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

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 https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5480646-aid-turned-death-trap-gaza/

by Hani Almadhoun, opinion contributor - 09/02/25 11:30 AM ET 

A Palestinian boy sits on the ground as he waits near a food distribution kitchen in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

 

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... READ MORE  https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5480646-aid-turned-death-trap-gaza/