"We Die a Hundred Times": Palestinians Starve as America Keeps Funding Israel's Genocide

“I got nothing. I just ran away to save my life," Mahmoud Al-Bayyaa, a 21-year-old Palestinian in Gaza, tells Status Coup about IDF soldiers shooting at him as he tried to obtain food aid.

“Hunger is increasing day by day and we die a hundred times,” Mahmoud Al-Bayyaa, a 21-year-old resident of Gaza City, said in a voicemail obtained by Status Coup on Sunday, July 20. “There is absolutely no food in Gaza and no drinkable water. Within days you will see people dying by the thousands from hunger as everything they own has run out.”

Tuesday — 10 days after Mahmoud sent his voicemail — the UN-backed food monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), declared in an emergency alert: “The worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.”

Al-Bayyaa struggled to articulate the full scope of horror ravaging Palestinians in Gaza.

“The situation is beyond description,” Al-Bayyaa told Status Coup. “The picture and sound only convey a small part of it. People have run out of money and food, and their bodies have become emaciated from lack of food. They are unable to even stand and [sic] not feel dizzy.”

You can listen to his voicemail below:

While the IPC has not officially declared a stage 5 famine, which requires additional data and the kind of access to Gaza that Israel has barred monitors and journalists from having over the last 22 months, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) states: “IPC Level 5 indicates catastrophic levels of food insecurity, where starvation, acute malnutrition, and mortality are widespread. The latest data indicate that these thresholds are being met for food consumption in most of Gaza and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.”

As of this writing (which I’ve had to update several times), 154 Palestinians are known to have died of starvation since October 2023 — 89 of whom were children. Sixty-eight of the 147 known deaths due to starvation have been reported since Al-Bayyaa left that voicemail and the majority have taken place over the last month.

“It has become a habit to shoot people before offering them a little food, or as it is called, a daily protocol or routine,” Al-Bayyaa told Status Coup, alleging that he and his brother Ihab, a 28-year-old lawyer, have been shot at by IDF soldiers as they tried to access the closest food aid site. “I got nothing. I just ran away to save my life.”

And even for the Palestinians able to avoid IDF bullets and access food, it is woefully inadequate, Al-Bayyaa told Status Coup.

“The people here want real food because the trucks only contain small amounts of flour. For half a year, people have not eaten meat, eggs, cheese, sugar, or any traditional food. Unfortunately, as I speak to you, most of the residents have only had one meal, which is a loaf of bread that costs $3 and is empty.”

The flood of photos and videos flowing from Gaza after 22 months of war and hunger has forced even Trump, who infamously boasted of turning Gaza into a resort “Riviera,” to confront the bare bones reality of the Israeli-made crisis of humanity unfolding in Gaza, achieved with the full-throated support and backing of his government.

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When asked on Monday if he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s absurd claim that Israel has "no policy of starvation in Gaza” and that “there is no starvation in Gaza,” Trump replied, “those children look very hungry.” On Israel’s failed negotiations with Hamas, Trump meekly posited, “maybe they have to do it a different way” — as if he is some powerless bystander.

In March — nearly five months ago — Israel imposed a full blockade on food, fuel, water, and other aid coming into the Gaza Strip. After ousting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israel established four Secure Distribution Centers (SDSs) in south and central Gaza in late May. All four are operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by the U.S.

Near the end of June, the Trump administration authorized a $30 million grant to the organization, with $7 million already dispersed. And the U.S. isn’t just supporting GHF financially. Private U.S. security contractors like Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, stand side by side Israeli Soldiers tossing stun grenades and firing off bullets and pepper spray into crowds of starving people; and former advisor to president Trump, and raging Zionist, Rev. Dr. Johnnie Moore Jr. is GHF’s executive chairman.

These distribution centers have functioned more as mousetraps catching starving civilians desperately looking for food, water, and other aid. Over 700 people have already been killed by Israel while attempting to access food at these GHF distribution centers.

Three of these sites are in southern Gaza, in Rafah and Khan Younis (serving a large number of those displaced by the war). The other site is in the central Gaza Strip near Wadi Gaza. All of these so-called secure distribution centers are in heavily militarized zones. “Unfortunately, all aid distribution areas are in a red zone and it is forbidden to be there at all,” said Al-Bayyaa. None are located in northern Gaza where famine conditions are the worst and more than half of the remaining population are currently living.

Wadi Gaza is roughly eight to nine kilometers away from Gaza City. In peacetime, this could be a 15-20 minute drive. During war, the same trip could take hours — if you’re able to get there at all. There’s no fuel, so desperate people travel on foot through a heavily militarized area laden with traps, military checkpoints, and whatever still remains of the bombed out roads and infrastructure.

The GHF is “known for its false propaganda that it brings food to us, and of course it shoots at anyone who approaches, so people are afraid to go there,” said Mahmoud. "But because of hunger, people go out of necessity, nothing more. It is a morsel dipped in blood.”

Roughly 62,000 metric tonnes of basic food staples would need to enter Gaza each month to meet the basic needs for survival, according to the report from the IPC. In March and April, Israel blocked the entry of all food into Gaza; in May 19,900 tonnes entered into Gaza; and 37,800 tonnes entered in June.

From March until June, 248,00 tonnes of food should have entered Gaza. Instead, they received roughly 57,700 tonnes. And that food has merely entered Gaza does not mean it reached even a minority of those who need it most — like babies and children who are most vulnerable to death from starvation and the irreversible effects of malnutrition.

On Wednesday, at least 48 people were killed by Israeli soldiers near the Zikim crossing. “The army shot directly at civilians,” said Ihab, who had set out from Gaza City following rumors of aid trucks near the crossing. “I had great hopes of returning with food for my family, but unfortunately that did not happen.”

After 22 months of live-streamed death, hunger, and suffering, Germany, France, Spain, and the UK have announced they will be airdropping aid into Gaza over the coming days. This announcement followed Jordan (which has already airdropped 128 tonnes of aid into Gaza since the war began) and the United Arab Emirates airdropping aid into Gaza on both Sunday and Monday.

Compared to the tonnes of food needed to feed Gaza, and the looming risk of a mass starvation event orchestrated by Israel (dutifully prodded along by the U.S.), these airdrops might as well be single crumbs falling from the sky.

"Using airdrops for the delivery of humanitarian aid is a futile initiative that smacks of cynicism," said Jean Guy Vataux, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. Adding, “airdrops are notoriously ineffective and dangerous” and “carry far less supply than the 20 tonnes you can get on a truck.”

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, stated on Twitter that the famine is “entirely man-made.” “The only way to reverse this catastrophe is to flood Gaza with a massive scale up of aid,” adding that “UNRWA alone has the equivalent of 6,000 trucks of food & medicine ready to cross into Gaza.”

The only true barriers to meaningful amounts of desperately needed food, water, and other aid reaching the starving mouths of the people of Gaza — and preventing a mass death event to the extent we still can — are Israel, its lackey the U.S., and the soul-blighting cowardice of the international community.

“People must know that the people of Gaza are human beings and they have the right to live like the rest of the world in freedom and dignity, without wars, hunger, bombing, and destruction, and without being oppressed, besieged, or deprived of food,” Mahmoud Al-Bayyaa said. “For half a year, the people of Gaza have not received sugar, protein, or calcium. Their bodies have been destroyed and emaciated. They walk tired and go to sleep hungry. I am talking to you and I am hungry.”

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