Now that its formally genocide, this is fair.
Opinion |
After Seeing Gaza's Starving Children, My Work as an Israeli Pediatrician Will Never Be the Same
The horrific images from a virtual tour of Gaza's Nasser Hospital – before Israel shelled it this week – make it clearer than ever: The power is in our hands. We must stop the atrocities committed in our name
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Dr. Ahmed al-Farra with Seela Barbakh, 11 months old, weighing 3.5 kilograms. Photographed at the end of July at Nasser Hospital. Not known to have preexisting illnesses.
Michal Feldon
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Aug 29, 2025 8:28 am IDT
During the doctors' rounds in a large pediatric ward of a hospital in central Israel, as I face a 1-year-old infant who is sitting in a new stroller, laughing and eating Bamba snacks, I find myself in a futile discussion with an anxious mother who doesn't want the child to be discharged, because he "isn't eating anything."
"But he's eating now," I tell her, "and we've already dealt with the illness that brought him here, and he looks great – healthy. It's not good to be in a hospital ward for no reason."
There's no chance of convincing her. "Doctor, Bamba is not food. Look, he's throwing his egg at me." "No problem," I reply, because I know she'll stay until he eats the egg. "Stay. Gladly," I add with a smile, feeling as if I'm choking inside.
This is a ward full of children who are actually healthy. At least almost all of them are. In most cases it would be possible to treat them in outpatient clinics; in most cases they could be treated with oral medications. Without infusions, without expensive blood tests and without complicated imaging. And many of them are hospitalized because of parental anxiety – simply because it's an option.
Despite the fact that public medicine in Israel is suffering from a significant economic deficit, it's still very "pampering" compared to many places in the world. But the disparity between the medicine I practice on a daily basis in this country, and
what is happening in the Gaza Strip – just a few dozen kilometers from me – is totally insupportable and unacceptable.
In an article last Friday in Haaretz ("'
Starvation Is Everywhere': Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose the Scale of the Horror"), reporters Nir Hasson and Yarden Michaeli joined a doctors' round, via video, in a pediatric ward of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the largest hospital in the southern Strip. Their harrowing virtual tour took place just days before an
Israeli tank fired shells at the roof of the hospital this week, killing some 20 people and wounding dozens of others. Among the dead were four medical personnel and five journalists, including Moaz Abu Taha, the photographer who guided the Haaretz reporters through Nasser.
I watched the footage showing Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of the department, with great emotional distress. Al-Farra moves from one starving child to another, illustrating all the phenomena that I'd only read about in medical textbooks: marasmus – severe malnutrition due to a caloric deficiency – and kwashiorkor, severe malnutrition due to protein deficiency: loss of muscle tissue and fat; serious skin ailments; hair falling out; changes in skin and hair color; large, bloated abdomens with protruding ribs, sometimes with signs of rickets; and sad or apathetic children who barely react to him.
The infants don't even follow him with their gaze, their heads are drooping to the side. They look like rag dolls. The older children don't look him in the eyes, don't move their head. Not a muscle in their face moves, they neither smile nor cry. As though there is no child inside.
Listening closely to the learned, gentle physician, one understands that no blood tests were performed on any of these young patients. He doesn't know their blood sodium or protein or vitamin levels. He doesn't know whether they're anemic or if there is evidence of dehydration. One also understands that the only treatment available to him is a special World Health Organization feeding formula rich in calories and protein, but there is no way to administer it via a feeding tube, nor are there special intravenous solutions or the necessary equipment.
The only way to care for these children is to feed them orally with these formulas. But what happens if the child is too weak and emaciated to be fed in this way? And how do we know that a refeeding syndrome hasn't developed – that is, whether they are suffering from a life-threatening imbalance of electrolytes that can occur after refeeding in a condition of severe malnutrition? And who will track the infant's progress neurologically to monitor the extent of their developmental damage after many months of starvation?
The answer is that there is no real way to treat these children, and certainly no way to keep track of possible complications. Anyone who succeeds in eating the enriched formula will get a few more days in the hospital, without the benefit of any laboratory tests, and will then be discharged to the broiling-hot tents they live in, without proper, long-term follow-up. Infants in Gaza are being fed starch dissolved in water or herbal tea, because there is no mother's milk or baby formula, nor even cow's milk.
There are insufficient medical personnel to keep track of these infants, as the existing staff is overwhelmed, working to save lives. Because Nasser Hospital is located in an area designated a "red zone" by the army, families take a risk by going there even when their child's life is in danger. It is clear that no one will go there for a simple clinic-based follow-up.
Thousands of children in the Strip are suffering from severe, life-threatening malnutrition and more than 270 people have already died from hunger. The health services have been so badly damaged by attacks on hospitals,
sieges, a dire shortage of basic medical equipment and medications, and the killing or detention of about 1,800 medical professionals, that there is no way to help these children. They will die or remain with severe neurological deficits for the rest of their lives.
Never again will I be able to make the rounds with colleagues in my ward without thinking about the virtual rounds Hasson and Michaeli took in August 2025. Nor will I ever be able to come to terms with the horrific images they described and showed of dozens of starving youngsters.
The power is in our hands only. We must put a stop to the atrocities that are being committed in our name.
Dr. Michal Feldon is a pediatrician.