In a narrow alleyway of war-torn Gaza, "Adam" walks barefoot, wading through the mud of streets soaked in both bombardment and poverty. He searches through the ruins for something to eat. He is no older than nine, yet his eyes carry the sorrow of countless years.

He hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday, except for a sip of contaminated water from a cracked tank on the roof of their destroyed home. With the shy innocence of childhood—and the dignity of a people who refuse to be broken—he sifted through trash bags, hoping to find a scrap of bread to keep his small heart beating amid the rubble.

Smoke was still rising from the neighbors’ house, hit by Israeli warplanes at dawn, as his mother gathered leftover ash from a clay stove, trying to cook a bit of dry lentils. But even fire had become a luxury. “Tel Aviv,” just beyond the fortified borders, issues death sentences mercilessly, blocks food, medicine, and water, silences the screams of children, and closes the sky on a childhood slaughtered daily in plain sight. A systematic starvation policy that makes no distinction between young and old, its goal: to choke life at its root.

Adam sat on a broken stone, staring at a crust of bread stuck to a rusty can as if it were a priceless treasure. He didn’t eat it immediately but gazed at it for a long time—like someone bidding farewell to life, or silently thanking God for a small miracle. Around him, a deadly silence, the constant roar of warplanes overhead. Everything suggested the city had died, yet the hungry child was still fighting—through his hunger, his endurance, and his dried-up tears.

What kind of heart can bear seeing a child wrestle with hunger—not in some remote African jungle, but mere steps from the Mediterranean shores, under a siege that has lasted for years? What Tel Aviv is doing in Gaza is not a conflict—it is an ongoing crime. Bakeries, hospitals, and relief centers are being deliberately targeted.

Little Adam wants nothing from the world—just a scrap of bread, a candle for the night, and a truce for his tiny dreams.