Since May 22, six members of Veterans for Peace have engaged in a 40-day fast in solidarity with the people of Gaza, consuming just 250 calories a day, considered a starvation diet. That’s the amount of calories a recent report said is the average consumed by Palestinians in Gaza, under assault and blockade by Israel supported by the Trump regime. Since their fast began, the veterans have maintained a vigil outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City.
At least 800 others in the U.S and around the world are also fasting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Some fasters are limiting themselves to the 250-calorie daily diet, while others are fasting from dawn to dusk, or shorter periods.
As starvation and violence worsens in Gaza, the Veterans and Allies Fast activists are demanding 1) full humanitarian aid be restored to Gaza under UN authority and 2) no more U.S. weapons be sent to Israel. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Mike Ferner, a former national director of Veterans for Peace who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, later discharged as a conscientious objector. Ferner began the fast with the others, but was forced to drop out after 21 days due to health reasons. Here he talks about his hope that the fast will draw attention to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and end the suffering of Palestinian civilians there.
MIKE FERNER: We picked 250 calories for the main people who are going to be fasting. We picked that number because as of several months ago, that was considered to be the average caloric intake for people in Gaza and Lord knows by now it’s probably nowhere near 250 calories, which we’ve found out on the fast — it is a starvation diet. And in addition to that, we go home every night. Those of us in New York and other people around the country that are doing this have a safe place to sleep. We don’t have to have the constant anxiety and fear of being bombed at any minute. We have clean water to drink and all those sorts of things.
So the fast is a tiny fraction of what the people in Gaza are going through, but we hoped by doing it, to call people’s attention to what’s happening in Gaza. And I got to say it’s personally, for everybody I’ve talked to who’s involved with it, it has been personally transforming. So it’s been an amazing experience and 800 or more people in the U.S., there are handfuls of people in South Africa, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Australia who are participating with us.
MELINDA TUHUS: You said it’s been personally transformative. Can you say a little more about that? How?
MIKE FERNER: Well, when you’re on a starvation diet, extremely limited calories or nothing at all, you start to notice some changes within a few days. Everything slows down. You don’t move as fast, you can’t think as fast. I do some writing. I’ve done the news releases for the group, something that would take me a couple hours to knock out. I’m working on it a day and a half. I mean, your brain just isn’t functioning.
What would that add to the burden that people in Gaza are experiencing? You don’t have to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and walk miles to try to find water or food and you’re already half knackered because of the limited amount of food that you’ve got. So you can stand in line. I mean, you just get fatigued, you get tired, your resistance is down, everything just goes to pot. And if you’re in those conditions for, we found within a week, it really begins to affect your ability to function. And if you’ve been like that for months, God knows how they’re even surviving. And I came close to dying from electrolyte imbalance that I was unaware of and it just made me realize if I’d have been in Gaza, that’d have been it.
MELINDA TUHUS: What kind of response did you get? Is it a very busy area where a lot of people going by? Was there a lot of interest or did they ignore you?
MIKE FERNER: It was interesting. The pedestrians consisted, as far as I could tell, mostly of tourists and people who were probably working in the U.N. or working at some of the various restaurants or offices that surround the U.N. Most of the people just look straight ahead and try to avoid seeing protesters there. After we were there for a while, increasingly pedestrians would stop and thank us for what we were doing. Some of them working for the U.N. and said, I can’t come out and say this publicly, but it’s very important what you’re doing.
And I’m so glad because this gives people an opportunity to do something more. And we went to Grand Central Station and we did a die-in there, and we’ve been at various things around the city and overwhelmingly, it’s people have been supported. Overwhelming. Our hope is obviously to draw attention to what’s going on in Gaza, but also to motivate a greater number of people to be involved by participating in a fast at some level and then from there, staying active with the good people that they’ve met and upping the ante of their activism. So we can just keep trying to do more than we’ve done before and that’s what I hope comes out of this.
For more information on Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza, visit fosna.org/2025gazafast.
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