Scream­ing in an­guish as the des­per­ate crowd crush­es them against a bar­ri­er, young chil­dren and adults fran­ti­cal­ly wave pots and pans at char­i­ty work­ers, beg­ging for a por­tion of some of the last food aid left in Gaza: Rice.

The chaos at the com­mu­ni­ty kitchen in Khan You­nis in south­ern Gaza on Fri­day was too over­whelm­ing for Niveen Abu Arar. She tried and tried, but the 33-year-old moth­er of eight didn’t get to the front of the crowd in time. She left with her pot emp­ty, and her eyes full of tears.

“Un­til when will life be like that? We’re slow­ly dy­ing. We haven’t eat­en bread for a month and a half. There is no flour. There is noth­ing,” said Abu Arar, whose ninth child, a 1-year-old boy, was killed in an Is­raeli strike near their home at the start of the war in 2023. “We don’t know what to do … We don’t have mon­ey. What do we get for them?”