Today Substack gave me full permission to cover the genocide in Gaza without limitation or censorship. Prepare your hearts for how painful it will be to see it.
After being banned by Instagram I have been searching for a place to be able to tell the full, unedited truth about this genocide. Today, I now understand I can tell it here.
✊🏽 Before you read this…
This post is hard to write. It’s personal. Painful. And it’s only possible because people like you support this work. I have no corporate sponsors. No political party. No media machine behind me. The truth I tell here — about Gaza, about genocide, about systems starving people to death — survives because of members of The North Star.
If you believe in this work, if you want to help protect it and grow it, please become a member today: 👉🏽 thenorthstar.com/subscribe
Whether it’s $10/month, $100/year, or more — it keeps this alive.
Her name was Sana Al-Laham and this morning in Gaza she starved to death at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. She was a skeleton. This should not happen anywhere in the world. Not today. Not ever.
She is the 67th child in Gaza that we know of that has starved to death. Never, in the modern history of Gaza, did kids starve to death there. No matter how horrible the conditions - nothing like this EVER happened - and it’s only happening now because Israel and the United States are blocking all aid and all commercial good for sale from entering. It’s an abomination.
Today, after speaking with the staff at Substack, I have been given full permission to document the genocide of Gaza here after nearly 18 months of being banned from Instagram and suppressed everywhere else.
I want you to prepare your heart and mind for how difficult what I plan to show you daily truly is. The American news media refuses to show it. American social media outlets are banning or suppressing anyone who tells the truth.
But we will tell it here. Below are the images we now have of this sweet child, Sana, that simply could not survive without the specialized food and care she deserved.
Anyone telling you that this is not a famine, that this is not a genocide, is LYING TO YOU! Sana is showing you the they are lying.
Do you believe Sana and your own eyes or do you believe their propaganda that everything is just fine in Gaza?
📩 The Texts Always Start the Same
Every time the famine in Gaza worsens, I know before the headlines tell me.
I don’t need an official report. I don’t need a UN briefing.
I know because the texts start flooding in.
From friends. From families I’ve helped for years. From journalists, teachers, organizers, mothers.
Sometimes once a day.
Sometimes every hour.
And the messages always start the same way:
“I’m so sorry for bothering you…”
“Please forgive me…”
“I hate to ask again…”
They are apologizing for begging. For asking for food. For help. For survival.
And the worst part is…
they know I can’t help them anymore.
🧊 For Two Years, I Could Almost Always Get Help to People
Quietly. Behind the scenes. No press releases. No fanfare.
I’ve moved meals, medicine, emergency cash, and medical supplies into Gaza during some of the darkest months of the war — often in private, through trusted networks of drivers, diplomats, and humanitarian workers.
I’ve helped fund mass food distributions. Provided for children in shelters. Supplied entire neighborhoods with emergency relief.
But not this time.
Now?
Nothing is getting through.
Not through Egypt. Not through the Rafah crossing. Not through the U.S.
Everything is blocked.
🍞 The Food Is Sitting Right There — But It’s Being Blocked On Purpose
Let me be clear:
This is not a famine caused by drought. Or climate change. Or natural disaster.
This is a deliberate blockade.
A manufactured famine.
A siege.
There is enough food — right now — to feed Gaza for months. It’s sitting in trucks. In containers. In storage.
Outside of Rafah.
At the border.
In convoys.
Ready to move.
But Israel is blocking it.
And the United States is backing that decision — with money, weapons, and silence.
🟥 This Is a Crime — And Everyone Knows It
Under international law, forced famine is a war crime.
Article 54 of the Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon of war. So does the Rome Statute, which governs the International Criminal Court (ICC).
But instead of obeying that law, Israel is defying it.
And instead of enforcing that law, the U.S. is punishing the ICC for trying to do its job.
Earlier this year, when the ICC announced it was considering war crimes charges against Israeli officials for their role in Gaza, the United States threatened and sanctioned ICC prosecutors.
🧷 Source – Reuters: U.S. Sanctions ICC over Gaza investigation
So the law is clear. The crime is clear. And the silence is criminal.
📉 This Isn’t Just a Famine. It’s a Death Sentence
The images coming out of Gaza are unbearable.
Children with sunken eyes.
Mothers wasting away.
Families boiling grass and animal feed into soup.
Bread made of animal feed mixed with water and dirt.
The UN has warned for months that famine is imminent.
Now, famine is here.
And the world is pretending it doesn’t see it.
🧷 Source – The Guardian: Gaza’s man-made famine
🧎🏽♂️ The Texts Keep Coming
“Brother, I know you’ve done all you can.”
“We have nothing. I haven’t eaten in two days.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just afraid my children won’t survive.”
I read these texts through tears.
And every time I go to reply, I have to sit in the reality that I can’t fix it anymore.
Not because I’ve stopped trying — but because they’ve made it impossible.
🛑 If You’re Waiting for Permission to Be Outraged — You Don’t Need It
Forced starvation.
Deliberate blockade.
Children dying because a country with nuclear weapons is blocking bread and rice from entering a war zone.
If that doesn’t outrage you, I don’t know what will.
✊🏽 What You Can Do
Tell the truth. Talk about it. Post about it. Break the silence.
Pressure elected officials — especially in the U.S. — to lift the blockade, restore aid, and stop funding the siege.
Support people-powered platforms that are telling the truth when the mainstream won’t.
👉🏽 Become a member of The North Star
If you want to keep seeing reporting like this — raw, painful, unflinching — that’s how we protect it.
This platform exists because of people like you.
👉🏽 Join us here
Thank you so much for your love and support!
Your friend and brother,
Shaun
I have opened up comments for all of you.
May Allah rewards you for your efforts 🤲🏼🤍