ISRAELI OCCUPIED AND STARVED GAZA, 10 Oct. - (ANA) - Two years after 7 October, Hani Almadhoun, Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA USA, is running a small-donor operation to feed Palestinians in Gaza, a project he initiated in November 2023, recognising then that there would be a need for non-traditional aid.

 

Today, the project is providing daily aid to Gazans in need, serving around 3,000 individuals a day, primarily supported by small donors through a GoFundMe campaign. They work with local farmers, cooks and distributors. To get the money to Gaza, Almadhoun, based in the Washington, DC area, transfers the money to Europe, and it is then sent to a trusted local recipient.

 

"This morning, we got loaves of bread to doctors in Gaza. We want to do it until we don't have to," Almadhoun, who co-founded the Gaza Soup Kitchen with his late brother Mahmoud, told The New Arab.

 

"I work for the largest humanitarian actor in Gaza. In November 2023, I knew we'd have to build an alternative. We went public in February 2024," he said.

 

In November, a year after he started the Gaza Soup Kitchen, Almadhoun's brother Mahmoud was killed in an Israeli airstrike. In total, he has lost at least 150 family members in the war. He became more determined to send in aid to support his close family, who remain in Gaza—his parents and siblings—struggling to survive in the besieged enclave.

 

Though aid to Gaza has long been politicised, this intensified with Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. At the beginning of the war, Israel accused members of UNRWA of working with Hamas to commit the attack on 7 October that killed more than 1,100 people in southern Israel. With the blockade, the majority of trucks carrying food and other humanitarian aid were unable to reach civilians, resulting in widespread malnutrition and starvation.

 

After 7 October, he said, "We felt invisible and unwanted. The US administration was supposed to be friendly, but they repeated Israeli lies and were complicit in genocide."

 

Since Israel began its military assault on Gaza two years ago, multiple human rights experts and organisations, including the United Nations and Amnesty International, have described its actions as genocide. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 67,000 Palestinians have died in the war, more than 420 of them from hunger.

 

Almadhoun was born in the United Arab Emirates, where he lived with his family until the age of nine. They then moved to be with his extended family in Gaza, where he says he "learned to be Palestinian." This meant no longer living a sheltered life and understanding that the news often had a direct impact on their daily lives.

 

"In the Emirates, we had a sheltered life. News didn't impact us very much," he recalled. "In Gaza, all news is local. It affects your shopping, if you go to school, if you don't go to school. If somebody's assassinated, it has a big effect. In Gaza, everything affects your life."

 

Like many Palestinians, Almadhoun's family arrived in Gaza after being displaced by Israel in 1948. Their original home was in Ashkelon, 13 kilometres north of the Gaza Strip, inside the pre-1948 Palestinian territories. Though their lives were in some ways more challenging, they were able to find a warm sense of community.

 

"Being together with the family, the grandparents, the big meals. You know, being with your people. Nobody's going to say you're a foreigner. But in reality, a bunch of foreigners were harassing us every day in Gaza," he said.

 

In 2000, he had the opportunity to study in the US with a scholarship from Brigham Young University in Utah, where he continued with a master’s degree in public administration. This was around the time the Second Intifada started, and before Hamas and the Israeli siege. During this time, he was able to visit Gaza. Now, his connection to the besieged enclave is facilitating the delivery of food aid.

 

"We're trying to be the anti-Gaza Humanitarian Foundation," Almadhoun said, referring to the organisation that has been accused of turning aid distribution sites into death traps.

 

"I wish we didn't have to do this. It's ugly that we have to solve the famine," he added. "There's more to Palestinians than Gaza. There's more to Palestinians than aid. We deserve better. For two years, they've been genociding out people. We still have to show up. I wish we didn't have to go to hell."    - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/10 October 2025  - - -