ALEXANDRIA, Va. — When Hani Almadoon saw her family slowly starving in the Gaza Strip, she knew she had to do something.
Frustrated by the lack of humanitarian aid reaching Palestinians thousands of miles away, he teamed up with his brother Mahmoud, who was trapped in a conflict zone, to start a small family soup kitchen. .
Famine is imminent in Gaza, where most of the population is already facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger, according to a UN-backed report.
After Israeli bombs killed seven workers in the world's central kitchens while delivering humanitarian aid earlier this week, some aid groups have suspended operations on the ground, and Israel has He called it a “grave mistake,” and the dire need is now even more critical.
The Armadoun brothers have already lost many relatives and friends during the six-month war. They are now working to save others, including their parents, from hunger.
“We crushed corn and grain for the rabbits and pigeons,” said his brother Hani. “This broke me.”
The soup kitchen started small, with my brother Mahmoud mixing together tomato paste, cooking oil, and enough wood to start a fire.
“There are no farmers,” he told NBC News. “I collected potatoes and carrots that came out of the rainwater.''
The first batch of stew fed about 120 families, and hundreds more returned in the days that followed, “providing nourishment to people who literally had no other choice,” Hani said.
Currently, the soup kitchen serves approximately 3,000 people each day and hopes to be able to feed even more people.
“We're not serving strangers. We're serving people we grew up with,” he said.
Hani said basic ingredients are expensive in the besieged enclave, and staples such as rice and flour are “out of reach” for most people.
“Our children were starving,” a 45-year-old Palestinian woman who was receiving a hot meal told NBC News. “They go to sleep hungry and wake up hungry.”
Hani was able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars online, which went directly to her family in Gaza, allowing them to buy groceries locally at a higher price.
Grassroots efforts bypass many of the red tape most international aid agencies encounter when trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is only a fraction of the aid provided before the war began.
“When I wake up every day and look at these images and photos, I feel joy. It's the only thing that allows me to open my eyes when I'm scared,” Hani said.
GoFundMe claims to certify how funds are used in accordance with international law, and has seen a surge in donations since the start of Ramadan last month. The soup kitchen project alone has raised $250,000 in the past two weeks.
Now, the Almadoon family is expanding their efforts with a second soup kitchen in Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city. Israel still says it plans to launch a major ground offensive at some point, with more than 1.4 million people estimated to be sheltering there.
Even if a ceasefire is reached before then, families know that feeding people will still be a major challenge. They hope to open more stores, hopefully with the money they raise.
The mission brought the brothers together in ways they never imagined, they said.
“This is like my punk little brother, but now he's doing something good,” Hani said. “It's just the beautiful distraction our whole family needed.”
For them, providing someone with a hot meal in a combat zone is more than fulfilling a basic human need.
“It means survival,” Hani said. “That means someone is watching you.”
