As Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza enters its third consecutive month in May 2025, the world is bearing witness to a humanitarian catastrophe of unspeakable proportions — one that is unfolding not just in real time, but in the bloodstream of the next generation…
From starvation and siege to the birth of children marked by toxic war exposure, the collapse of Gaza is no longer limited to infrastructure or even human life. It now extends into biology itself.
Human rights organizations and medical professionals on the ground are sounding the alarm: what is happening in Gaza is not simply a war. It is the methodical destruction of a people — their homes, their food, their future — through starvation, disease, and genetic trauma. The evidence is overwhelming and, in many cases, documented in the open.
The Siege Begins: October 2023
The crisis began with chilling clarity. On October 9, 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ deadly attack two days earlier. “No electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed,” Gallant said. It marked the beginning of one of the most extreme blockades in modern history.
In the weeks that followed, Gaza’s fragile infrastructure began to collapse. Electricity vanished. Hospitals relied on backup generators that soon ran dry. Clean water disappeared, as did access to basic medicines. Israel’s total closure of Gaza’s border crossings created what humanitarian groups have described as a textbook case of collective punishment.
Bearing Witness: November 2024
By November 1, 2024, the extent of the destruction was made plain in a haunting article published in The Nation titled “The North of Gaza Is an Open Graveyard.” Dr. Ezin Shahab, a physician trapped inside the besieged Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, chronicled his experience as medical systems crumbled and entire neighborhoods disappeared.
“The hospital became a place of horror. We had to decide who might survive and who we had no hope of saving,” Shahab wrote.
Without fuel, anesthesia, or antibiotics, doctors performed amputations with flashlights. Patients died not from wounds, but from the absence of basic care. Shahab lost 72 members of his extended family during the bombardments and was ultimately forced to flee south.
“There is no north anymore. No sanctuary. Just an open graveyard.”
His testimony offered a rare and intimate look at the human toll of Israel’s siege strategy — not from the air, but from within Gaza’s collapsing health system.
A Fleeting Reprieve: January 2025
In January 2025, after more than a year of warfare and international outcry, a temporary ceasefire was brokered. For a brief period, humanitarian aid flowed back into Gaza. Convoys brought desperately needed flour, fuel, and medicine. Families began to receive bread again, and some hospitals restarted emergency services.
But this respite was short-lived. The ceasefire collapsed within weeks. And what followed was even worse.
Total Siege Resumes: March 2025
By early March 2025, Israel had reinstated the full blockade. No fuel. No food. No medicine. No clean water. Not a single aid truck was permitted to cross the border. According to The New Yorker, medical clinics in southern Gaza began to resemble war zones. The humanitarian crisis, already dire, descended into something unprecedented.
With bakeries closed, families survived on a can of beans or lentils per day — often shared among six or seven people. Clean drinking water was scarce, and disease spread rapidly in overcrowded tent cities.
The siege quickly became the longest uninterrupted blockade of Gaza since the war began.
Starvation Confirmed: April 2025
In April, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor confirmed what medical workers had been saying for weeks: Gaza was in famine. The group reported dozens of deaths from malnutrition, including infants, elderly patients, and injured people whose wounds could not heal without nutrition.
One of the most tragic victims was four-month-old Janan Al-Scafi, who died of severe malnutrition at Al-Rantisi Hospital. Gaza’s Health Ministry painted a bleak picture:
- Over 60,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition.
- At least 16,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women in urgent need of nutritional and medical assistance.
“The crime of starvation in Gaza is fully-fledged and committed in broad daylight,” said Lima Bastami of Euro-Med. “The emaciated bodies, the lines at charity kitchens, the death toll — this is all visible, and it is all intentional.”
The War on the Womb: May 3, 2025
What makes the current phase of Gaza’s suffering particularly horrifying is its genetic reach.
On May 3, Dr. Shahab wrote a harrowing message on social media, recounting the birth of a full-term baby girl with anencephaly — a condition where the brain and skull are missing.
“She had no brain — not in the poetic sense of innocence, but anatomically… No memory. No future.”
He described the mother’s ordeal: nine months of starvation, displacement, and trauma, only to give birth to silence. The baby had eyelashes. Fingers. A beating heart. But no life to live.
Shahab and his colleagues believe this and similar cases are not isolated. They report a pattern of congenital deformities: cleft palates, malformed limbs, neural tube defects, and organ damage. They suspect environmental toxins — potentially depleted uranium or dioxins — as the root cause.
“Bombs struck not only buildings, but chromosomes. This is a war against birth .”
Scientific Warning: The Lancet Study
Supporting Shahab’s grim diagnosis is a recent peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet, which estimates that up to 200,000 indirect deaths could occur in Gaza from the siege and war. These are not deaths from explosions — but from starvation, untreated diseases, and long-term genetic and biological harm.
Key findings include:
- In-utero exposure to war pollutants may cause permanent developmental disorders.
- War-related malnutrition could affect cognitive outcomes and immune function in an entire generation.
- Chronic toxic exposure may result in DNA mutations passed down for decades.
“The most profound consequence of war may not be visible in the rubble,” the study warned, “but in the chromosomes of children not yet born.”
A Moral Reckoning: Bernie Sanders Speaks Out
As the death toll mounts and international agencies demand a ceasefire, voices of conscience have begun to rise — among them, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. In a passionate speech from the Senate floor, Sanders denounced the siege as a war crime and a moral disgrace.
“Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention… Civilized people do not starve children to death.”
He listed the facts:
- Over 52,000 Palestinians killed, 60% women, children, or elderly.
- Over 15,000 children dead — many from starvation.
- 65,000 children currently showing signs of malnutrition.
Sanders criticized not only Israel’s conduct but the United States’ role in funding it:
“What is happening in Gaza is not just being allowed. It is being funded. Last year alone, the U.S. gave $18 billion in military aid to Israel. And another $12 billion has been approved.”
He warned that Washington’s political silence is driven not by lack of awareness, but by the influence of lobbying groups:
“Many of my colleagues privately express horror. But they are afraid to speak out because AIPAC and its super PACs will spend millions to defeat them.”
Sanders called for an immediate ceasefire, massive humanitarian aid, and the end of U.S. complicity in what he described as the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza.
“We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu’s war machine. We must rebuild Gaza — not for billionaires, but for the Palestinian people.”
Calculated Extermination, Without Mercy
The tragedy in Gaza is not confined to one generation. It is etched into the genetic code of a people under siege. The war is no longer only about bombs and borders. It is about the cells of children, the health of pregnant mothers, the future of an entire nation.
“Some weapons do not explode,” Dr. Shahab wrote. “They incubate.”
In Gaza, war has entered the womb. And unless the world acts NOW, it will remain there — shaping the lives of young Palestinians who survive, and those who are yet to be born.
