In a small shelter in Gaza, two-year-old Adham lies still, his frail body a living testimony to the cruelty of siege and famine. His mother, Umm Adham, recalls how her son’s health began to improve with milk and nutritional supplements, until the war and blockade stripped them away. Now, with baby formula almost impossible to find, she sometimes gives him water to quiet his hunger, watching helplessly as his body weakens and milestones like crawling or speaking slip further from reach.

The United Nations warns that acute malnutrition among Gaza’s children has reached record levels, with over 12,000 under the age of five in urgent danger of death. Hospitals are overwhelmed with starving patients of all ages, arriving in states of extreme exhaustion, skeletal thinness, and dangerous dehydration. In this landscape, milk, food, and medicine are more precious than gold, yet denied entry for over 140 days.

Umm Adham’s plea is heartbreakingly simple: open Gaza’s crossings and let children live in safety, peace, and health, like children anywhere else in the world. But as famine deepens and the siege holds, her voice joins thousands of others calling into a world that has yet to answer.