Dr. Omar Harb was more than a university professor, poet, and psychologist—he was a pillar of soul and intellect in Gaza. In an interview with Al Jazeera just three weeks before his death, he weighed less than 40 kilograms, a staggering drop from nearly 120 kg before the crisis . He spoke with quiet despair:
"I looked at my before and after photos and thought 'this can’t possibly be the same person'. We don’t know why we’ve reached this point. People are suffering, and no one is paying attention to this suffering."
Those words—so simple, yet so haunting—echo across Gaza’s hollow streets. Dr. Harb, who lost 26 members of his family, had appealed even for a new wheelchair as his body betrayed him .
A Life Starved of Peace, a Death Refused
Dr. Harb died not from the debris of bombs, but from the void of life—no food, no medicine, no humanity. His personal tragedy mirrors the broader agony of Gaza, where Category Five famine has been declared for the first time in the Middle East, and 66,000 children now suffer from severe malnutrition .
This was not an act of war in the traditional sense. It was a slow, deliberate extinguishing—a starvation designed by policy, enforced by siege.
Beyond Tragedy: A Reckoning with Complicity
So many are comforted by the thought huthat “we didn’t kill him with a bullet.” But what of the silence, the blockade, the denial? Accountability must extend beyond the visible violence to include the willful deprivation.
Let Dr. Harb’s fading voice be a call—to pressure governments, to demand truth, and to remember that to starve a scholar of his dignity, his family, and his life is to starve us all of our shared humanity.
Comments