Left: Amir, minutes before he was felled by Israeli gunfire. Right: The award-winning photograph capturing Sudan’s 1993 famine
Let me begin today’s column with the story of Amir, a boy barely 10 years old. His story depicts the everyday tragedy that awaits starving and highly emaciated Palestinian children and adults at the US-Israeli food distribution points in Gaza.
First some context: Desperate Palestinians in their tens of thousands flock to these US-Israeli-run centres, seeking food for their starving families, despite knowing full well that they may fall victim to Israeli troops’ satanic ritual—killing or wounding on average 20 Palestinians a day.
At these death traps, formally and euphemistically called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the death toll since May this year has topped 1100. The total death toll has now surpassed 60,000 and is growing rapidly, at a speed that rivals the descent of Israeli hardline politicos’ moral depravity.
The story of Amir entered the public domain this Monday, as US President Donald Trump golfed in Scotland and lamented that no one had thanked him for providing $60 million in assistance to feed hungry Palestinians.
Amir’s story was told in a podcast by Anthony Aguilar, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who recently resigned from his role in the GHF. Aguilar witnessed Israeli forces kill Amir—alongside countless others—while manning a GHF aid distribution point in southern Gaza on May 28. This is how he related the story:
“This young boy, Amir, walked up to me, barefoot and wearing tattered clothes that hung off his emaciated body. He walked 12km to get there, and when he got there, he thanked us for the remnants and the small crumbs that he got.
“He set them down on the ground, because I was kneeling at this point, and he set his food down, and he placed his hands on my face, on the side of my face, on my cheeks, these frail, skeleton, emaciated hands—dirty—and he put them on my face, and he kissed me.
“He kissed me, and he said thank you in English, thank you. And he collected his items, and he walked back to the group.
“Then he was shot at with pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades and bullets shot at his feet [and then] in the air, and he runs away scared, and the IDF [Israeli army] were shooting at the crowd.
“They’re shooting into this crowd and Palestinians—civilians, human beings—are dropping to the ground, getting shot. And Amir was one of them.”
Amir’s story was just one tragedy that should leave morally depraved Western leaders—the modern-day imperialists—dying of shame, as they genuflect before Zionist power in the misguided belief that servility to a genocide-committing Israel is more virtuous than saving Palestinians from starvation. In outlandish statements, they justify their reprehensible inaction by claiming that intervention might be seen as rewarding Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group they have branded as terrorists.
Amir’s tragic end bears some eerie resemblances to the Sudanese boy—Kong Nyong. Barely three years old, Nyong crawled half a mile to a UN food centre while a vulture ominously waited to prey on him. Nyong was in the centre of the Pulitzer-winning picture taken by South African photojournalist Kevin Carter in March 1993 during the Sudanese famine. The picture shook the collective conscience of the world and contributed to ending the famine, as it compelled rich nations to redouble their efforts to feed the hungry.
But similar images abound in Gaza—of weeping young mothers with nothing but unclean water to offer their hungry, speechless infants; of children scrambling at soup kitchens for a ladle of watery lentil broth; and of survivors taking part in funeral prayers for children and adults killed in Israeli bombings.
None of these images have shaken Western imperialist leaders into action, even though they acknowledge seeing horrific scenes. Their inaction amounts to an endorsement of Israel’s genocide. Some might argue that French President Emmanuel Macron is an exception, having vowed to recognise the state of Palestine during the UN sessions in September. But why grant Israel time until then?
Britain’s Keir Starmer proved a shameful disappointment. He said he would recognise Palestine during the September UN session only if Israel had not taken action by then to address the hunger crisis. In other words, he grants Israel two more months to use starvation as a weapon of genocide while continuing to supply war material to Israel. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney also announced on Wednesday that Ottawa would recognise Palestine but conditioned it on Hamas playing no role in Palestinian politics. As expected, Trump warned Canada of losing tariff concessions and pledged the United States’ unwavering support for Israel—even as the widely respected Israeli-Palestinian human rights group B’Tselem, in a special report, declared Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide.
Unlike Sudan’s baby Nyong, in the case of Palestinians—including children like Amir—there are thousands of hooded vultures: trigger-happy Israeli Defence Forces, who, with impunity, prey on starving people, many of whom haven’t had a proper meal in days. These vultures also take the form of Western complicity—and bombs and missiles that strike in a flash, unlike Nyong’s vulture, which circled in rhythmic dives and waited a few meters away. To save Nyong, photojournalist Carter chased the vulture off after capturing the image. No one was there to save poor little Amir.
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