What does Israel’s starvation of Gaza do to the human body?

Israel continues to implement its policy of forced starvation on Palestinians, killing hundreds of children, men and women and plunging the entire population into catastrophic levels of hunger and malnutrition.

A new statement published in the medical journal The Lancet, authored by a group of scholars and physicians including Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta and Ilan Pappé, says, “Starvation is being used repeatedly and relentlessly as a weapon of war.”

The genocide in Gaza, the letter adds, “is a defining ethical test for the global public health community, social scientists and academic associations. Silence is not an option. As scholars and health professionals, we face a stark choice: either we uphold our collective ethical responsibility and speak out to prevent further mass violence and starvation or we will be remembered for our selective silence and inaction during one of the most urgent moral and public health crises of our time.”

Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a member of Healthcare Workers for Humanity, is an emergency physician who has worked in Gaza for years, including during the last 22 months of genocide. He tells The Electronic Intifada Podcast that the starvation in Gaza is catastrophic.

“What we’re seeing is that there’s a total deprivation of everything that a human being needs to be able to thrive,” he says.

Forced and sustained starvation is “shaving years off” of Palestinians’ lives, he explains, especially children, whose cognitive and growth development is dependent on good nutrition in their earliest years.

“Every day that passes that they are under these conditions of malnourishment, especially the severe ones, you are gambling with their future. They have cognitive issues that will develop as a result of this that will be irreversible.”

Children’s immune systems will be irrevocably weaker, he says, adding that children will have shorter statures and developmental delays.

“Not reaching the classic milestones that we see kids reach – even crawling and then walking, or then speaking, all of these things get delayed,” he says. “All of these things get delayed, they get pushed back because of what’s being inflicted on them.”

Children are at higher risk to develop chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, affecting overall life expectancy.

He discusses the way that Western legacy media has covered Israel’s starvation of Gaza, referring to an editors’ note published by The New York Times’ on 30 July. The note concerned an article featuring a photograph of a starving child.

In the editors’ note, The Times says that the child had “pre-existing health problems,” lending cover to Israel’s claim that it is not starving Palestinians. David Collier, a pro-Israel lobbyist – misleadingly described as a journalist in some media outlets – had tried to cast doubt on the veracity of The New York Times’ article by pointing out that the child had a genetic disease.

“Ask any doctor if that changes how they’re viewing the starvation in Gaza,” Thaer Ahmad says.

“Ask any public health official, any nutritionist. Yes, cystic fibrosis kids are more at risk, but this is like [a] canary in the coal mine sort of scenario here. If something like that happens, something [like] that sort of tragedy happens in front of you, it’s not about trying to figure out, oh, well, he was sick already, he had some other medical illness. It’s about mobilizing all of the resources that you have to be able to assist what’s happening in Gaza. And that’s also not happening. So it truly, truly is horrifying, and I think pictures of hungry children are not accurate in the portrayal of just how tragic it is on the ground.”

Ahmad also explains the physiology of refeeding syndrome – a paradoxical condition that can lead to sudden death when a starving patient is suddenly given food.

“As you starve to death, your organs begin to shut down, your body begins to waste away, your ability to just even function as a normal, independent human being starts to vanish. And so in a very twisted way, if you are somehow presented with all of the adequate nutrients and calories that you need in food, while this process has already started, your body wouldn’t know how to process any of that. And as a result of that, you may have all sorts of problems, including in your inability to break it down and digest it, or the electrolytes and the nutrients that are in there [can] cause problems for you, like having seizures, risk of death, going into a coma, cardiovascular issues.”

As Gaza’s healthcare system remains in total collapse, Ahmad notes that his colleagues’ abilities to care for the most vulnerable patients, especially those who are experiencing acute and chronic starvation, is extremely threatened.

“The ability to treat patients has been compromised, the ability for doctors to maintain the standard of care, it’s all compromised in a way that’s – again – deliberate. And it’s a policy that’s being implemented.”

Produced by Tamara Nassar.

Photo by Omar Ashtawy/APA images