Another post surfaced on social media last night—another pointed finger, another attempt to pin the blame on someone else. “THEY” are always the culprits. It doesn’t matter who our “THEY” happens to be—there’s always someone to blame, as long as it’s not our allies, the “US” that we support.
The question echoing in my heart this morning is painfully simple: How did we get here?
How did we, as followers of Christ, become more obsessed with being right than being compassionate?
How did we move from weeping over starving children to arguing about who’s to blame for their suffering?
How—in God’s name—did this happen?
Jesus didn’t walk the streets pointing fingers at sinners or crafting theological loopholes to bypass the sick, the rejected, and the outcast. He didn’t just reach out—He reached in. He interrupted broken systems with unrelenting grace. He never sought a scapegoat; He became the scapegoat.
How did this example of kindness and goodness turn into arguments and discussions? What in the name of Jesus happened to the Church? When did we turn virtues into vultures?
And yet, here we are, again, tangled in another argument meant to distract us.
“It was Israel that bombed the last remaining church in Gaza!”
“No, no—it was a stray missile from Hamas!”
“It was the IDF that killed the starving Gazans queueing up for food!”
“No, no—it is Hamas shooting their own people!”
“It was the Jewish settlers who burnt the churches in Taybeh.”
“No, no—it was the Christians themselves!”
Does it matter?
Does it truly matter who carries the truth
when children fade into bone and breathless silence,
when they die—not quickly—but slowly, achingly, forgotten?
When hostages remain trapped in shadows.
Does it matter who is right and who is wrong when entire families lie crushed beneath concrete tombs.
Does your rightness mend their broken bodies?
Does my wrongness feed a single soul?
Does it make any difference at all—
when truth becomes a trophy,
and mercy is nowhere to be found?
Do our debates, drenched in self-righteousness, ease the agony of the thirsty?
Do our opinions of truth become just another way to justify our God-forsaken complicity?
Have we weaponized the very fabric of Christ’s love—grace, forgiveness, and mercy—only to crucify the very ones He came to seek and save?
O for God’s sake—yes, you and yes, me.
If we dare to walk in the footsteps of Christ, then let us dismount from our self-righteous high horses and face the heartbreaking reality: We are busy blaming everyone else… while the greatest tragedy of our generation unfolds right in front of our eyes, live-streamed for all to see.
If all we bring to Gaza’s starving children is debate, we edge closer to the blueprint of brutality.
For in the shadow of hunger, our silence dressed as discourse becomes a slow, complicit violence.
Consider, for a moment, as uncomfortable and gut-wrenching as this might be, what it feels like to starve to death. (taken from Closer to the Edge – https://substack.com/@closertotheedge/p-169166052)
A HUMANITARIAN COLLAPSE BEYOND LANGUAGE
Right now, in the smoldering ruins of Gaza, more than 100,000 women and children (yes, one hundred thousand) are hovering on the edge of death. Not food insecurity. Not malnutrition. STARVATION. The kind that kills. The kind we read about in history books when we want to feel like we’ve learned something. But we haven’t. The World Food Program says Gaza is at “astonishing levels of desperation.” Doctors are watching babies die with nothing to offer but water. Mothers search for flour like it’s oxygen. Toddlers lie limp on concrete hospital beds while bombs fall in the distance. And the world scrolls on. Gaza is not just under siege — it’s being starved to death. Slowly. Intentionally.
FOR ADULTS, STARVATION IS A DESCENT INTO HELL
It starts with hunger. Loud, aggressive hunger. A growling, feral emptiness that pushes out every thought but food. You might feel lightheaded, angry, cold. You fantasize about bread. You would kill for salt. Your stomach cramps and twists. But the pangs eventually vanish — not because your body’s healed, but because it’s given up. The systems that once screamed now go quiet. You stop burning fat and begin eating your muscles. Your skin thins. Your face hollows. Your ribs show through your shirt.
Your body is cannibalizing itself to keep you alive, but it is not sustainable. Your heart rate slows. Your blood pressure crashes. You grow too weak to walk. The smallest cut becomes infected. Your immune system collapses. Your breath smells like acetone. You lose hair. You lose speech. You lose memory. You lose hope. And still, somehow, you keep waking up. You wake to pain. To confusion. To a world where even dying feels like a distant luxury.
YOUR MIND DISAPPEARS BEFORE YOUR BODY DOES
Starvation doesn’t just attack the body. It takes the brain. You forget names. You forget how to speak. You hallucinate. You talk to people who aren’t there. You weep, or rage, or go completely still. Some curl into a corner and speak gibberish. And some just sit — hour after hour — eyes wide open, staring into nothing, waiting. Your thoughts decay. Your consciousness frays. You aren’t dying in peace. You are unraveling, thread by thread, in front of the people you love.
By the end, your blood is thick with toxins. Your body can no longer digest food, even if it were offered. You may have seizures. You may stop breathing in your sleep. You may live long enough to feel your organs fail. Or you may not. But either way, starvation is not a quiet death. It is not merciful. It is not quick. It is the body screaming its final prayers into a void that never answers.
FOR A TODDLER, IT’S EVEN WORSE
A toddler doesn’t know what calories are. They don’t know why they’re hungry. They only know they hurt. They cry. They reach for their mother. They get carried to an aid site, only to be sprayed with pepper gas. They scream — until they can’t. Their strength leaves them first. Then their voice. Then their eyes go blank. Then their limbs stiffen. They were born healthy. They were learning to walk, to talk, to laugh. And now they’re being dismantled — cell by cell — while the adults argue over ceasefire terms and tweet about tunnels.
A baby doesn’t have the reserves an adult has. They don’t have months. They don’t even have weeks. Their bodies were built for love, not for siege. When milk runs out, when formula isn’t found, when lentils are the only meal in a day, their bodies fold in on themselves. Their bellies bloat. Their skin dries and cracks. Their brains stop growing. They can’t regulate temperature. They can’t fight infection. Their life disappears without language. Without understanding. Without dignity.
THIS IS NOT A NATURAL DISASTER. IT’S A CHOICE.
Israel blames Hamas. Hamas blames Israel. The U.N. says it can’t safely deliver food. The United States says it’s doing all it can. Meanwhile, hundreds of children are starving to death while thousands of Gazans have been shot while trying to reach food. And in the middle of it all, the babies keep dying — not from lack of aid, but from lack of access to it. They are being starved with full knowledge of the international community.
This isn’t famine. This is siege warfare.
This isn’t tragedy. This is cruelty.
HISTORY WILL NOT FORGIVE US
When the war ends — if it ever ends — and the rubble is cleared, and the reports are filed, we will look back at this moment and see not just death but deliberate neglect. We will see children turned to skeletons while world leaders spoke in passive voice. We will see a generation wiped out by silence, by delay, by cowardice.
There is still time. The borders could open. The aid could flow. The babies could be fed.
But every day we wait, more of them cross the invisible line between the living and the forgotten.
And when they go, they do not go quickly.
They go slowly.
Painfully.
Quietly.
Remember the question of Dr. Ezzideen Shehab—a 28-year-old physician born and raised in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza:
How did we come to this? How did we become a people the world no longer believes are fully human? Is it because our blood is too cheap? Or is it because the world has learned to look, and then to look away?
If so, then it is not we who have lost our humanity.
It is you. It is me
''For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink'' Matthew 25:35
If this article gutted you, please share it. Don’t let more babies vanish without a sound.
‘Lives hanging by a thread’: Looking at hunger and starvation in Gaza | America Magazine