By Lisa Murimi
How do you measure misery? In Gaza, it’s in the sound of a mother weeping beside a child who hasn’t eaten in days.
It’s in the silence of classrooms turned to rubble, in the eyes of children who have stopped crying because hunger has stolen even their tears.
More than 200 Palestinian journalists have died trying to show the world this anguish—many without flak jackets, many without backup—just their cameras, their words, and their will. They were the storytellers. Now, they are part of the story.
Since Israel shattered a fragile ceasefire on March 18 with a barrage of airstrikes, the suffering has deepened.
Aid workers describe an unthinkable daily struggle. Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, calls it plainly: “the weaponization of humanitarian aid.”
Starvation is not a consequence of war—it’s being used as a tactic.
Famine is no longer a threat; it’s a shadow falling fast. The UN’s food security analysts report that nearly half a million Gazans—mostly women and children—are already living in “catastrophe.”
Their bodies are wasting while food waits just across the border, blocked.
Israel says the siege pressures Hamas. But for many, including the families of hostages, that explanation rings hollow.
What lies ahead may be an attempt to fulfill Donald Trump’s perilous vision of transforming Gaza into a “Dubai of the Mediterranean”—a gleaming project rebuilt under American control, but stripped of its Palestinian people.
This vision has emboldened the ambitions of Israeli extremists who openly advocate for the forced removal of Palestinians from their homeland, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.
They accuse the government of abandoning diplomacy in favor of destruction—choosing war over their loved ones.
Civilians now live like hunted animals, driven from ruin to ruin. Misery doesn’t need to be measured anymore.
It’s written into every demolished home, every empty bowl, every grave dug too soon.
And the world still watches.
