Fascism

Israel’s blocking of aid to Gaza is a weapon in its brutal war against Palestinians

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Original article by Abdul Rahman and Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Photo: UNRWA

Israel’s deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza has emerged as key weapon against the people of the territory. More than 20 Palestinians have reportedly been killed due to starvation in the last few weeks and numbers are expected to explode in the coming days.

Though Israel denies it has any such policy, almost all UN agencies working to provide aid on the ground in Gaza, as well as several other groups, have termed the deliberate blocking of aid as the most important reason for an imminent famine in the besieged Palestinian territory. 

Research conducted by organizations such as Refugees International show that, “Israeli conduct has consistently impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations, and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

By denying adequate aid to Gaza, Israel has been in violation of the interim order passed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26 while hearing the genocide petition filed by South Africa. The ICJ had asked Israel to facilitate “urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life.”

In its submission to the court in February, Israel claimed it had complied with the ruling. However, UN data shows that the actual number of trucks with aid reaching Gaza decreased by half in February in comparison to the previous month. International organizations still describe experiences where the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) block their entry into Gaza, especially North Gaza, after being made to wait for hours on end.

According to Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of UNRWA, in February, on an average just 98 trucks entered Gaza in comparison to around 200 trucks a day in January. Before October 7, Israel used to allow around 500 trucks a day to the besieged territory for a population of over 2.3 million.

Israel’s denial of adequate aid to Gaza also violates the UN Security Council resolution adopted in December which talks about greater access to humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. 

The US, which was the primary mover of the UN security council resolution, recently airdropped aid to Gaza. While delivering his State of the Union address on March 7, President Joe Biden also talked about opening a temporary port in Gaza to deliver faster aid. Both the moves confirm the claims that there is not enough aid reaching Gaza at the moment, despite Israeli claims.

However, the US act is widely seen as a face-saving exercise given the Biden administration’s reluctance to press Israel for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and its supply of arms and ammunition which is used by Israel to bomb Palestinians.

The Biden administration has failed to make Israel comply with its own National Security Memorandum (NSM 20) as well. It requires that countries seeking security aid from the US make arrangements for adequate humanitarian assistance.

Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK highlighted on her page on X that Biden says “Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and protect civilians. But it doesn’t. And Biden keeps sending them more weapons.”

Meanwhile “after five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter and basic medicine. Famine level hunger is already widespread and worsening” in Gaza, Refugees International’s report says. The lack of adequate food has significant health implications for children in Gaza who have been the primary victims of Israel’s war since October 7.

Israel weaponized starvation against Palestinians

Israel has killed over ten thousand children in its bombings and ground offensives in Gaza since October 7. In addition to that, the health effects of Israel’s blockade on aid delivery are worsening by the day.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age in Gaza are acutely malnourished. The combination of food shortages, lack of clean water, and inadequate healthcare provision is having devastating effects, particularly on young children and mothers.

Many women are facing extreme difficulties in initiating and continuing breastfeeding due to their own nutritional status and stress. “People are hungry, exhausted, and traumatized,” said Adele Khodr, Regional Director of UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office.

The food shortage in the north is so severe that health workers report 95% of female patients are suffering from anemia. “There have been many operations performed, such as cesarean sections, to remove fetuses, [which] died of malnutrition among women,” Mohammed Salha, director of Al-Awda Hospital, told ActionAid.

Pediatricians at Kamal Adwan Hospital have reported not having the resources to treat more than half the children admitted to the hospital for malnutrition, as there is no food or medical supplement the staff can give them. “The most we can do for them is give them a saline solution or sugar solution,” physician Imad Dardonah told UN teams visiting the institution.

Israeli obstacles to aid delivery also mean that there is not enough infant formula or diapers. On the rare occasions when these essential supplies are found, their cost puts them out of reach for most of the population in Gaza.

A box of diapers in northern Gaza now costs around ILS 200 (USD 55), while monthly income before October 7, 2023, was reported around ILS 1,200 (USD 343)— not even enough to cover a newborn’s monthly supply during her first month of life, let alone food on top of that.

Restrictions are also being applied to the number of international medical teams allowed into Gaza and to field hospitals, which would allow for a partial expansion of much-needed health service capacities.

The siege is causing a devastating paradox: at the same time, there are too few health workers to respond to the needs of the population and those who have been working in Gaza’s healthcare system since October; and there are too many health workers in comparison to the operational surgery capacities—the only remaining functional operation rooms are located at the European Hospital in southern Gaza, according to surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah.

Some countries have attempted to circumvent Israel’s aid blockade by airdropping supplies, but the amounts reaching the population in Gaza this way are nowhere near sufficient. To adequately stock hospitals and health centers, several international agencies have warned, it is paramount to ensure unimpeded passage for truck convoys carrying a wide range of supplies, not just a specific type of food or sanitary bandages.

When it comes to aid delivery, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, James McGoldrick, said, “There is no alternative to food trucks, to road transports.”

Original article by Abdul Rahman and Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIsrael’s blocking of aid to Gaza is a weapon in its brutal war against Palestinians

With Genocide in Gaza, the Word ‘Never’ Has Been Stripped From ‘Never Again’

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Original article by ARHANDUTI ROY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A Palestinian man holds a child as he mourns the death of twin babies Naeem and Wissam Abu Anza, killed in an overnight Israeli air strike, during their burial in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 3, 2024.  (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)

The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war.

The following is a statement written by Arundhati Roy and delivered on her behalf at the meeting of Working People Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club, New Delhi, on Thursday March 7, 2024. The remarks were first published by Scroll, an independent media outlet in India.

The richest, most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.

Even though the highest court in the world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos” celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them.

They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them.

Racism is of course the keystone of any act of genocide. The rhetoric of the highest officials of the Israeli state has, ever since Israel came into existence, dehumanized Palestinians and likened them to vermin and insects, just like the Nazis once dehumanized Jews. It is as though that evil serum never went away and is now only being recirculated. The “Never” has been excised from that powerful slogan “Never Again”. And we are left only with “Again”.

Never Again.

President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor. The optics say so. Like a geriatric child, Joe Biden appears on camera licking an ice-cream cone and vaguely mumbling about a ceasefire, while Israeli government and military officials openly defy him and vow to finish what they have started. To try and stop the hemorrhaging of the votes of millions of young Americans who will not stand for this slaughter in their name, Kamala Harris, US vice-president, has been tasked with the job of calling for a ceasefire, while billions of US dollars continue to flow to enable the genocide.

And what of our country?

It is well known that our prime minister is an intimate friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no doubt where his sympathies lie. India is no longer a friend of Palestine. When the bombing began, thousands of Modi’s supporters put up the Israeli flag as their DP on social media. They helped spread the vilest disinformation on behalf of Israel and the IDF. Even though the Indian government has now stepped back into a more neutral position – our foreign policy triumph is that we manage to be on all sides at once, we can be pro- as well as anti-genocide – the government has clearly indicated that it will act decisively against any pro-Palestine protestors.

President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor.

And now, while the US exports what it has in abundant surplus – weapons and money to aid Israel’s genocide – India too is exporting what our country has in abundant surplus: the unemployed poor to replace the Palestinian workers who will no longer be given work permits to enter Israel. (I’m guessing there will be no Muslims among the new recruits.) People who are desperate enough to risk their lives in a war zone. People desperate enough to tolerate overt Israeli racism against Indians. You can see it expressed on social media, if you care to look. US money and Indian poverty combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable, shame.

The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. They, their journalists, their doctors, their rescue teams their poets, academics, spokespeople, and even their children have conducted themselves with a courage and dignity that has inspired the rest of the world. The young generation in the Western world, particularly the new generation of young Jewish people in the US, have seen through the brainwashing and propaganda and have recognized apartheid and genocide for what it is. The governments of the most powerful countries in the Western world have lost their dignity, and any respect they might have had. Yet again. But the millions of protestors on the streets of Europe and the US are the hope for the future of the world.

Palestine will be free.

Original article by ARHANDUTI ROY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Arundhati Roy quoted.
Arundhati Roy quoted.
  • Arundhati Roy Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Her most recent book, a novel, is: “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Her other books include: “Listening to Grasshoppers: Fields Notes on Democracy,” “The God of Small Things,” and “The End of Imagination.

This blog is named after and in tribute to Roy’s 2002 article which now seems difficult to find. She made a speech at the World Social Forum on 27 January 2003. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” I consider that this article answers and satisfies the question I posed in my recent Coming Soon: Should it properly be called Fascism?

Continue ReadingWith Genocide in Gaza, the Word ‘Never’ Has Been Stripped From ‘Never Again’

Coming soon: Should it properly be called Fascism?

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Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler

Our ancestors fought huge battles against Fascism in the 20the century e.g the Spanish Civil War and World War 2. I am considering whether we should be properly be calling the current situation of Israel’s Gaza genocide and anti-Muslim racist attacks Fascism.

Continue ReadingComing soon: Should it properly be called Fascism?