Time froze at an unforgettable, tragic moment in the city of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

The heart of an infant stopped beating—his name was Yahya Al-Najjar, and he hadn’t yet completed his third month of life.

He didn’t die because a bomb fell on his crib, nor because a bullet tore through his chest.

He died because his tiny body found nothing to nourish it, as a result of the harsh, unrelenting Israeli siege on Gaza.

He died of hunger.

When Milk Becomes a Distant Dream

His mother held him in her arms, trying to quiet his cries—cries that didn’t sound like any normal baby’s.

His voice was weak, broken, and then… silent forever.

In Yahya’s home, there was no baby formula, no medicine, no doctor.

There was no electricity to power an incubator, no clean water to prepare a bottle, no proper food for a mother whose ability to breastfeed had been taken by the siege that has spread malnutrition across all ages.

In Gaza today, children don’t only die in airstrikes.

They die in their mothers’ arms—in deadly silence, under a siege that grows more brutal by the hour.

A Crime Without Sirens

No sirens warned of Yahya’s death.

His name wasn’t on a list of military targets.

He didn’t fight.

He didn’t chant.

He knew nothing of politics or occupation.

He had never seen a war.

He was simply born in the wrong place, at the wrong time—under a sky filled with the constant roar of Israeli warplanes, in a world that chose to abandon its own values.

In Yahya’s death, the masks fell. The principles collapsed.

Where is international law?

Where are the Conventions on the Rights of the Child?

Where is the “global conscience” that floods stages with hollow humanitarian speeches?

Gaza Reveals a Time of Moral Decline

Gaza’s tragedy is not just measured in rubble and martyrs.

It’s measured in the internal collapse of human dignity.

Every day, another “Yahya” dies—in different ways: from hunger, thirst, cold, fear, or the bewilderment of watching his father’s funeral.

It seems international law and the United Nations Charter were buried in Gaza, and on their grave was written:

"Justice died the day Yahya died."

A Hypocritical World

The same world that raises the banners of human rights and compassion is the one that funds the Israeli airstrikes, justifies them, or turns a blind eye.

They say, “We regret the loss of innocent lives…”

But Yahya didn’t need regret—he needed a single drop of milk.

Is there any explanation for the world’s silence in the face of such a crime?

What meaning remains in human rights if they cannot stop a starving infant from dying?

And what punishment is there for a killer who murders through weapons, siege, and starvation—before the eyes and ears of the entire world?

Yahya Al-Najjar—a small name carried by a fragile body,

but one that laid bare the shame of humanity.