UN famine expert: Trauma and shame of Israel's starvation of Gaza will last generations

Clearest sign of famine is its effects on children, Michael Fakhri says

Zainab Abu Haleeb is five months old, and is one of the Gaza children diagnosed with malnutrition. Reuters

The trauma and shame inflicted on Gaza as it starves under an Israeli blockade will last for generations, a UN expert on famine has told The National.

The pain felt by parents helplessly watching their children fade away, the lengths for survival that some have had to go to like eating rotten flour, picking up chickpeas from the ground that someone else had left behind, or eating animal fodder – all of these experiences of suffering are bound to be carried forward, said the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri.

“Starvation campaigns create a social trauma because if you survive, then you’ve had to make impossible decisions and decide who to feed and deny food,” said Mr Fakhri, who has spoken to descendants of people affected by Ireland's famine in the 19th century.

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The survivors of times like these would have had to endure watching others slowly die in agony, Mr Fakhri said. “There’s a sense of shame for having survived, and it is very difficult to speak about publicly and recover from it psychologically.”

Officials in Gaza say at least 113 people, many of them children, have died of starvation during Israel's blockade on life-sustaining aid, which includes baby food. On top of that, almost all of Gaza's population of 2.2 million people is displaced, the death toll from direct bombardment is inching towards 60,000 with more than 143,000 injured, and living conditions are squalid, unsafe and rife with disease.

Palestinians gather for food at a charity kitchen in northern Gaza. Reuters

Israel's government maintains it is not to blame for harrowing images of emaciated children in Gaza begging for food, or crying at some of the last remaining charity kitchens for a spoonful of beans. It says there are unused aid supplies in Gaza and accuses Hamas and the UN of preventing their delivery.

In the past 24 hours, two new deaths were recorded from malnutrition and hunger. As the UN inches closer to declaring a famine in Gaza, the clearest tell-tale sign of famine is how it affects the youngest in a population, Mr Fakhri said.

“When children start dying from hunger and malnutrition, you know there’s a famine because any community – when there’s hunger – will feed their children, and adults will deny themselves food for days to prioritise their children,” he said.

So when those children begin to die from hunger, as in Gaza, Mr Fakhri said, it can be concluded that there is a famine and that the entire social structure of that community is under attack.

A UN expert said children starving is the clearest sign of famine, because adults will do all they can to feed them. Reuters

But while the semantics over what constitutes a famine are being discussed, Mr Fakhri said it is not debatable that Israel is inflicting mass starvation on Gaza, in what he describes as a war crime. Starvation is not only the direct deprivation of food, he said, as a person can be held liable for the crime of starvation if they wilfully impede relief supplies. Israel has blocked large quantities of aid from entering Gaza since at least March.

“The denial of food, water, medicine and destruction of homes, is starvation,” Mr Fakhri said. “You don’t have to measure the impact and count dead bodies and measure misery to wait to find that there is starvation. All you need to show is intent and action.”

Another of the world's leading experts on famine, Alex DeWaal, compared this diagnosis to a physician not needing to look at a patient's test results to determine the disease they have.

Whether it's under the legal definition of starvation according to international humanitarian law, or the UN's Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which has its own technical definition of famine, Mr Fakhri said: “By any definition, Israel has conducted a starvation campaign”.

In November last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Minister of Defence at the time, Yoav Gallant, for the war crime of starvation. They remain free and Israel continues to deny the impact it has had on the population.