“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” The tragic situation the people of Gaza are living through and the sense of powerlessness lead us to lose hope and trust. Yet, it is the certainty that the hungry and the thirsty in Gaza will one day be satisfied that reignites our commitment to demand justice. 

A protest demonstration

Last Sunday, despair and the feeling of being forgotten led the people of Gaza to launch massive protest demonstration to tell the world that children are dying from hunger. The population has been suffering for months without the basic necessities to survive, their bodies weakened and frail after nearly two years of hardship and suffering. For months now, food, medicine, and electricity have not been entering Gaza — these vital necessities are blocked just a few kilometers away from those who need them, and that is inhumane. The sound of ambulance sirens produces a long and deafening noise which should awaken the dulled consciences of those silently witnessing a slaughter, one that becomes a massacre when food is denied to the hungry and water to the thirsty. This is the greatest scandal, the indelible shame of a world that has placed economic interests and greed for power at the top of its value scale, and human life and the denial of human rights at the very bottom.

Death in real time

Elderly people, people with disabilities, and children make up a large and fragile part of a population that no longer has a home and may no longer have a land — a population subjected to deadly attacks while sleeping in tents and makeshift shelters. To the already extremely high number of those who have died, those still under the rubble, those injured, and those orphaned, we must add the equally painful number of those dying from hunger. The world knows that for many months now, countless children have been suffering from malnutrition and that thousands have died of starvation. It seems unbelievable, but this is happening just a few kilometers away from a world that consumes beyond its needs and wastes vital resources. The world watches, live, the avoidable deaths of children dying from hunger: among the 900 who were killed while queuing in humiliation for a piece of bread, as the majority were fathers trying to find food for their families. Those who did manage to return home with something to survive on often found their children already dead. A video showed the heartbreaking tragedy of an elderly and frail man who, while standing in line for food, died from hunger and heat. This is the daily, painful reality for my friends in Gaza, for so many people--human beings, children who deserve to be respected without any distinction of nationality or faith, like all children of the world.

Images of suffering that unite consciences
During this long period of violence, it has been the images of suffering--of children, the disabled, and the elderly in Gaza-- that have united the consciences of those who feel powerless in the face of so much pain, of those who do not want to be complicit in what has happened and continues to happen in Gaza. The deep, sad eyes, the tears shed from suffering and hunger, the severe physical and emotional trauma of the children of Gaza are a silent cry to humanity.

The strong appeals of the Holy Father, the heartrending sound of ambulance sirens, the mobilization of international civil society, Heads of State, and eminent authorities and figures, all remain unheard by those who continue to use every kind of weapon against the unarmed, and who do not realize that denied rights are a legacy that cannot be erased from history.

The eyes, the tears, the broken and trembling little bodies of the children of Gaza outrage us and make us cry out for peace, make us hunger and thirst for justice.