'Brother, I Haven't Eaten in Three Days'

Gaza reflects the haunting collapse of humanity and the hunger war is consuming Palestinians

- Iftikhar Gilani IS A JOURNALIST CURRENTLY BASED IN ANKARA, TÜRKIYE

HAVING reported from conflict zones since the early 1990s—Kashmir, Syria, Palestine—I believed I had developed the emotional calluses required to carry on.

But Gaza breaks you. Reporting from this besieged Palestinian strip is not about bullet trajectories, ceasefires, or negotiations. It is about starvation. It is about shame.

A few days ago, I called a fellow-journalist in Gaza. We've exchanged notes for years, sometimes shared stories, and often grieved. This time, his voice wavered. He never did. And I did not call again.

I sat with the phone in my hand, stunned—not just by his words, but by the quiet dignity with which he said them. It felt obscene to have disturbed him at that moment. What right does a journalist have to ask for a quote from someone who hasn’t eaten in days? That moment shamed me more than any checkpoint ever had. In that instant, I was no longer a reporter chasing a byline. I was a witness to a moral collapse.

Gaza today is not just about bombs or blockades. It is about hunger. A famine not born of drought or disaster, but designed, enforced, and militarised. It is not merely the stomach that is empty—it is the soul of the world.

For this write-up, I reached out to Abu Ramadan, 28, a resident of al-Nasr city in Gaza. His words were soaked in a mixture of bitterness and disbelief. When I shamelessly asked him what he would eat today, he replied: “Unfortunately, we still haven’t found an answer to what we might eat today. Every day brings its own fate. Sometimes a scrap of stale bread, sometimes nothing. It’s all dipped in bitter za’atar—that's if you even have za’atar.”