Det har brug for mad, værdighed, retfærdighed og handling – nu.
af Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish.
Følgende kronik blev offentliggjort i Toronto Star den 5. august 2025. Her er linket til begyndelsen af artiklen på Toronto Stars hjemmeside. Forfatteren har givet os tilladelse til at offentliggøre den.
Gaza doesn’t need empty statements. It needs food, dignity, justice and action — now
By Izzeldin Abuelaish, Contributor
Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian Canadian medical doctor, was born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip and is an author and professor emeritus, clinical public health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.
The images of Gaza tell us everything we need to know: charred children, weeping mothers clutching lifeless infants, fathers burying their children in plastic bags and entire families erased in a single airstrike have been shown repeatedly alongside the long lines of thirsty and hungry people waiting for what will never come.
What more must Gaza show for the world to act? It’s what countless experts, and a UN special committee have named a genocide. And it’s happening in real time, livestreamed on the internet. The world knows and the response from the international community has failed a moral test.
The destruction of Gaza is a deliberate and direct policy of the Israeli government, which is being enabled by the silence, indifference, or endorsement from the many governments that fund, arm, or politically shield Israel from accountability.
For nearly two years, Gaza has been dying in slow motion and burning. And before that, for many years, it has been suffocating. Today, many people in Gaza are closer to death than to a loaf of bread.
Gaza is a moral mirror. It reflects the fragility of international law, the hypocrisy of global diplomacy and the dangerous elasticity of human empathy. When children are starving to death in full view and are still not being rescued, we must ask: What have we become?
The people of Gaza are not statistics, they are human beings, students, doctors, musicians, mothers, people who dream. They are trapped by an international order that sees their lives as expendable.
What is happening in Gaza today is an engineered humanitarian collapse executed in full view of the international community. This is not war — it is annihilation; an unarmed, captive population being erased.
The most unbearable aspect is global inaction. The world is failing every day when it settles for another statement calling for calm, or “we are monitoring the situation,” “expressing concern,” or “urging restraint.” Gaza doesn’t need monitoring. It needs mercy, food and an end to impunity. The gap between Gaza’s suffering and the world’s response is no longer just injustice, it is complicity.
Far too many people no longer have water, medicine, electricity of shelter. The people there are not asking for the impossible. They simply want food and water, a moment of peace to bury their dead, a chance to sleep without fear of bombardment. They want to survive.
What Gaza needs is an immediate lifting of the siege. It needs open crossings. It needs unrestricted access to food, water, medicine and fuel. It needs protection — not just from airstrikes, war crimes, but from the slow, daily violence of hunger, disease and despair.
What Gaza needs most off all from the international community is accountability. The Israeli government’s deliberate policies of destruction must not be rewarded with silence, weapons, or diplomatic cover. Those responsible must be named, investigated, and tried under international law — not applauded or excused.
Canada, as a country that claims to uphold human rights and international law, must stop enabling this injustice through political complicity. It must support binding mechanisms of accountability, including referrals to the International Criminal Court and advocate for immediate humanitarian access, protection of civilians, and an end to impunity.
The people of Gaza are not asking for your pity. They are demanding your action. They are calling not just for life — but for a life with dignity.
History is watching. So are the survivors. And so are the children who remain — not yet buried, not yet starved, but still waiting for the world to choose justice over delay and humanity over politics. History will remember not only the atrocities, but also the apathy. Not only the bombs, but the indifference and silence.
Gaza will rise — not by miracle, but by the unbreakable will of its people. And even if Gaza must start from zero, let that zero not be seen as emptiness, but as possibility.
Gaza’s rebirth must be global in solidarity and Palestinian in spirit. It must honour the lives lost, uplift the survivors, and proclaim that never again is now — and it applies to every child, every mother, every dream buried beneath the ruins.
Gaza will rise because it must. Because its people still breathe, still believe and still belong to a future where they are no longer caged, starved, or erased — but free.
