Category World News

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Every morning for Israa Abu Reyala and her husband, Mohammad, is a battle to find decent food for their five daughters, the youngest three of whom are triplets born during the war.

The ceasefire agreement, which took effect about a month ago, has made little difference in the family’s daily life, Israa, 31, and Mohammad, 33, told Al Jazeera.

“The war was a nightmare,” Israa says as she feeds her little ones in her parents’ home in Deir el-Balah. “But the hardest part by far has been finding food, milk, and supplies for my three babies.”

Israa learned she was pregnant with triplets two months before the war.

“We were planning for a third child, not three at once,” she laughs, exchanging a look with her husband.

Their concerns at the time – about income, rent, and how to manage three infants – feel like paradise now compared to what they lived through during the pregnancy and birth, they say.

‘I’m worried’

Israa says her triplets, who are now 19 months old, don’t even know what an egg looks – much less tastes – like. They’ve eaten chicken a few times, but only when sharing meals with extended family.

The couple had high hopes for the ceasefire that ostensibly ended Israel’s war on Gaza and stipulated that Israel would allow food and aid supplies to enter the beleaguered enclave.

But instead of more and higher-quality food entering Gaza, they found little of nutritional value.

Mohammad says the markets are “stuffed with commercial goods” like biscuits, chocolate, candy, snacks, nuts, and canned foods, with few fruits and vegetables that enter at prices many can’t afford.

“But what about the quality? What about proper food? And the prices are insane,” he adds.

“Where are the eggs? Where is meat and poultry? Fresh dairy and cheese? Everything healthy, nutritious, or essential for children doesn’t exist, and if it does, it’s in tiny quantities and disappears instantly,” Israa says.

Humanitarian officials call the state Israel has imposed on Gaza since it launched its genocidal war on it in October 2023, engineered starvation – a policy aimed at weakening the population physically and psychologically until society collapses from within.

Dr Khalil al-Degran, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that Israel has not adhered to humanitarian protocols requiring the entry of food and medical aid into Gaza, with quantities entering now “only 15 to 20 percent of actual needs”.

He adds that the products Israel allows in are nonessentials, like chips and instant noodles, which lack vital nutrients.

Markets remain empty of meat, poultry, dairy products, eggs, and most protein and fat sources, he says, calling it “clear engineered starvation”.

Israa says her girls are getting more to eat now, but she still worries because of the severe lack of nutritious food.

“I’m worried about my health, too,” she says. “I did lab tests last month and the specialist told me I’m in the early stages of malnutrition.”

A premature birth

Ten-year-old Toleen says she will never forget the tanks and Israeli soldiers she had to walk past with her parents, hands up in the air, holding white flags.

She and her six-year-old sister, Jana, had fled with their parents from one displacement shelter to another for weeks before they fled south on foot through what Israel called “the safe corridor”.

They tried to stay in the north, leaving their home in Shati refugee camp for a UNRWA school in al-Nasr – but Israeli tanks kept advancing, and the family had to keep fleeing.

So one day in November 2023, they headed south to Israa’s parents’ home in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, where she spent the rest of her pregnancy and delivery, struggling with malnutrition and the fear of Israeli bombs.

They stayed there until a ceasefire in January this year, when they went back to Gaza City, only to be caught by a famine caused by Israel’s blocking of the entry of all aid supplies.

On March 28, 2024, two weeks before her scheduled caesarean section, she was woken up at night by labour pains, but the war was raging, with intense Israeli bombardment in nearby Nuseirat.

Moving at night was dangerous, and they had to call the ambulance service repeatedly, telling them they were expecting triplets, before Israa was taken to al-Awda Hospital for an emergency c-section.

Her daughters, Keraz, Kifah, and Jumana were born, one weighing two kilogrammes (4.4 pounds) and two weighing in at 1.9 kilogrammes (4.2 pounds), well within the average for healthy triplets.

“Giving birth to healthy babies in a war felt like a miracle,” she says.

Dr al-Degran says most pregnant and breastfeeding women face acute anaemia caused by a lack of food and supplements, with many giving birth prematurely or miscarrying.

Once home, the struggle to find baby formula, diapers, and clothes for the newborns began.

The triplets needed about one can of formula per day, which their severely malnourished mother had to supplement by breastfeeding them. Her health collapsed.

“My body was exhausted and hungry,” Israa says.

“These three … I cried as they cried from hunger,” she says, looking at her triplets playing nearby.

“‘Nanna, nanna, nanna,’ that’s the sound they made asking for food, day and night. I can still hear it.”

Israa and her husband spiralled.

“I used to escape into the street from my babies’ screams, walking aimlessly, crying for hours,” she says.

Damage that may be irreversible

Al-Degran says Gaza has suffered chronic malnutrition throughout Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave.

He warns that even if essential foods were allowed in today, the damage done to children, especially infants, has already left long-term physical and cognitive consequences.

Israa’s daily struggle continues, as she divides a single bite of food into three portions for her three infants.

“This piece for one, this for the second, and this for the third … just so they quiet down a little. But then they start crying again. They don’t understand. They’re just hungry.”

Israa and Mohammad remain grateful for what little they have, though Israa cannot hide her heartbreak over Toleen and Jana, who she says have endured hunger and still tried to help her care for the babies.

The family’s only wish now is simple: “To see a semblance of a normal life again,” Israa says.

“Open crossings. Food. Supplies. Aid.

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This year marks three decades since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which an estimated 100,000 people lost their lives. The war culminated in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, in which the Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladić, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, massacred more than 8,000 men and boys in a United Nations-designated “safe area”.

In the following decades, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia heard hundreds of witnesses and sentenced dozens of high-ranking Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, including those convicted of genocide. Meanwhile, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and foreign donors put significant funds into the study, victim recovery and remembrance of the genocide.

When the genocide in Gaza began, many Bosnians who survived the 1992-1995 war saw striking parallels between their own experiences and the suffering of Palestinians. Many took to the streets and spoke out against the genocidal war in Palestine.

However, many Bosnian intellectuals, especially those researching war crimes and genocide, have remained silent. Their refusal to speak out harms not just efforts to deliver justice for Gaza but also undermines the field of genocide studies.

Voices of conscience

Before we explore why Gaza has become such a taboo topic for Bosnian genocide scholars, it is important to point out that not all have remained silent. A relatively small group of Bosnian scholars who are not only academics but also active advocates for Palestine and human rights have chosen to speak up.

University professors and researchers, such as Lejla Kreševljaković, Sanela Čekić Bašić, Gorana Mlinarević, Jasna Fetahović, and Sanela Kapetanović have underscored that there is moral responsibility not to remain silent. They have led by example, participating in protests and speaking out in public.

Belma Buljubašić, a professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, has criticised European and other political leaders who express sympathy for Srebrenica while justifying Israel’s actions in Gaza as acts of “self-defence”. Such double standards, she has argued, reveal a troubling pragmatism that undermines both solidarity and accountability.

In a recent interview, Edina Bećirević, a genocide scholar at the University of Sarajevo’s Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies, said the genocide in Gaza clearly mirrors the dynamics seen in Srebrenica, defined by dehumanisation, ideological mobilisation and international complicity.

Ahmet Alibašić, the director of the Center for Advanced Studies and professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo, has also been outspoken. Last year, he co-organised a seminar called From the Balkans to Gaza: A Critical Analysis of Genocide, which examined contemporary dynamics of mass violence through a “comparison between the Srebrenica genocide, the Sarajevo siege and the unfolding genocide in Gaza”.

Nidžara Ahmetašević, a Sarajevo-based journalist and media scholar, has also not hesitated to draw parallels between Gaza and the experiences of Bosnian survivors from besieged Sarajevo and Srebrenica.

For months, members of the Sarajevo Feminist Anti-Militarist Collective have been conducting demonstrations in downtown Sarajevo in which they read the names of children killed in Gaza, juxtaposing war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory to Sarajevo’s own war horrors.

These individuals have all responded in various ways to the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said’s enduring exhortation that intellectuals must claim the space to speak truth to power, connect local memory to global justice and resist the politics of convenient truth-telling. Silence remains not a neutral stance but a political choice that sustains harm.

‘Not our battle’

Still, Said’s call has not stirred everyone to action. Paradoxically, many Bosnian genocide scholars have remained conspicuously silent, even as their colleagues abroad, among them Israeli genocide scholars Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg and Shmuel Lederman, have publicly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. This did not change even after the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world’s largest academic body in the field, passed a resolution in August declaring that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.

Various experts on genocide at the University of Sarajevo’s Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, lecturers at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo and genocide scholars at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks have been reluctant to comment on Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

As an institution, the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law publicly addressed Gaza only after it was clear a ceasefire was soon to take effect. On October 8, it issued an evasive statement that did not mention Israel as the perpetrator of atrocities. This prompted some observers to accuse the institute, led by Muamer Džananović, of a calculated and opportunistic approach to the issue.

However, probably the most notable is the case of Emir Suljagić, genocide survivor and director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center. When asked about his stance on Gaza in late 2023, Suljagić told Haaretz: “This is not our battle.”

Many Bosnia-watchers swiftly condemned his remarks, pointing at the double standards of his position, given that just a year earlier Suljagić published an op-ed urging Ukrainians “not to lay down their arms”.

Furthermore, under his leadership, the Srebrenica Memorial Center produced a series of case studies funded by the United Kingdom government on Ukraine, Syria, South Sudan and Ethiopia, highlighting early warning signs of mass violence and genocide.

When the Palestinian community in Bosnia and Herzegovina expressed surprise over the lack of solidarity from Srebrenica with the people of Gaza, questioning whether the Srebrenica Memorial Center’s ties to the World Jewish Congress had something to do with its silence, Suljagić responded by accusing them of anti-Semitism.

He went even as far as to compare Hamas members to Chetniks, Serb nationalist and royalist forces that collaborated with German, Italian and at times Croatian fascists during World War II. Chetniks were responsible for some of the most brutal atrocities, including acts of genocide, against the Bosnian Muslim population. Almost half a century later, their enduring ideology fuelled war crimes and genocide against Bosniaks during the war in Bosnia.

The price of silence

The silence of many of Bosnia’s genocide scholars is not accidental. Some of them fear professional repercussions in Western academia and feel that accusing Israel of genocide would be unfavourable for their careers. Many are reluctant to jeopardise external financial support from foreign embassies, particularly funding provided by American, British and European Union donors to their projects and “side hustle” NGOs. Others are reluctant to alienate diplomatic partners who still wield influence over Bosnia’s fragile peace.

None of this, of course, justifies the silence of scholars working at institutions funded by Bosnian taxpayers rather than foreign donors. As genocide researchers whose work is sustained by public funds, they have an obligation to serve the public interest, which entails upholding scientific integrity, defending evidence-based genocide research and contributing to the global scholarly consensus without fear of professional repercussions.

When scholars, genocide researchers and lecturers at public institutions fail to speak out on war crimes or humanitarian crises, they contribute to legitimising a discourse that conceals harm. Such a discourse frames certain acts of mass violence as unworthy of the same scrutiny applied to other cases, creating a hierarchy of victimhood that serves political interests rather than universal principles and scholarly integrity.

Said’s universal call on intellectuals to speak out remains relevant and urgent. It reminds us that we need to move beyond comfortable silence, expose distortions of power and advocate for justice, transparency and accountability. In his view, silence is a form of complicity that undermines the very pursuit of truth that academia claims to uphold.

In this sense, public intellectuals must never allow themselves to slip into the realm of political bargaining where silence about one genocide is traded for recognition of another. If their advocacy becomes selective, then they risk turning genocide studies into a political tool. If that happens, genocide scholars will cease to be independent academics and instead become an interest group, stripped of the moral pedestal they so readily claim.

By foregrounding Gaza within the Bosnian context, we argue for a renewed ethic of intellectual responsibility and integrity, one that aligns scholarly discernment with public accountability and humane justice.