Gaza isn’t starving, it is being starved. And the people who are starving it have names and addresses.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza are beginning to climb, with the health ministry reporting 18 in a single 24-hour period. Doctors report that people are “collapsing” in the street, and Gaza journalist Nahed Hajjaj is warning the world not to be surprised if the remaining reporters in the enclave are soon silenced by starvation.
Unless something drastically changes, things can be expected to get much worse very rapidly.
Meanwhile Israeli forces are setting new records with their massacres of starving civilians seeking aid, with 85 killed in a single day on Sunday.
If this isn’t evil, then nothing is evil. If Israel isn’t evil, then nothing is.
So what’s the plan here? Do we just sit and watch Israel starve Gaza to death with the support of our own governments?
And then what? We just go along with our lives, knowing that that happened? That this is what we are as a society? That our civilization is comfortable allowing something like that to happen? And that our rulers could do the same thing to another inconvenient population at any time?
We’re just meant to be cool with that? And go on living like it’s normal?
I’m genuinely curious. How exactly is everyone planning to go about living their lives after that point? How does that work, exactly?
I’m asking because I don’t know. I mean, I know what my own government and its allies should do, but I don’t know what we as ordinary members of the public are supposed to do.
You’ll see western pundits and politicians asking “How do we get a ceasefire in Gaza?” or “How do we end hunger in Gaza?” as though it’s some kind of ineffable mystery, which is kind of like a man strangling a child to death while saying “The child is being strangled, but HOW do we stop the child strangulation from occurring?”
It’s not some mystery how to get a ceasefire in Gaza; the empire is the fire. It simply needs to cease firing. Israel’s holocaust in Gaza is made possible only by the support of its western backers, primarily the United States. Numerous Israeli military insiders have acknowledged that none of this would be possible without US support. If the United States and its western allies ceased backing Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, a ceasefire would have to occur.
Likewise, it is not a mystery how to get food into Gaza. You just drive the food on in and give it to people. They’ve got roads and gates right there. The only reason people in Gaza are starving is because western governments (including my own Australia) conspired to pretend to believe that UNRWA is a terrorist organization to justify cutting off critical aid, while doing nothing to pressure Israel into allowing aid to flow freely.
And now Israel and the US empire are monopolizing the delivery of “aid” through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose facilities now see civilians massacred every day for the crime of attempting to obtain food.
The organizations, funding and delivery systems to feed Gaza are all 100 percent fully available (at no cost to Israel, by the way). They’re just not being allowed to provide aid because the goal is to remove all Palestinians from Gaza via death or displacement. The people of Gaza are starving because the west is helping Israel starve Gaza. It really is that simple.
This isn’t some kind of unfortunate famine caused by a drought or natural disaster. It is a deliberately manufactured starvation campaign, implemented with genocidal intent.
To paraphrase Utah Phillips, Gaza isn’t starving, it is being starved. And the people who are starving it have names and addresses.
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Feature image by UNRWA via Wikimedia Commons.
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