‘We feel helpless’: Palestinian New Yorkers are reeling from Gaza’s starvation crisis

For Zein Rimawi, a 71-year-old Palestinian New Yorker and Arab American community leader in Brooklyn, mornings are the hardest. That’s when he says he has time to scroll through social media on his computer and see the latest images and reports from the Gaza Strip.

“Honestly, it’s very difficult,” he said on a recent Friday at the An-Noor Social Center in Bay Ridge, pointing to a photo of a malnourished child on his screen. “What makes our life more difficult, we cannot do anything.”

Rimawi, who hails from the West Bank and founded the center in an area dubbed “Little Palestine” for its large Palestinian population, is one of thousands of New York City residents with roots in the Palestinian territories. As Gazans face what the United Nations on Tuesday called “record starvation and malnutrition” amid Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid and its escalating war against Hamas, members of New York City’s Palestinian community say they’re frustrated with the limited options for individuals to help alleviate the crisis. Unlike other catastrophes that have befallen the home countries of New York’s vast array of immigrant communities, they say the conflict is particularly anguishing because Israel’s blockade is severely preventing aid from reaching those in need.

Some are dedicating their energy instead to pressuring American officials to push for more food and medicine to reach Gazans. They’re also calling for the flow of weapons from the United States to Israel to stop. But it’s far from certain those efforts will succeed as the war nears its two-year mark.

Meanwhile, Palestinian New Yorkers told Gothamist they’re grappling with how to cope with the daily barrage of grim news from Gaza.

“We’re upset and we’re angry, and we feel helpless that we can’t do more for the many that are suffering right now,” said Essa Masoud, general manager at Balady Foods, a popular halal market in Little Palestine. “ It’s very difficult to actually send food items.”

According to the U.N., more than 220 people, including over 100 children, have died from malnutrition-related causes in the enclave since the war began in October 2023, and Gazan hospitals are operating far beyond capacity. A half-million people are on the brink of starvation and a third of the strip’s population of 2.1 million aren’t eating for multiple days in a row, U.N. officials said. More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including while trying to get food, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures. The war started when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.

Signs of the conflict are visible around Bay Ridge, where a concentration of the city’s estimated 7,000 Palestinians live alongside people from Yemen, Egypt, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Palestinian flags hang outside shops, people wear the flag’s colors on lapel pins, and posters on store windows call for an immediate ceasefire.

City Councilmember Justin Brannan, a Democrat who represents the neighborhood, said the war has affected many of his constituents as much as local matters have.

“Folks are so directly impacted where this is literally their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and cousins and nephews and nieces [in Gaza],” he said. “For me, it’s about just being there, listening and showing up.”

As the death toll mounts, some of those New Yorkers continue to organize for peace.

At a press conference hosted Monday by the New York chapter of the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations, seven somber-faced people held signs with large numbers on them — 307, 37, 900 — representing how many loved ones they said they’d each lost in Gaza over the past two years. The speakers said their surviving relatives in the enclave were living through unfathomable horrors.

“ When I FaceTime them … it startles me to see that they’re just bones and skin,” said Najla Khass, who said she’d lost at least 56 extended family members in the conflict. “We joke around and I tell them, ‘Oh, you are on a great diet.’ But it’s not funny.”

Afaf Nasher, executive director of CAIR’s New York chapter, encouraged those wanting to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis to take political action.

“ The best thing that we can do as Americans is to make those phone calls to our congressmen and women,” she said. “Make the emails, show up in front of the White House, show up in front of every street that you can and you tell our representatives, ‘The food is there, the aid is there, the medicine is there.’”

Brooklyn-based journalist Afeef Nessouli spent about two months in Gaza this spring volunteering with Glia, a group that provides medical support for communities in health emergencies, and reporting during his off-hours. He said those hoping to help Gazans can donate to individual families’ GoFundMe pages, community kitchens in the region or larger organizations working on the ground.

But it can still be hard to know whether such contributions will reach people in the form of direct assistance due to the volatile conditions and restrictions on aid distribution in Gaza, he said. To combat his feelings of helplessness, Nessouli said he tries to stay in touch online with the Gazans he met while there.

“I talk to them and I treat them like humans, like friends,” he said. “Not like just victims, but people who are real and want to pursue life.”