‘The Hunger Games’: Inside Israel’s aid death traps for starving Gazans

This following excerpt is from just one of the stories in this article. Within this one alone, there is so much tragedy, so much cruelty deliberately caused by other humans--wretched humans who will never be held accountable as long as we allow the Western governments to be complicit in their crimes:

In the early hours of June 11, before sunrise, 19-year-old Hatem Shaldan and his brother Hamza, 23, went to wait for aid trucks near the Netzarim Corridor in the central Gaza Strip. They hoped to return with a bag of white flour for their family of five. Instead, Hamza returned with his younger brother’s body wrapped in a white burial shroud.

The Shaldan family had lived virtually without food for nearly two months due to Israel’s blockade, crammed into a classroom-turned-shelter in eastern Gaza City. Their home, once nearby, was destroyed completely by an Israeli airstrike in January 2024.

At around 1:30 a.m., the two brothers joined dozens of starving Palestinians on Al-Rashid Street along the shore upon hearing that trucks carrying flour would enter the Strip. Two hours later, they heard shouts of “The trucks are coming!” followed immediately by the sound of Israeli artillery shelling.

“We didn’t care about the shelling,” Hamza recounted to +972 Magazine. “We just ran toward the trucks’ lights.”

But in the chaos of the crowd, the brothers got separated. Hamza managed to grab a 25kg bag of flour. When he returned to their agreed-upon meeting spot, Hatem wasn’t there.

“I kept calling his phone, over and over, without answer,” Hamza said. “My heart ached. I began seeing dead bodies being carried over to where I was. I refused to believe my brother might be among them.”

Hours after Hatem went missing, Hamza received a call from a friend: a photo of an unidentified body had surfaced in local Whatsapp groups, taken at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza. Hamza sent a cousin — a tuk-tuk driver — to check. “Half an hour later, he called back, his voice shaking. He told me it was Hatem.”

Upon hearing this, Hamza passed out. When he came to, people were pouring water on his face. He rushed to the hospital, where a man wounded in the same artillery strike explained what had happened: Hatem and about 15 others had tried to hide in tall grass when Israeli tanks opened fire.

“Hatem was hit by shrapnel in his legs,” the man said. “He bled for hours. Dogs circled them. Eventually, when more aid trucks arrived, people helped move the bodies onto one of them.”

In total, 25 Palestinians were killed that morning waiting for aid trucks on Al-Rashid Street. Hamza brought Hatem’s body back to Gaza City and buried him beside their mother, who was killed by an Israeli sniper in August 2024. Their older brother, Khalid, 21, had died months earlier — in a January airstrike while evacuating wounded civilians on his horse cart.

Delete the middle east.