In the ’60s, he saw images of starving war-torn kids. He’s seeing them again.

As unbearable as it is to look at them, it’s even more unbearable to think of turning away.

I was 8 when I first saw images of starving children from Biafra in the late 1960s. My parents became friends with an Irish missionary priest who had been reassigned to the United States from Nigeria to raise money for the Biafran airlift relief effort. My family got involved with the project. Children with acute malnutrition, knobby-jointed and balloon bellied, appeared on fliers left on our kitchen table.

At the time, I was too young to understand the politics. I know now it was precipitated by a state seeking independence, and that its rebellion was met with an iron clamp from the Nigerian government. Obliged by international convention of the day, the world watched helplessly as Nigeria isolated and then slowly starved the secessionist Republic of Biafra over the next two years. Nearly 2 million people died. The horrific outcome helped lead to a 1977 amendment to the Geneva Convention: Protocol ll, with its provision that “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” are protected and cannot be attacked.

In 2005, member states of the United Nations affirmed the Responsibility to Protect, an international commitment to end the incidence of crimes against humanity. It tackles the conflict between state sovereignty and the need for intervention during a humanitarian crisis.

Lately, I’m seeing images of starving children again: now Palestinians. Their heads too heavy to lift, these children stare soundlessly in their agony, too weak even to cry. As unbearable as it is to look at them, it’s even more unbearable to think of turning away.

As a boy, I may not have understood why kids in Biafra were emaciated, but I did understand it was an emergency. That much was obvious. And so it is today, where evidence of famine in Gaza is overwhelming.

Whichever of the adversaries bears primary responsibility to protect the people of Gaza is immaterial, because both are failing them. The fellowship of nations has a tool; it should use it. It’s time for the UN General Assembly to take whatever immediate action is necessary to change the way this story ends.

MARK GABRIELE Wellfleet