume, amid warnings of a wave of starvation. Then on Sunday, faced with a mounting international chorus of alarm, Israel began a series of "tactical pauses" while allowed aid trucks to cross two border crossings into Gaza, and Jordanian and Emirati planes to airdrop aid. Shipments have ramped up, but for the IPC this effort will not prove enough unless aid agencies are granted "immediate, unimpeded" humanitarian access. "Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the Strip," it said, warning that 16 children under the age of five had died of hunger since July 17. "Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths," it said. According to Netanyahu's office, the pause in military operations covers "key populated areas" between 10:00 am (0700 GMT) and 8:00 pm every day. Designated aid convoy routes will be secure from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm. COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry body in charge of civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said more than 200 truckloads of aid were distributed by the UN and aid agencies on Monday. - Air strikes - Another 260 trucks were permitted to cross into Gaza to deposit aid at collection points, four UN tankers brought in fuel and 20 pallets of aid were airdropped from Jordanian and Emirati planes, COGAT said. Overnight, however, strikes continued. Gaza's civil defence agency said Tuesday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians, including women and children, in the central Nuseirat district. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the strikes were carried out overnight and into the morning and "targeted a number of citizens' homes" in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The local Al-Awda hospital said it had received "the bodies of 30 martyrs, including 14 women and 12 children". An Israeli military spokesman told AFP that he would need more information to enable him to look into the strikes. With aid experts pushing for a ceasefire to enable a large-scale humanitarian operation, Israel's foreign minister addressed reporters in Jerusalem to denounce what he called a "distorted campaign" of international pressure. Gideon Saar told reporters that if Israel was to halt the conflict while Hamas is still in power in Gaza and still holding hostages it would be a "tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians". "It ain't gonna happen, no matter how much pressure is put on Israel," he said.
