I want to state the following as clearly and unequivocally as possible: Israel, with the help of the US, is deliberating starving the population of Gaza to death.
The (manmade) famine conditions unfolding in Gaza are, many experts have noted, “unprecedented” in terms of their severity, speed and scale.
“We have never seen children pushed into malnutrition so quickly in any conflict in modern history,” the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, has said. “We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely … Israel is not just targeting civilians, it is trying to damn the future of the Palestinian people by harming their children.”
Not only is Israel blocking aid from getting to Gaza, it is making the process of getting what little aid does get in deadly. In a statement on Tuesday UN experts accused Israel of “intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October”, adding: “Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys.”
That statement was in reference to what is being called the Flour Massacre. Last Thursday at least 112 Palestinians were killed and 760 were injured in a desperate attempt to get flour. Witnesses say Israel opened fire on the crowd and caused panic, resulting in a stampede. This wasn’t a one-off: there is an established pattern of Israeli forces attacking Palestinians who are trying to get aid.
Again, I’m trying to state all this as clearly and unequivocally as possible because the US government, and large swathes of the US media, would have you believe the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is inscrutable and unavoidable. There seems to be a widespread attitude that while it’s terribly sad innocent people are being bombed to oblivion and starved to death, this is just the sort of inevitable collateral damage that happens in a conflict.
When Hillary Clinton was recently asked if she was shocked by casualties in........