Opinion | If We Can Watch a Child Starve on Screen and Feel Nothing

By Phoebe Robertson

TW: Death, Starvation, Genocide 

It’s July. The world moves on. Gaza does not.

Over a thousand people have now been killed while trying to reach food. Not in combat. Not in crossfire. Shot while standing in line for flour, for rice, for canned meals. Mothers. Grandparents. Children. They died waiting to eat. This was confirmed last week by the United Nations human rights office. In the time it took me to write this, at least 15 more have died of starvation. That number is now over 100.

We are living in a time where people starve on camera and we scroll past. Where a toddler with her ribs showing can flicker across our screens and we feel nothing. Where mass civilian death barely cracks the algorithm. Where the world says “never again” and watches “again” unfold in real time, pixel by pixel. Gaza has become the background hum of suffering. 

But to look away now is a decision. And it may cost us something we don’t know how to recover.

Last week, New Zealand was among 25 countries to condemn the “inhumane, horrifying” killing of people seeking food and water in Gaza. In diplomatic terms, that’s about as strong as it gets. The language was deliberate. The horror is undeniable. This came days after UN agencies, including the World Food Programme and WHO, warned of engineered famine. The kind not born of drought, but of siege. Bombardment. Blockade. A kind of starvation that is planned, then denied, then filmed.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, called Gaza “hell on earth.” The hospitals are gone. Aid workers are collapsing from hunger. Children are dying before they learn to speak.

And still, the bombs fall.

Even Winston Peters, our Deputy Prime Minister and foreign minister, broke diplomatic ranks with an unusually direct call for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.” He’s right. There is no military goal left that can justify burying thousands more under rubble. There is no calculus in which this level of loss makes moral sense. “The war serves absolutely no purpose,” he said. He’s not wrong. But still, the killing continues.

This comes despite his absence to publicly support Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick’s bill to impose sanctions over the unlawful occupation of Palestine. With 55 Opposition MPs now backing the bill, just six Government MPs are needed to bring it to the floor of Parliament.

Politicians argue that Gaza is complicated. And yes, the history is layered. The geopolitics are brutal. But starvation? That is not complicated. A baby shrieking for water is not morally ambiguous. The shelling of hospitals? The blocking of aid? The slow, public death of children? These are not grey areas. These are crimes. And we know it.

And still, we remain silent.

Here in Aotearoa, the space to care aloud is shrinking. A Givealittle fundraiser for medical relief in Gaza was shut down last week. No reason that made sense to donors. Just gone. The organiser said she was gutted. Said it felt like just trying to help had been made into something suspicious. As though Palestinian suffering is too controversial to treat. As though compassion needs vetting.

When charity becomes dangerous, we are in dangerous times.

Because this is no longer just about Gaza. This is about what kind of people we’re letting ourselves become. Whether we only care when it’s convenient. Whether our empathy can survive saturation. Whether we’re still human in a world that makes it easier every day not to be.

We should care because over two million people are trapped in a place where water is weaponised and bread costs a life. We should care because the law meant to protect civilians is being shredded, and the international community responds with a whisper. We should care because it is not normal to shoot someone for trying to feed their child.

Because if we can watch a child starve on screen and feel nothing, we have lost something we may never get back. Not just empathy. Not just hope. But the muscle of our shared humanity. And once atrophied, it is so hard to rebuild.

Maybe that’s why some people won’t look. Because deep down, we know: if we really saw what’s happening—if we let it into our bones—we’d have to change something. About our lives. About our priorities. About what we expect from the people in power. It would stay with us. Interrupt our day. Make everything else seem absurd.

It should.

This isn’t a war on terror or a conflict between equals. It is the systematic erasure of a people under the eyes of the world. Entire families turned to ash. Whole generations displaced. Every statistic is a life that loved something. That had inside jokes and birthdays and stories half-told. Every child buried in Gaza had a name.

If you feel helpless, that’s okay. But don’t confuse helplessness with uselessness. Don’t let the scale of grief flatten you into silence. Speak. Donate. Write. Pressure. Vote with this in your heart.

Because they are still there. In Rafah. In Khan Younis. In tent cities without toilets. In hospital basements lit by cell phones. They are still there. And they are still hoping that someone, somewhere, still sees them.

We have no excuse to look away. Not anymore.