Hunger was nothing new to Amir, an 11-year-old boy. He was used to falling asleep to the sound of his brothers’ empty stomachs and resting his head on his mother’s tired arm, in a desperate attempt to forget the pain of another day without bread.

But that morning, he seemed different. He stood at the door and said, “Mom, I’m going to get us something to eat, God willing.”

His mother grabbed his trembling hand, looked into his eyes, and whispered, choking back tears:

Come back to me, just come back to me. I don’t want to lose you.

Amir: shot simply for trying to get food

Amir walked more than 12 kilometers. Barefoot, thin, dragging his small body over the rubble of houses and torn roads, every step taking him past a corpse, a hole, or the smell of death.

He carried in his heart a small hope that he would return home with something, anything, to feed his brothers and mother.

At what people in Gaza call the “aid trap,” controlled by Israeli and American forces, Amir stood in a long line with children, women, and older people waiting, their eyes fixed on the soldiers throwing boxes of food from a distance.

Amir approached, very close. He kissed an ex-American soldier’s hand after receiving his food.

The child smiled and kissed the soldier’s hand.

His action was not one of servility, but of hunger.

He thought that people would be kind if they were thanked.

Amir walked away, clutching his food crumbs as if he had found a treasure, but he did not go far.

Only seconds later, the sound of gunfire rang out.

A single bullet from the IDF pierced his body.

He fell to the ground, his hand still clutching some food and biscuits, blood flowing onto the dirt.

One of the young men ran towards him, carried him and shouted: “Why?! Why?! He’s just a child, people!”

But Amir did not answer. His eyes were open, staring at the sky, as if asking God: “Am I dead because of a piece of biscuit?”

He was not the first, and he will not be the last

His mother came back looking for him in the evening and found him in the hospital, exhausted, covered in a white robe that didn’t suit him.

She put her hand on his cold forehead and said:

“I told you to come back to me… but not like this.”

Amir was not the only one, but he became a symbol.

A symbol of childhood dying every day from hunger, oppression, and without a lens to document it.

Amir was not the first, and he will not be the last in the line of hunger and death that stretches every day in Gaza.

In a sector that has been besieged for more than 18 years, more than two million people live at the mercy of bombing, deprivation, complete closure of crossings, and famine that is intensifying on the people, who are no longer able to provide food.

Israel has now threatened more than half of Gaza’s population with starvation, according to United Nations reports, at a time when aid is only reaching them in humiliating doses, under conditions that residents describe as “deliberate humiliation.”

Children like Amir do not understand the language of politics or the maps of war. They only know that they are hungry and that the road to a loaf of bread is fraught with death.

Featured image supplied