A state of famine in Gaza, if not already present, is imminent. The government of Israel is deliberately starving to death an entire population of two million people by limiting the amount of food aid to well below the levels necessary to maintain even basic levels of nutrition. The soldiers at the checkpoints for trucks to gain entry into Gaza delay the trucks for inordinate lengths of time and often turn them back for the most trivial of reasons, such as having scissors in medical kits, absurdly claiming that these could be used as weapons. A “clear pattern has emerged” of Israeli obstruction of aid trucks, which suggests that deliberately creating famine conditions is now official policy.
Humanitarian workers and government officials working to deliver urgently needed aid for Gaza say a clear pattern has emerged of Israeli obstruction, as disease and near-famine grip parts of the besieged enclave.
…CNN has also reviewed documents compiled by major participants in the humanitarian operation that list the items most frequently rejected by the Israelis. These include anesthetics and anesthesia machines, oxygen cylinders, ventilators and water filtration systems.
Other items that have ended up in bureaucratic limbo include dates, sleeping bags, medicines to treat cancer, water purification tablets and maternity kits.
Israeli troops have also opened fire on desperate Gazans who struggle to access the meager supplies that do get in, killing many of them. Doctors treating injured people in Gaza say that Israeli snipers have targeted children.
Dr Fozia Alvi was making her rounds of the intensive care unit on her final day at the battered European public hospital in southern Gaza when she stopped next to two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes in their windpipes.
“I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old,” she said.
The Canadian doctor’s heart sank. These were not the first children treated by Alvi who she was told were targeted by Israeli soldiers, and she knew the damage a single high-calibre bullet could do to a fragile young body.
“They were not able to talk, paraplegic. They were literally lying down as vegetables on those beds. They were not the only ones. I saw even small children with direct sniper shot wounds to the head as well as in the chest. They were not combatants, they were small children,” said Alvi.
Children account for more than one in three of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Tens of thousands more young people have suffered severe injuries, including amputations.
Attempts to send in aid by ships were halted when Israeli airstrikes of food trucks killed seven aid workers who had just brought in supplies by sea.
Some of Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, on Tuesday condemned the deaths of seven aid workers who were killed by airstrikes in Gaza — a loss that prompted multiple charities to suspend food deliveries to Palestinians on the brink of starvation.
The deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers threatened to set back efforts by the U.S. and other countries to open a maritime corridor for aid from Cyprus to help ease the desperate conditions in northern Gaza.
…Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid from the charitable group turned back from Gaza just a day after arriving, according to Cyprus. Other humanitarian aid organizations also suspended operations in Gaza, saying it was too dangerous to offer help. Israel has allowed only a trickle of food and supplies into Gaza’s devastated north, where experts say famine is imminent.
The dead from Monday night’s strikes included three British citizens, Polish and Australia nationals, a Canadian-American dual national and a Palestinian. Those countries have been key backers of Israel’s nearly 6-month-old offensive in Gaza, and several of them denounced the killings.
The BBC Verify team has collected detailed evidence of the attack on the food convoy.
Joe Biden has issued ‘blunt criticism’ of Israel but he and other western leaders like the UK’s Rishi Sunak are being utterly hypocritical, using words to try and assuage the worldwide anger at their complicity in the ongoing genocide, while refusing to do the one thing that could stop Israel’s murderous terror campaign and that is to stop weapons shipments. In fact, while expressing opposition to Israel using US made bombs to devastate Gaza, Biden just quietly approved the sale of the the same kinds of bombs that Israel has used on hospitals and other civilian targets.
Any sense that a US abstention on a UN ceasefire resolution signalled a radically different approach to the Gaza war by the Biden administration lasted only four days.
The UN security council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, a hostage release and large-scale delivery of food aid, was passed last Monday. By Friday, the Washington Post was reporting on the latest consignment of billions of dollars worth of US bombs and planes for Israel.
The only hesitation, according to a source familiar with the procedure, was a delay of a few days in processing approval of 1,800 MK-84 2,000lb (907kg) bombs, which can flatten an apartment block and leave an 11-metre deep crater.
It is a devastating weapon that has reportedly been used frequently by the Israeli air force, playing a significant role in the estimated 33,000 death toll in Gaza since October.
As if that were not bad enough, he is supposed to be ‘considering’ (this is White House language for a decision that has already been made but is waiting for the best time to announce it) yet another major arms shipment to enable Israel to further terrorize an already devastated people.
The U.S. government is considering major new weapons sales to Israel of fighter jets, air-to-air missiles and guidance kits, as calls grow for the U.S. to withhold arms if Israel won’t do more to limit civilian casualties in Gaza.
The Biden administration is weighing selling Israel up to 50 new F-15 fighter jets, 30 AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, and a number of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which turn dumb bombs into precision-guided weapons, according to a congressional aide and a person familiar with the discussions. The people were granted anonymity to speak ahead of an announcement.
There has been a significant protest vote against Biden in the primaries, suggesting deep anger at the lack of any serious pressure by the US on Israel to stop the slaughter of Gazans. The US is the only country that can do anything but for decades it has been condoning, if not actually defending, all the ways in which Israel has been depriving Palestinians of their land and their basic rights. The blood of Gazans is on US hands as well as that of Israelis.
I don’t understand it. You can call me naive. I just don’t. These are our brothers and sisters. I don’t understand how this atrocity can be in full view, and the “liberal” party of the US shrugs and says ‘okay’.
So the US government is shipping Israel more bombs.
Selling them more bombs is just so messed up. I very much do not support Israel’s actions, or the knee jerk support of their violence against the Palestinian people.
Hamas and Netanyahu are both terrorists.
AOC is one liberal Democrat who has been very vocal in their criticism towards Israel. It’s odd how the media never seems to report on actual liberal Congress members. Nope it’s 24/7 of tfg’s extralegal shenanigans but zilch when it comes to reporting what our actual progressive elected officials have been saying and doing.
I’m not an anti-semite or a conspiracy theorist, but when one of those sort start ranting about how the world is “secretly” controlled by da Jooz, it’s this kind of behaviour that makes it harder than it should be to argue with them.
Israel can demonstrably do literally anything it likes, up to an including what is fairly universally accepted to constitute fucking genocide, and the “free world” at best stands by wringing their hands mouthing platitudes, and at worst actively arms the genociders despite being in a position to slow then stop their genocide with the stroke of a pen without having to fire a shot or risk a single soldier’s life.
If that isn’t having effective control of the world, then what is it?
I’m waiting for Netanyahu to declare how inhuman Muslims are because evidence was found that Gazans are eating human flesh. If total extinction of the Palestinians there is not the goal of the starvation campaign, then that might be it. Maybe he’ll relent if he can gloat about cannibalistic Muslims.
US support continues because of the many decades long stoking of fear of Islam combined with the Christian nationalist requirement that Zionism be successful. The small negative political cost to Democrats and the glee of vicariously reliving Jim Crow for Republicans -- I mean it’s been less that 45 years since the last bombing of a Black neighborhood in these United States of America -- leads to the inertia we see.
In the news tonight, they had some retired Israeli general trying to justify the targeted bombing of the World Central Kitchen aid folks, carrying on and on about how it was SOOOO dark and it could have been Hamas, and they had NO IDEA it was humanitarian aid they were bombing, etc. etc. etc. Lies, all lies, but they clearly expect to 1) scare off humanitarian aid to the area, and 2) be believed because they’ve been committing atrocities against the Palestinians for generations now, and the whole world just goes along with it.
In the news (the Guardian, in this case, markup to plaintext version):
While I will never stop believing that the Jewish people need a place to be safe in a world that has been hostile to them for centuries, I no longer believe that is the state of Israel. Honestly, after WW2 it would have been better to give them part of Germany to make as a new home.
Of course, for a while now if someone was to ask me if Israel has a right to exist, my reply would have been that I’m not convinced Canada as a right to exist. But despite our own ongoing genocide of the indigenous people here, we’re not shooting children for funsies. Now my answer to that question is a straight up “no.”
The pattern of deliberate obstruction has been there ever since the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank 1967. The IDF has merely turned it up to eleven. This is their attitude to palestinians.
In the West Bank, israelis who oppose the repression formed the Machsom watch to prevent soldiers at checkpoints from harassing palestinians.
Tabby Lavalamp @ 9
There are times I wonder if the human race has a right to exist.
Maybe we should create a species of “uplifted” cuddly raccoons, and let them and the more benign kinds of AI inherit the world.
Hey, Palestinians! In case it wasn’t clear to you, consider:
30,000 of you die, Biden wrings his hands and sends more bombs
7 people who aren’t Palestinian die, Biden demands immediate ceasefire.
Could he be any clearer how little he values Palestinian lives?
More than nothing is more than Trump cares, so he’s still the better option there.