Conscious and Unconscionable: The Starving of Gaza
The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian populace in the Gaza Strip from risk of genocide by ensuring the supply of humanitarian assistance and basic services.
In its case against Israel, South Africa argued, citing various grounds, that Israel’s purposeful denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians could fall within the UN Genocide Convention as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
A month has elapsed since the ICJ order, after which Israel was meant to report back on compliance. But, as Amnesty International reports, Israel continues “to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.”
The organisation’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, gives a lashing summary of that conduct. “Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said placed them at imminent risk of genocide.” Israel, Morayef continues to state, had “woefully failed to provide for Gazans’ basic needs” and had “been blocking and impeding the passage of sufficient aid into the Gaza strip, in particular to the north which is virtually inaccessible, in a clear show of contempt for the ICJ ruling and in flagrant violation of its obligation to prevent genocide.”
The humanitarian accounting on this score is grim. Since the ICJ order, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has precipitously declined. Within three weeks, it had fallen by a third: an average of 146 a day were coming in three weeks prior; afterwards, the numbers had fallen to about 105. Prior to the October 7 assault by Hamas, approximately 500 trucks were entering the strip on a daily basis.
The criminally paltry aid to the besieged Palestinians is even too much for some Israeli protest groups which have formed with one single issue in mind: preventing any aid from being sent into Gaza. As a result, closures have taken place at Kerem Shalom due to protests and clashes with security forces.
Their support base may seem to be small and peppered by affiliates from the Israeli Religious Zionism party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but an Israeli Democracy Institute poll conducted in February found that 68% of Jewish respondents opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza. Rachel Touitou of Tzav 9, a group formed in December with that express purpose in mind, stated her reasoning as such: “You cannot expect the country to fight its enemy and feed it at the same time.”
Hardly subtle, but usefully illustrative of the attitude best reflected by the blood curdling words of Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, who declared during the campaign that his country’s armed forces were “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” in depriving them of electricity, food and fuel.
In December 2023, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding, among other things, that the warring parties “allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings.” Direct routes were also to be prioritised. To date, Israel has refused to permit aid through other crossings.
In February, the Global Nutrition Cluster reported that “the nutrition situation of women and children in Gaza is worsening everywhere, but especially in Northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children are acutely malnourished and an estimated 3% face the most severe form of wasting and require immediate treatment.”
The organisation’s report makes ugly reading. Over 90% of children between 6 to 23 months along with pregnant and breastfeeding women face “severe food poverty”, with the food supplied being “of the lowest nutritional value and from two or fewer food groups.” At least 90% of children under the age of 5 are burdened with one or more infectious diseases, while 70% have suffered from diarrhoea over the previous two weeks. Safe and clean water, already a problem during the 16-year blockade, is now in even shorter supply, with 81% of households having access to less than one litre per person per day.
Reduced to such conditions of monumental and raw desperation, hellish scenes of Palestinians swarming around aid convoys were bound to manifest. On February 29, Gaza City witnessed one such instance, along with a lethal response from Israeli troops. In the ensuing violence, some 112 people were killed, adding to a Palestinian death toll that has already passed 30,000. While admitting to opening fire on the crowd, the IDF did not miss a chance to paint their victims as disorderly savages, with “dozens” being “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.” The acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Salha, in noting the admission of some 161 wounded patients, suggested that gun fire had played its relevant role, given that most of those admitted suffered from gunshot wounds.
If Israel’s intention had been to demonstrate some good will in averting any insinuation that genocide was taking place, let alone a systematic policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian population, little evidence of it has been shown. If anything, the suspicions voiced by South Africa and other critics aghast at the sheer ferocity of the campaign are starting to seem utter plausible in their horror.
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Return to home pageIt appears Israel didn’t understand or, much more likely, just didn’t care that the International Court of Justice said: “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian populace in the Gaza Strip from risk of genocide by ensuring the supply of humanitarian assistance and basic services. Gunning down hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians trying to get food from delivery trucks, which were approved by the Netanyahu genocide junta. More than likely they used it as a way to entice, trap and mutilate these poor long-suffering people who only want to feed their families. Absolutely disgusting, the whole international community should make them pariahs and isolate them in their ‘stolen nation’ and deny them ALL basic services and see how they like it being done to them!
George Santayana is credited with the observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [The Life of Reason, 1905].
List of Jewish ghettos in Europe during World War II.
I never heard of UNWRA aid trucks resorting to shooting civilians : who is the bad guy here ?
Plenty of horrific information here. Much, much more in Wikipedia “Israel-Hamas war”. In Q+A recently there was l a lecture on this topic based on October 7 and finishing with the need to support Israel. It is a common idea, defying what is called “anti-semitism”. Yet thinking about Nazi killing of Jews we are appalled. Yet we are told to support Israeli destruction of Palestinian people in horriific ways – and not just in the past few months, but going back to the 1947 Al Knakba (the catastrophe).
It is a disaster. And it will not be forgotten. Netanyahu has much to fear, even in his own country.
A basic identificative field guide to the freakshow menagerie of bigots and zealots comprising Netanyahu’s governing coalition ministry.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/top-ministers-israels-new-religious-nationalist-cabinet-2022-12-29/
For example, here is small slice of the qualification resume of Itomar Ben Gvir, the convicted criminal Netanyahu picked as his National Security Minister;
One thing I know and I hope many others follow suit: To all Australian politicians: If you voice support for, or materially aid a genocidal government, I will not vote for you.
BTW,
not to minimise the suffering of the civilians in Gaza in any way,
but,
from an environmental perspective, Australian residents who knowingly and willingly allow their domestic cats out to slaughter native wildlife are nought but the complicit enablers of ecocide and extinction.
Thank you Dr. Kampmark for raising these matters; sadly, few others seem willing to address them.
Set out below is a short quote from a longer article by US journalist and author Chris Hedges:
“Young men and women sign up for the military for many reasons, but starving, bombing and killing women and children is usually not amongst them. Shouldn’t, in a just world, the U.S. fleet break the Israeli blockade of Gaza to provide food, shelter and medicine? Shouldn’t U.S. warplanes impose a no fly zone over Gaza to halt the saturation bombing? Shouldn’t Israel be issued an ultimatum to withdraw its forces from Gaza? Shouldn’t the weapons shipments, billions in military aid and intelligence provided to Israel, be halted? Shouldn’t those who commit genocide, as well as those who support genocide, be held accountable?”
[ https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/29/chris-hedges-aaron-bushnells-divine-violence/ ]
The author’s questions seem to me to be reasonable in view of the clear intent of Israel to eliminate as many Palestinians as possible; the notion of “self-defense” being employed initially but now a thin disguise for unrestrained revenge.
For the rest of us, the only valid question perhaps is why Israel is not being stopped?
JP “why Israel is not being stopped?” When your highly paid job relies on you looking the other way, this is what we get.
This is fundamental to how tyranny advances. Most politicians are weak, interested in staying the course that pays the bills.
They probably see it as being pragmatic, if they didn’t do ‘the job’, some other useful idiot would.
If some brown people are being genocided, who cares? I’m alright Jack.
Good to see that the EU have reinstated aid to UNRWA to the extent of EU50 million with more to follow.
We need to step up now with our aid.
So far Israeli claims of UNRWA involvement with Hamas have failed to provide any significant evidence.
It’s been underway since the Great War, and embedded since 1948.
Maybe the worst ever ‘modern world’ example of preconceived guileful colonial acquisition by lies, militarized theft, oppression and industrialized brutality and murder.
It is now fast approaching its despicable zenith via the hateful Netanyahu and Likud, aided by the gutlessly entrapped USA and other ignoramuses.
So much for ‘rules-based order’. Whose stinking f**ken xenophobic idiotic rules?
Do these self-entangled f-wits think there’ll be no revenge? Maybe they really want a continuing trail of war and imbalance.
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The starving of Gazan citizens… from where does this arise? The history of the creation of Israel is well documented, and it’s not something that any right thinking person would applaud. The abysmal circumstances facing the Palestinians is only the current end-note of a long symphony of utterly tragic composition that began more than a hundred years ago.
Watch the following 16 minute video for a comprehensive precis of how a colonialist-minded British politician conspired to gift the lands of Palestine to the Zionists as a form of fellating the richest banking family in Europe.
From George Galloway, Feb 24:
I just watched a video of a little girl vomit animal-feed. And then die. If you don’t care about that I have nothing further to say to you.
On food-drops;