In Gaza, Israel has turned food aid into a death trap

My cousin Sameeh Mohamad Hilmi Almadhoun was just 18 when an Israeli soldier allegedly killed him at an aid site in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. He was a young man searching for food, a simple act that became his death sentence.

The truth is far more devastating than a simple headline: Israel has turned aid in Gaza into a lure for death.

Sameeh had already lost nearly everything. An Israeli strike in northern Gaza killed his parents and three siblings, some of whom had special needs. Driven by hunger, he left the north in search of a meal — without his surviving family knowing he had even gone. 

He walked more than six miles to reach one of the four aid sites run by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near Khan Younis and chose to wait overnight so he could be first in line in the morning. 

That decision became his death sentence. Sameeh was one of more than 1,400 Palestinians killed at aid sites across Gaza.

We discovered his death the way too many Palestinian families do: through a grainy photo of an unidentified body circulating on Telegram. My sister, Chef Samah — who runs a soup kitchen on the Gaza pier, now a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians — recognized him and quickly reached out to our mother. 

That recognition was a form of grief too heavy to bear. Sameeh’s grandmother, who suffers from chronic chest pain, has already buried 10 of her children and grandchildren, all killed by the Israeli military in northern Gaza during this ongoing nightmare. Sameeh was the latest.

Eyewitnesses said the soldiers killed 15 other Palestinians along with Sameeh, all of them seeking aid. The explanation that filtered back to us was that an Israeli military jeep appeared and soldiers opened fire, killing the aid seekers.

Later, a neighbor, moved by pity for the ill and grieving grandmother, risked his life to retrieve Sameeh’s body from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and bring it back to the makeshift camp in northern Gaza. The body returned to her unclothed — a rare and shocking indignity for a boy who had already lost so much. A single bullet to the heart killed Sameeh.

This is what aid has become for my people: a trap. The flour, cooking oil and sugar meant to sustain life have become lures for death. 

While the world debates aid shipments and inefficient, dangerous airdrops, Israel decides who survives. And far too many international actors — including the United States — look the other way or worse, pretend to do something while still actively arming Israel.

I raise funds for UNRWA, Gaza’s largest humanitarian agency, but funding is meaningless without access. Israel blocks access as part of its forced takeover and weaponization of aid, while foreign governments fixate on airdrops that make for good headlines but leave families starving.

The real problem is not the humanitarian actors — over 400 aid workers have been killed since October 2023. The true enablers are those who, through their silence, allow a far-right Israeli government to deliberately starve children and turn lifesaving aid into a death trap.

That’s why my family and I also run the Gaza Soup Kitchen in northern Gaza, preparing hot meals for our neighbors. We do this not only to nourish but to reduce the desperate need for people to risk their lives at these dangerous aid sites. We couldn’t save Sameeh, nor the others killed while simply trying to eat.

Now, with Israel recently approving a plan to fully occupy Gaza City and expel its residents to the south, the largest concentration of displaced Palestinians is trapped between the Mediterranean coast and the city itself. Nearly 1 million people live there, families paralyzed by fear of what’s still to come. 

After 22 months of relentless bombing, destruction and forced displacement, the threat of yet another displacement — for some, the 20th — hangs heavily over them. Families don’t know where to flee, if anywhere is safe, or if they will survive another round of violence.

The U.S. government is actively aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The moral outrage should be deafening, but the Trump administration chooses silence. It uses its position at the United Nations Security Council to veto resolutions for a cease-fire, effectively shielding Israel from international accountability.

The administration’s failure is not one of inaction, but of active complicity. With every veto and every new arms shipment, Washington makes a statement: Palestinian lives are expendable, and the pursuit of a meal is a valid pretense for murder. This policy is a stain on America’s stated values and a betrayal of humanity.

Sameeh’s killing is more than a personal loss; it is proof of a system Israel has imposed on Palestinians, a system that denies dignity and sustenance and decides life and death with impunity. This is a moral test for America and Israel’s other Western backers. 

Is the promise of a meal a pretext for murder? Is the dignity of life negotiable? We must demand accountability from those who allow this to continue — governments, institutions and complicit organizations. 

Rest in peace, Sameeh. May your memory endure and demand justice for a family and a people that deserve it.

Hani Almadhoun is senior director of philanthropy for UNRWA USA and co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, which is operated by members of his family in Gaza.