Netzarim: Between Hunger and Death

Eyewitness accounts of four attempts to receive aid from the so-called "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" reported to me on 16 June 2025

A Canadian nurse spoke a few weeks ago at a protest outside the US Consulate in Montreal and warned not only that American “aid” companies are trying to do away with the U.N. Relief Works Agency (and by extension, Palestinian refugee status) but in particular that the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), now being reported on by Dropsite and other actual journalism sites and Palestinian journalists on the ground, is not to be trusted. She said its proposal that she’d seen before GHF started, was a plan in which, every two weeks, Palestinians would be obligated to pick up a box of food from access points, the ones we know now have been the sites of multiple massacres – containing enough calories for the two weeks only, barely enough as usual. We now know GHF is a Mossad-funded US colonial scheme, not that original, in which collaborator mafia gangs in Gaza have been coerced into working for them to steal food and sell it at extravagant prices. In addition to the massacres that have taken place at collection sites in recent weeks, MASSACRES of starving people, the scheme is deliberately badly organized with no way to fairly distribute food put in place; coercion and lies being dished out by employees who tell those who leave empty handed (but alive and starving) that Hamas is the one doing the looting and killing. Meanwhile Hamas is going full speed ahead in the U.K., suing the government for designating it a terrorist organization.

These Americans working for GHF were handed a propaganda line and are stupid enough to think people in Gaza will buy it.

The nurse had gone on to say the GHF and all related schemes must be vigorously denounced and stopped, along with any plans in which Palestinian governance and decisions are made by non-Palestinians. Nobody gets to decide what happens except Palestinians themselves, from the river to the sea. “Nothing about us without us.”

My friend in Gaza has related to me four separate incidents in which he tried to obtain a box of food. The first time he arrived at the distribution point an hour’s walk from his home, where the scene was chaotic with no more packages left, he entered a conversation with one of the American employees who lied about Hamas and tried to recruit him as a collaborator, impressed with his English fluency. My friend asked what he thought he was doing there on his land in Gaza? He told him he didn’t need a job and that he did not believe for a second that Hamas was stealing food. He asked him why the organization deliberately sets up distribution with no chance of orderly distribution, and was told he shouldn’t expect anything to run smoothly with all these desperate people storming the scene.

II.

The second nightmarish night (see video) he managed to get a package of food despite great hardship and horror. As he left, Israeli quadcopters starting shooting at people. It was 4 a.m., there must have been at least 2000 people there, and he had helped a woman there alone with a shopping bag trying to climb up one of the sand dunes in the heat, through fear and starvation.

III.

On his third attempt to get something from the GHF, this is what happened, in his own words:

While I was running to the Netzarim checkpoint to get food from the American company, I arrived late, and I had run out of time and food, when I got there I stood at the top of the hill and looked at the remains of the food, there were bags of flour, I wanted to go down to take it, and the American soldier stopped me and prevented me from going down, and told me that there was nothing left, I told him that I see that I see some flour on the ground there, let me take it. He gave me just one minute, I want it for my family, I said, and then he started shouting at me and I shouted loudly, I want to take that flour, then he started shouting again to “get the fuck out of here” and then he drew his weapon and fired under my feet in the hill to scare me and force me to leave, then I had no choice but to go back home without anything.

He said to me, “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a false organization that has nothing to do with anything humanitarian. It is only a group of mercenaries serving the agendas of the occupation under the cover of an organization that supports humanity and provides services to the hungry in Gaza.

How can an organization claim to provide humanitarian services while they force us to go to a military site controlled by the occupation, knowing that in this place the occupation killed hundreds of unarmed Palestinians who were on their way to displacement? If this organization really provides humanitarian services, why don't they hire civilians? Why are these employees shooting all the time when people are present?”

IV.

He decided to try and go back one more time to get bread and food for his family. I spoke to him the morning after this horror, and he was barely coherent, completely traumatized. He sustained some wounds on his back and elbows and knee.

Here is what happened, in his own words:

12 June 2025

Netzarim between hunger and death.

You may or may not survive.

At midnight tonight, I went to Netzarim checkpoint, not for a walk or just to pass the time, but to search for scraps of food to keep me and my family alive at a time when merchants and thieves took advantage of our weakness, hunger and need for food by raising prices that no ordinary person can afford, unless you earn money through looting, killing and stealing.

I went with my soul on my palm, not caring about my life except that I wanted to bring food for my family, and there are only two options, either to return to your home or not to return, as bullets do not differentiate between resistance and hunger, between a dreamer of life and a seeker of bread.

I said to myself, “Death, give me some time to live but to be able to provide some food and flour for those I left behind.” I could have died treacherously from the occupation, which does not care about the blood of a Palestinian, or from a thief who sees in my hunger an opportunity to steal from me or kill me.

We and death are on the same road, where shots are fired over our heads and on our bodies that are exhausted by war and hunger.

I cared about nothing but a loaf of bread.

While I was running to escape the bullets, the person running next to me fell to the ground, I stopped running and started crawling towards him, only to find that he had been shot in the shoulder,

At that moment I did not realize what I could do, whether to continue my way towards Netzarim to get food or to withdraw and help this injured person.

I remained stunned, looking like a dead body.

Lying on the ground next to him, and him saying to me, “I don't want to die, I want to go back, help me get out of here.”

And here I did not realize how and what to do in the middle of the shooting,

The bodies are lying on the side of the road and no one can approach.

But what I do know is that I started dragging him towards a safe area so that we could settle down for a while,

I carried him on my back and started crawling towards the remains of a house that was bombed earlier.

His blood was running down my face and my hands were shaking weakly from crawling on my knees and hands, to reach a safer place. I wanted to go somewhere to hide us.

We sat down to catch our breath, and we found ourselves surprised to find a quadcopter flying over us. All around we could hear bombs, shooting of fire-bolts, and a tank was blasting close by.

At that moment we realized that we were finished, as a bomb was thrown towards us, but it only hit us with only minor scratches.

After suffering from crawling on the ground amidst the gunfire, we finally made it to a safe area to settle down.

Then we tried to escape to another place, but we couldn't, so we stayed until the morning hours, when the others returned and asked for help. Hours later, we were able to get out of the area and reach the ambulance. The ambulance could not come to us. That is the way it is, there are places they can’t go.

I cleaned my face from the blood that covered my beard, then I returned home stealthily to hide my shirt and throw it away so that my mother, who was waiting for my return, would not see it, with her prayers that she was reciting and praying to God to protect me.

I came back with fear, and I threw myself on the bed and wondered.

What if I come back safely, what if I die, how will my mother and my family be, how will my beloved be waiting for me, how and how?

In Gaza we don't just die from bombing, we die from hunger and fear.

Hunger that breaks homes, makes adults cry like children, and makes a loaf of bread a wish.

We feel as if everyone agreed on our death, hunger and bombing.

They send us a false American company that claims to be humanitarian, while at the same time they kill us in cold blood.

They are all liars.

This is the jihad of survival... The jihad of living when death from hunger is closer than anything else.