You Know More Hebrew Words Than You Think
10 min read
Why it’s wrong to accuse Israel of causing famine in Gaza.
On Monday, March 17, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative (a grouping made up of a number of relief organizations and UN agencies) issued a dire warning about northern Gaza. If conditions don’t improve, people in northern Gaza would face famine conditions sometime between now and the end of May. The group also warned that the entire population of Gaza currently faces food insecurity.
This report’s important findings underline how crucial it is to bring aid into Gaza, and seem to vindicate Israel’s current strenuous efforts to facilitate and increase civilian aid flow into Gaza.
Since Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023 attack, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and over 240 were taken captive, and Israel’s attacks on Hamas targets inside of Gaza, Israel has sent over 15,200 truckloads of aid – representing 369 million pounds of food – into Gaza, even as Hamas has continued to send continual volleys of rockets into civilian centers in Israel from their bases inside Gaza.
In recent weeks, the number of trucks entering Gaza from Israel has increased to over a thousand a week. On one day for which specific data are available, March 3, 2024, 277 trucks loaded with aid – including 8.3 million pounds of food – entered Gaza. (Egypt, which also shares a border with Gaza, has not allowed any humanitarian aid trucks to pass through its territory into Gaza directly.) Surprisingly, perhaps, since October 7, the number of trucks entering Gaza has increased from pre-war levels by about 50%. Israeli Government spokesman Eylon Levy notes that the report paints an “out of date picture” that “does not take into account the latest developments on the ground,” such as increased numbers of trucks entering Gaza.
Israel has asked the international community to help step up aid, and worked with France and Jordan to plan drops of aid packages into northern Gaza. Before they allow trucks to enter Gaza, Israel inspects the goods they carry first to ensure that no military goods are being smuggled to Hamas. Since October 7, 1.6% of all aid trucks headed to Gaza have been found to contain arms and were barred from continuing their journeys.
In January 2024, Col. Elad Goren, who helps plan and carry out aid delivery in Gaza, told journalists: “We are not refusing anything that is underneath four headlines – food, water, medical supplies, and shelters. All of those are entering every day.” He said that by early January, the Israeli Defense Agency had sent over 22 million pounds of supplies to Gaza, including a complete water desalination plant, mobile desalination filters, X-ray machines, CT machines, and oxygen generators.
One major reason Gaza is facing a critical shortage of food is Hamas’ ineptitude in distributing aid and its theft of vital food and other items.
This should come as no surprise. Hamas, which has a long and bloody history of using its own people as human shields, clearly has no compunction about putting its civilians in harm's way. As a major report by NATO puts it, Hamas’ “most common uses of human shields include: Firing rockets…from or in proximity to heavily populated areas…(e.g. schools, hospitals, or mosques)....and (c)ombatting the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) from or in proximity to residential and commercial areas… By engaging in these acts, Hamas employs a win-win scenario: if indeed the IDF uses kinetic power, and the number of civilian casualties surges, Hamas can use that as a weapon in the lawfare it conducts. It would be able to accuse the IDF and Israel of committing war crimes….” https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf Now, it appears, Hamas is looting aid with impunity, leaving many of its people hungry, and enjoying the “win-win” NATO warned about by watching Israel take the blame.
Zvika Klein, Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post newspaper, recently quoted a senior Israeli official who confirmed this, describing most of the food aid entering Gaza at the moment having “immediately been taken by Hamas terrorists, who then sell some of the supplies for ten times more than what it’s worth.” Those who are hungry are families and individuals without the means to pay Hamas’ extortionate prices. “This condition reinforces (Hamas’) narrative,” the official notes, “portraying hunger as a consequence of external forces and legitimizing (Hamas’) control.”
Hamas members have brazenly attacked crowds of civilians waiting to receive food and other aid in Gaza in order to steal aid. Maj. (ret.) John W. Spencer, Chairman of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, has stated that in recent weeks, “We know Hamas dressed in civilian clothes have been walking up to armored vehicles to place magnet bombs and fire into the crowd during aid distribution.
Israeli officials have also described Hamas fighters using shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down aid drops sent by Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, making the use of aid drops from airplanes and helicopters immensely difficult.
“The situation in Gaza is akin to hunger in New York,” an Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post; “where homeless people suffer not from a lack of food but from a lack of money to purchase it.” Given the amount of aid that’s entering Gaza every day, the acute hunger in Gaza is a problem created by Hamas’ theft and corruption.
Criminal gangs also conspire to loot much of the food and other aid entering Gaza. As The Economist magazine describes: “Gaza’s clans have long been power-brokers. They never went away under Hamas, whose cannier leaders learned not to pick quarrels with the larger families… Aid officials and observers say the clans are involved in…crookery: in some cases they offer NGOs safe warehouses and merchants protection for their goods - for a fee; in others they arrange the theft of aid, which they later sell at extortionate prices.” .
The Times of Israel interviewed an aid worker who described what this sort of gang theft looks like on the ground in Gaza right now: “In the last convoys, we had swarms of people moving toward the vehicles, to the point where they could not move. In the past, this would last for about three minutes and then clear up. But in one of the latest convoys, we timed how long we were stuck. It was about 20 minutes. Then we had to turn back because we just couldn’t go ahead. And the cargo was looted.” On different aid deliveries, he and his colleagues have been shot at and threatened with knives as their trucks were robbed. Since February, this aid official described, he hasn’t been able to successfully deliver an aid shipment without the contents being stolen.
In late February, the World Food Programme announced that it was pausing its food aid deliveries in northern Gaza because their drivers were facing “complete chaos and violence”. Drivers and aid crews are being shot at and aid is being stolen. On March 13, 2024, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vividly described this scenario, where gangs of criminals are stealing much-needed food aid from their neighbors: “You have situations where aid goes in and then people immediately charge at the trucks and you see looting. You see criminals get in the act….”
Violence at aid distribution points has escalated into wide scale shooting twice. On February 28, over 100 people were shot while waiting for food in Gaza City; on March 14, 21 people were shot at a different Gaza aid distribution site. In both cases, Hamas accused Israeli troops of opening fire on civilians unprovoked; in both cases, Israel’s military blamed armed gunmen in the crowd. In the February 28 incident, Israelis said that after looting aid, some gunmen turned on Israeli forces, who shot back in self-defense. In the March 14 episode, Israel said that the violence was entirely the actions of armed Gazan gunmen.
In the aftermath of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative’s report, a number of officials and media outlets have placed the blame for hunger in Gaza entirely on Israel, despite copious evidence that Hamas and armed criminal gangs are stealing enormous amounts of aid in Gaza.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, immediately claimed that Israel is “intentionally depriving people of food” in Gaza. More, he claimed, this is part of Israel’s plan “to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian” and accused Israel of “genocide”. The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said that Israel is using “starvation…as a weapon of war.” The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has said that Israel’s actions “may amount to the use of starvation as a weapon of war”.
Those who falsely accuse Israel of deliberately causing a man-made famine in Gaza are opening up the possibility of Israel being tried in the International Court of Justice, and for individual Israelis to be seized and tried by the International Criminal Court. It’s a cynical gambit, and one that ignores the complexity and difficulty of distributing aid to civilians in Gaza. South Africa is asking the International Court of Justice to issue binding resolutions limiting Israel’s ability to wage war against Hamas. Charges that Israel is committing war crimes and deliberately and single-handedly engineering a famine would bolster this ludicrous claim.
In the face of the intractable problems plaguing food and other aid distribution in Gaza, there are a few concrete steps we can all take.
As mentioned above, Israel has increased the pace at which aid is entering Gaza. In recent weeks, it has reopened a land route into northern Gaza and urged the World Food Program to restart its aid deliveries in northern Gaza. Israel has set up a sea corridor to deliver aid from Cyprus and is working with donor countries to coordinate more air drops of aid. It has also added manpower and screening equipment to its screening center for trucks entering Gaza, and is now conducting inspections round the clock, allowing 44 trucks an hour to be cleared to enter Gaza. We can all applaud these moves.
Even when plagued by armed gangs and looters, aid organizations refuse to work with the Israeli military to ensure their aid deliveries’ safety. Israel is now considering hiring private security guards to protect aid deliveries. Israel is also working with the United States to set up a floating dock to bring aid into Gaza by ship. Again, these are positive developments that have the potential to help innocent civilians.
No matter how much aid is delivered, it’s worthless if Hamas fighters and criminal gangs steal aid before it can benefit ordinary Gazans. We can demand of our elected representatives that they take a strong line against Hamas and work to a stable, real, and lasting peace in Gaza.
With so many falsehoods filling the internet and public discourse, it’s important to educate ourselves and stand up for the truth. Read Israeli newspapers. Counter smears and lies about the Jewish state. Comment and post links to reliable articles. With Israel and Israelis being accused of fomenting a famine, it’s crucial we all stand up and paint a more realistic, nuanced picture about what is taking place in Gaza today.
In the words of a prominent Israeli journalist, "Why is Israel giving aid to Gaza? Why are we giving them humanitarian aid? There are over 130 Israelis being held hostage by Hamas right now....much respect to those protesters who showed up today to block the trucks with their bodies, not letting aid in....as unpleasant as it may be, the only way to increase protests against Hamas...any way for there to be a glimmer of hope that these people to turn on Hamas once and for all is if we stop providing the humanitarian aid so that they will turn against their leaders...."
Sure sounds like "using starvation as a weapon of war" to me.
"We can demand of our elected representativesthat they take a strong line against Hamas and work to a stable, real, and lasting peace in Gaza".
First of all, we SHOULD, not "can" demand. Secondly, there WON'T be a lasting peace in Gaza, as long as these gang of psychos run the place. Naive to think and write any differently.
International law does not require Israel to provide aid to enemy civilians. And Israel is only required to allow in neutral third-party aid *if* it can be sequestered from combatants, which is clearly not the case - and everyone knew that from the start.
The international condemnation of Israel over so-called starving Gazans is just international antisemitism. As usual. Singling out Israel for discriminatory treatment.
Civilians in any other war-torn territory would be allowed - even encouraged - to flee to safety. If the international community actually cared about Gazan civilians rather than just pretending, it would have found a way to get them out of Gaza. If the UN couldn't pressure Egypt to open its borders, Biden could have built his "humanitarian aid pier" months ago.
It makes no sense to think Israel would use starvation as a weapon of war. Famine and, any measures made to cause and increase a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, serves absolutely no benefit to Israel.
Such a strategy would only work in a situation where the enemy cared about the welfare of their own population.
But this is Hamas. Not only do they not care for the Gazans but, they want the population to suffer; this is part of their strategy. And the world falls for this.
Well said!
It only goes to show how crasy it has become,I mean,everybody knows what hamas stand for, yet,when hamas cry WOLF everybody says well it has to be right because if you are JEWISH you are guilty in whatever they say we did.But they have yet to prove it.
The only thing I "blame" Israel for is not wiping out Hamas sooner, but political realities are political realities. Right now, Israel is doing the world a huge favor by taking out some trash. I have not one shred of pity for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other such vile groups. No, I'm not Jewish.
I am reminded of the situation in war-torn Somalia when criminal elements deprived the starving people of relief. What are the areas of Gaza that are currently the most dangerous and is there anywhere people can flee to that want no part of Hamas?
When our elected officials like Melanie Jolie & Justin Trudeau blindly accept the Hamas rhetoric and side with the antisemitic NDP it’s impossible to get this message out. As long as there are 100 times as many Muslim votes in Canada & the US we will be fighting an uphill battle to change the narrative.