“Janan” died of Hunger in Gaza..How many children must die for the world to act?

SANAA, May 08 (YPA) – In the arms of her mother, who was exhausted from excessive crying, the four-month-old baby, Janan Saleh Al-Sakafi, gave up her soul last Saturday morning inside a room at Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City.

It was a tragic end to a bitter struggle with hunger and dehydration, adding a new wound to the wounds of childhood, which is silently dying in a Gaza Strip exhausted by war and widespread famine.

The mother, who held her daughter for the last time, neither shed tears nor raised her voice to scream. She simply looked at Jinan’s pale features, as if her eyes had become a silent plea for help, trying to breathe new life into them. Her gaze was seeking a little milk, a little warmth, and perhaps a bit of hope. In her silence, there was a silent plea not to leave. To stay. To resist for a moment longer.

Parting with Janan was not just a passing event, but rather a painful image that summarizes the atrocities embodied by the Israeli aggression and siege on Gaza. Children in this beleaguered sector are dying not only under shell fire, but also from a lack of food and milk, amidst the world’s indifference.

Four months of hunger

For only four months, little girl Janan Saleh Al-Skafi spent a bitter struggle for survival against the brunt of deadly hunger. With each passing day, silent pain gnawed at her tiny body until she passed away on Saturday morning, May 4, leaving behind another story in the long list of victims whose lives were taken by famine, while the world continued to watch without action.

At birth, Janan weighed 2.6 kg, but four months later, she had gained only 200 grams. Her tiny body, caught between life and death, fought a fierce battle with dehydration and chronic diarrhea, deteriorating day by day. Her weak body was not dying because she had a terminal illness, but because she was left helpless; without milk to nourish her, without treatment for the diarrhea that weakened her, or a balm to soothe the dryness that exhausted her fragile skin.

Janan’s suffering was not the result of an incurable disease or a rare condition; she simply needed a bottle of medical milk suitable for her medical condition and a treatment for her diarrhea. Simple needs that shouldn’t have been impossible, but she didn’t get any of them.

A silent departure…and the world is watching

Janan passed away silently, without a missile destroying her life, nor sharp shrapnel hitting her. But she left this world because of hunger, because she needed something very simple… just a carton of milk.

The sight of children dying in Gaza is nothing new, but in Janan’s case, it was more than unbearable. She died alone, struggling against a brutal hunger that drained her tiny body to the bone.

On her last morning, she was unusually calm. She did not cry, did not scream, she just slept… a sleep from which there was no return. Her thin body stopped resisting. Her house was not bombed, and no shrapnel penetrated her, but she surrendered to hunger, which has become another weapon claiming the lives of children in besieged Gaza.

On that day, her tears dried up, and her little heart stopped fighting.. She was on an iron bed, covered with a light blanket, and with a breathing tube on her nose, and the doctors were trying, just trying.. But what do doctors do when electricity, water, milk, medicine, and even hope run out?

In a voice heavy with trembling, Janan’s mother recounts: “I used to run between hospitals every day with her in my arms, crying from hunger and pain, while I was helpless. I could see the look of defeat deepening in her eyes day after day, and I was powerless to do anything.”

“All I asked for was a carton of milk. Janan died of hunger… in my arms.” These were the painful words uttered by her mother, cradling her daughter’s body laid out in a simple white shroud, after she had departed in profound silence, leaving her mother in a whirlpool of grief and suffocating helplessness.

As the mother closed her daughter’s eyes with a trembling hand filled with grief, the world watched only. No statements were issued, no aid planes arrived, no crossings were opened, and not even consciences were shaken.

Childhood falling like autumn leaves

Janan was not just a child in Gaza. Rather, she was an image that summed up the pain of a people punished by hunger, and embodied the milk deliberately deprived of infants, and an Arab silence punctuated by helplessness. She was a martyr of hunger, one of 57 children who passed away like dry autumn leaves falling… in painful silence without noise.

These numbers are not just statistics; they are stories that tell the pain of mothers whose hearts are afflicted and of tiny bodies whose strength has failed them until they breathe their last.

Faced with this reality, more than 66,000 other children stand on the brink of starvation, awaiting the same fate, while the world watches in cold silence the scene of their slow disappearance.

Childhood is being lost… until when?

Janan has left, and many more names will follow, as long as the blockade continues to envelop Gaza, as long as food shipments are held back across the border, and as long as the world remains unable to break this slow death.

As the hours pass, Gaza continues to count its martyrs… one child after another, as if this people had been destined to experience death in all its forms, while the world stood watching, motionless.

On her small grave, Janan’s name may be written, but it is more than just a name; it bears witness to the world’s failure to protect Gaza and its children, who die staring into a bleak void, waiting for a hope that never comes.

The most painful question remains: How many “Janan” must die for this world to take action?

YPA