On November 8, 2024, activists in New York City joined the Free Global Youth Movement’s hunger strike demanding an end to the genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement in Gaza.
The action follows a call for solidarity from a group of Jordanian hunger strikers pressing for an end to their country’s complicity in the siege on Gaza.
The New York City hunger strike began with a vigil outside the United Nations on Friday. Further vigils took place over the weekend, and organizers say the strike will continue until the U.S. government upholds its moral duty to pressure Israeli authorities to end their crimes in Gaza.
Israel’s weaponization of starvation and attacks on healthcare in Gaza
The hunger strike comes as a response to over a year of Israel’s brutal siege of Gaza, where the weaponization of starvation against the civilian population has created a dire humanitarian situation.
With Israel’s deliberate blocking of aid and systemic destruction of agricultural land, famine has reached critical levels across the Gaza Strip: 96% of the population are facing severe food insecurity and 37 children have already died from malnutrition. Most recently, Israel has banned UNRWA, attempting to coerce Palestinians into submission by dismantling the agency providing them with fundamental basic services.
This follows months of Israeli attacks on aid and healthcare workers in Gaza, as well as repeated raids on health facilities, in what the UN has described as systematic “medicide”. Healthcare infrastructure has been completely decimated and healthcare workers are unable to treat critical cases or even chronic diseases.
The situation in northern Gaza is particularly alarming, with an estimated 100,000 civilians trapped under an Israeli siege that has seen virtually no food enter the area, relentless attacks on hospitals, and a media blackout imposed to hide the atrocities being committed.
Hunger strike in Jordan
On November 1, 2024, 60 activists in Jordan began a hunger strike demanding an end to the siege on Gaza. As explained on their social media account, @hungerstrike_gaza, this followed the exhaustion of all possible efforts—daily demonstrations, political appeals, economic boycotts, and other measures—to rally a global stand against the Israeli crimes of genocide and hunger warfare.
“I believe that my life is not of higher value than the lives of the Palestinians being massacred in Gaza,” explained Mohammad Odeh, a Jordanian activist on his seventh day of hunger strike. “For this reason we have decided to put the most precious thing we own on the line: our health.”
The Jordanian activists have demanded the closure of Jordanian crossings to commercial traffic with Israel until sufficient aid reaches northern Gaza. They also call on all governments with political ties to Israel to take immediate and decisive action by severing all existing agreements and treaties, halting trade agreements and economic cooperation, and stopping military interventions that support the crimes of genocide.
The activists have suffered serious repression and dozens are facing intimidation, harassment, violence, loss of employment, arrests, jail and prison time. Yet they remain steadfast in their protest.
“The hunger and pain we feel are lighter on our conscience than watching a genocide broadcast live silently,” said Rand Nammas, another Jordanian hunger striker. “We call on all the free people of the world to take a stance against Israel and its allies that are complicit in genocide.”
U.S. activists take up the call
New York City activists joined the hunger strike on November 8. The opening vigil saw around 20 hunger strikers and supporters holding banners outside the United Nations while police watched on. Next to them, an arrangement of candles formed an outline of Palestine.
Participants expressed exasperation with the ongoing vacillation of international rights organizations and governments regarding the crisis in Gaza. “Institutions that claim to care about human rights have given us nothing more than empty proclamations and platitudes,” stated Jennifer Koonings, one of the main organizers and a nurse practitioner.
Like Koonings, many of the participants are healthcare workers. Hesen Jabr, a labor and delivery nurse, was fired from her job at NYU Lagone Hospital in May for highlighting the Gaza genocide during an award acceptance speech. Jabr said she was motivated to join the strike because “hunger strikes are one of the last forms of nonviolent resistance that we have” and “words aren’t good enough anymore.”
Several of the hunger strikers have committed to an open-ended strike, while others will be participating for shorter periods. A series of actions at key locations and organizations complicit with the genocide are also planned.
The NYC activists’ demands are:
- An immediate arms embargo on Israel;
- 500 trucks of aid let into north Gaza immediately;
- An end to the targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers.
The coordinated action between activists in Jordan, the United States, and elsewhere represents an intensifying movement of international solidarity against Israel’s crimes, even as the so-called leaders of human rights and democracy continue to fail the people of Gaza. “We will take back the power from those who have taken it from us,” announced the Jordanian activists on social media.
In NYC, hunger striker Rafael Garcia expressed his certainty that “it is only through the free people of the world and people of the land that we will see a liberated Palestine”.
While the genocide has shown up the moral bankruptcy of the US-led political order, it has also shown that people of conscience worldwide will never let Palestine stand alone.
Until liberation and victory, the resistance will continue.
Ms. Joyce Msuya, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator – Briefing to the Security Council on the Protection of Civilians in Gaza, 12 November 2024.
“Until liberation and victory, the resistance will continue”._________________________________
The time frame will be shorter, as more Americans come to a clearer understanding what “victory” from the river to the sea will look like.