Life in Gaza My struggle as a lecturer too weak to sit upright

I must admit: I write this piece while starving – too hungry to think clearly, too weak to sit upright for long. I do not feel ashamed because my starvation is deliberate. I refuse my hunger even as it decays me. I can survive no other way.

- Ahmed Kamal Junina

Since 2 March 2025, Israel has imposed a full blockade on Gaza. Little aid – food, medicine, fuel – is getting in or being distributed. The markets are empty and bakeries, community kitchens and fuel stations are shuttered.

On 27 July, the World Health Organization confirmed 74 deaths from "malnutrition" in Gaza this year – 63 of them in July. Among the dead are 24 children under the age of five and one older child. Starvation is avalanching.

A trickle of aid was dropped. The humanitarian agency Médecins Sans Frontières has called these airdrops "notoriously ineffective and dangerous". The distribution points of US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have been denounced as "death traps", the UN warning that the system violates humanitarian principles and has cost more lives than it has saved.

Famine is no longer a threat – it is here. Some days, my stomach cramps as I try to revise a single paragraph. My fingers feel dry and achy, parched from lack of fluids. Hunger is loud. I read, but hunger is shouting in my ear. I write, but the maw snaps with every keystroke.

And when I try to still myself, to think in the meagre pleasures of drone-infused quiet, my mind floats. Oh, for a coffee in between articles. A sandwich in between sentences. A snack alongside a lazy perusal of the latest issue of TESOL Quarterly.

I wonder: how can I keep my mind sharp when my body has gone so thin and dehydrated?