Why official aid sites have become a last resort: Three stories from the Times of Israel

For months, Israeli media have mostly avoided covering the starvation in Gaza. But recently, there has been some movement, as this article in the centrist Times of Israel demonstrates.

Khaldun Hamad, 30, has lost nearly 30 pounds since the war started, eating between one and two meals a day for the past several months. Like others, he has tried to raise money online to buy food on the black market. But the exorbitant prices forced him to set out for the Zikim crossing on Thursday, August 7, hoping to bring food back for his wife and mother, who was wounded by Israeli gunfire while sitting outside their test earlier in the war.

Hamad tells how he joined a crowd of 10,000 other hungry people near Zikim, but Israeli troops started shooting at them. Hamad and another person carried a wounded man a mile until they found a tuk-tuk driver who would take him to a hospital.

Hamad returned to the crossing point where he found the crowd racing toward four food trucks despite continuing gunfire. He grabbed a bag of flour but was knocked down and lost it.

The next day he came back and finally managed to come home with flour.

“I don’t want to die in silence,” Hamad told the Times. “I want the people [to] know [about] our suffering. I want to feel that there [is] some humanity in this world [and that] there are people who do not support collective punishment.”

Asked about the video of Israeli hostage Evyatar David released recently by Hamas, which shows David emaciated and forced to dig what could become his own grave, Hamad responded, “I feel sorry for him and sorry for us. We don’t want them to suffer, and we don’t want to suffer ourselves.”

The Times also tells the stories of two other Gazans struggling to stay alive and feed their families.

More at The Times of Israel