By SAMY MAGDY and MARIAM DAGGA Updated 9:15 PM EDT, July 26, 2025
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — A mother pressed a final kiss to what remained of her 5-month-old daughter and wept. Esraa Abu Halib’s baby now weighed less than when she was born.
On a sunny street in shattered Gaza, the bundle containing Zainab Abu Halib represented the latest death from starvation after 21 months of war and Israeli restrictions on aid.
The baby was brought to the pediatric department of Nasser Hospital on Friday. She was already dead. A worker at the morgue carefully removed her Mickey Mouse-printed shirt, pulling it over her sunken, open eyes. He pulled up the hems of her pants to show her knobby knees. His thumb was wider than her ankle. He could count the bones of her chest
We are fucking monsters for letting this happen, I literally cry everytime I open the news we are fucking monsters. Every single one of us.
More images from Anadolu @ Getty Images
I know this is not much of a help, and definitely doesn’t stop the root cause of the issue. But as the famine is decimating the Gaza population, right now it is top priority to help them find something to eat. And as aid agencies are blocked from entry, no matter how much we donate them, if they cannot deliver the aid.
Therefore we must directly help those inside Gaza. Here you can help one family: https://chuffed.org/project/121561-urgent-help-for-ahmads-family
And I highly encourage everyone to return and donate more, because as long as this genocide is ongoing, we’re not done. That means, we also might have to make sacrifices in our budget. I’m not saying we should also go full starving mode out of solidarity, no. I’m just saying, we should be able to give up some non-critical goals, postpone some purchases, preferably don’t waste food, and whatever we can save up this way, offer them as a contribution, because to them, this buys another hour of chance for survival.
I know food prices skyrocketed in Gaza, but together we can help them survive.
The link above is for one very kind family. Feel free to find other fundraiser campaigns as well, just be sure to check thoroughly to make sure it’s not a scam. At least this one I checked. They’re grateful beyond words for every contribution!
I fully agree, we’re fuckin’ monsters, every single one of us for allowing this genocide to happen. Those were my exact thoughts as well. Helping one family doesn’t change that, but at least it raises their chances for survival, and I want to believe that it is something.
Thank you everyone, who helps!
Edit: typo
The problem in Gaza is not a lack of money; or even a lack of food. It is the regional superpower using its overwhelming military support to block food entry and distribution. While explicitly blocking all organizations with a history and track record of successful aid provisioning in challenging war zones. Then replacing it with their own potenkin aid agency as members of their senior leadership talk openly about using starvation as a weapon of war.
Even in the most charitable reading, donations like this do nothing to help on net. Assuming it is not an outright scam, you are just giving this one family some of the limited supply of food in Gaza. That means that you are depriving someone else in Gaza that food; because you did not actually introduce more food; and, one way or another, that food was going to get eaten.
Adding more money to the equation does help fund the gangs running the food black market. I don’t mean to imply that such gangs are responsible for the crisis (they are not), or even that they are inherently bad (in a well run system, profit oriented local groups providing last mile distribution can be helpful). But, in this case, they are at best neutral.
Is this link verified? Sorry I really really really want to donate but I dont know what is a scam and what is a true fundraiser anymore these days, or where the money actually ends up. I might just take the chance and donate anyway. Thank you so much!!! xx
Hey, thank you if you consider donating!
The link is from @NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social (with her consent I’m putting her profile here), and her interactions seem legit to me. Pictures of her siblings seem to be original, as I haven’t found them anywhere else, and I haven’t seen any signs of AI tampering. I even asked questions that I didn’t fully understand from the story in the fundraiser description, and her answer was plausible to me. I can confidently say this isn’t a scam.
Donating to people within Gaza does nothing to solve the issue. It only drives up the price.
Donate to independent journalists and comedians who cover the genocide instead.
I cannot disagree with that - in fact, that’s how I started my comment above. Normally I’d agree with donating to journalists and aid organizations instead, but in this case that doesn’t really work.
First of all, the key issues are already all in the news. It wasn’t always the case, but by now they clearly show the depth of this genocide. They aren’t showing everything, but they definitely show enough to convey what’s going on. Those who don’t understand it from this, won’t understand it from anything. That being said, yes, donate to journalists - theirs is one of the most important jobs in the world, and probably the most dangerous too, especially in Gaza - but I’d say, priorities have shifted a little bit.
Secondly, those people in Gaza are starving! They haven’t had a proper meal in weeks, and they are already collapsing in the streets, tens or hundreds are dying every day, not including those who are killed at “food distribution points” used as a bait. These people need help right now, this very moment. This won’t solve the root issues as we both agree on this, but it helps at least some of the people to survive a bit longer. The money that goes into solutions that will solve the core issues is very important too, but those will take a very long time. Time that these people don’t have, because they only have merely days or a week at best, some only hours.
This is so little in this mayhem, I’m pretty sure these donations have little or no effect on that. Prices are already skyrocketing, the available food items cost 15-50 times as much as they used to. Like $60 for 1 kg flour. And if it drives the prices up even more, then what? We have to, we need to, and we will donate more. I know this isn’t sustainable on the long term. In the meantime we have to go to demonstrations, we have to keep pushing our governments until they finally realize that something isn’t right and they impose sanctions on Israel. But what’s the point if in the meantime, those whom we’re trying to protect, starve to death?
I’m not gonna downvote your comment, you do have a point, but I have to say I don’t like this negative attitude.
It’s very cold and calculated but there’s no other option right now.
Israel is currently letting in aid because of the massive international outrage.
Don’t forget how little Israel spends on their media and how much it gets in return. Journalists like Dropsitenews are worth their weight in gold.
I’ve never donated, as this is Israel, and they’re killing people who try to get aid in. I’m pretty sure the money goes nowhere.
The money on the fundraiser link is going to a family who needs it. In the end I’m pretty sure too, it will go to Israel, which is very sad, but at the moment there’s no other way to save lives.
So yes, in one way or another, in the end the money will end up in Israel, which is sad, but again, at the moment there is no other way to help them survive the famine.
I appreciate you clarifying.
The donations do go to people in Gaza but they use the money to buy food from the Abu Shabab ISISrael gang and the likes.
It does nothing to solve the issue. We need to change public opinion first.
You can’t put this on me.
I’m powerless to do anything meaningful to stop this, and you are too unless you’re the president of the United States or a billionaire. At the very least, I didn’t vote for the two ruling parties who made it all possible, but most can’t say that. For 99% of voters, supporting genocide wasn’t a red line.
I used to think this too in the past - in my country I never voted for those who supported the genocide, and in the country I live in now, in the case where I was eligible to vote, I also didn’t vote for the genocide supporters. I also am too poor to have any power. Only rich people have power, and the majority of them are pro-genocide, so that’s what’s happening, they decided it for all of us.
But the more I’m thinking about it, the more I realize we’re indeed fucking monsters. How did we allow this to happen in the first place? There are more of us than rich people. We outnumber them. Why are we so incapable? Why don’t we just stand up from work, go to the streets, all at the same time, and throw those out the window, who make those decisions to deliver those weapons? We’re cowards, that’s why.
The fact that we live in this kind of world shows we are a failure. As the old quote goes “Every nation gets the government it deserves” - a quote I also disagreed with in the past, but eventually I understood the meaning. It’s not about whom you’re voting for. Hell, there are countries where you cannot even vote. This is more like about people accepting what’s given, and not even trying to do more. We all are a failure.
I don’t know how often you get out into the world, but I run into people doing little pieces of good all the time. Those little pieces of good don’t grab headlines, but for most, that’s all the power they really have to make change. The same was true in Nazi Germany, with many people whose names didn’t survive (because they couldn’t give their real names) doing little pieces of good to help save lives.
You’re welcome to your misanthropic and self-critical views, but respectfully, I won’t have that put on me. If you feel like a failure in this fascist world, it’s time to find the little pieces of good you’re able to do on your block.