And soon, maybe not any part of Gaza. (Bear in mind that what they were feeding before was averaging something north of 200 calories a day according to some estimates I’ve seen.)
The United Nations suspended food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Tuesday due to a lack of supplies and an untenable security situation caused by Israel’s expanding military operation. The U.N. warned that humanitarian operations across the territory were nearing collapse…
…
The U.N.’s World Food Program said it was running out of food for central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people are now living.
“Humanitarian operations in Gaza are near collapse,” said Abeer Etefa, a WFP spokesperson. If food and other supplies don’t resume entering Gaza “in massive quantities, famine-like conditions will spread,” she said…
…The U.N says some 1.1 million people in Gaza — nearly half the population — face
This is, of course, deliberate Israeli policy, abetted by the US. The Rafah crossing was closed during the latest invasion and such trucks as do attempt to provide aid from other directions such as Jordan are often stopped by protesters.
Again, policy, announced immediately after Oct 7.
Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said it would impose a “complete siege” on the territory.
“No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed,” he said, adding that “we are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”
This is genocide. It is intentional genocide. There is no way the casualty figures are as low as the Hamas health ministry has suggested: they can’t count all the deaths and they have reason to minimize them. At the end of this we are going to find a death toll in the low hundreds of thousands, minimum. The longer this goes on and the more effective the blockade, well, Israel could get damn near its full genocide.
Once more, I will be clear. The only solution to this is a single secular state where everyone has a vote and equal rights. De-Zionization will be necessary, when 98% of the population thinks the level of force used in this war is appropriate and when civilians are stopping food trucks, the entire society is rotten to core. No “truth and reconciliation” bullshit. People going to prison for life, or hung from the neck, starting with the entire war cabinet.
“Never again” was supposed to mean “never again for anyone”, not “people claiming to be Jewish can genocide and Europeans will support them out of guilt.”
Oh, and so far, as best I can find, no food from the pier has made it to a Palestinian.
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Altandmain
The US and Israel never meant for the Palestinians to be fed. October 7 was meant to be used as an excuse and political cover to try to gain some global sympathy for what Israel had wanted to do for many years – genocide or what the Germans did to them.
In the case of the US, Biden has an election in November he desperately wants to win and he needs to pretend to be doing something to help the Palestinians (Michigan, for those unaware, is a critical swing state with a large Muslim population). He just wants their vote, not to actually do anything for them (and this is one of the disgusting parts of the Democrats these days).
It has not worked, of course, but he was going to try.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/donald-trump-joe-biden-2024-election-michigan-muslims.html
Everyone can see that the US doesn’t care about Palestinians. Certainly Biden could care less about them.
—–
Keep in mind that the Israeli economy is in contraction right now – post-war, Israel is in for hard times, not just because of the conflict, but because some of the richest Israelis have emigrated.
There is no more security in this supposed Holy Land – militarily, the Israelis would lose if they were foolish enough to challenge Hezbollah or Iran. They still might be crazy enough to try, based on the polls.
So in that regard, it’s not a clear win for Israel. There’s also the matter that a large percentage of the world has rightfully seen Israel as a pariah. Rebuilding business and trade relationships will be extremely difficult for Israel.
NR
The situation sounds bad.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/05/21/pentagon-says-none-of-food-aid-moved-through-gaza-pier-has-made-it-palestinians.html
I really hope the aid can get where it needs to go quickly.
Poul
Honestly, I think the Israeli have a good chance of succeding in genocide. Who will stop them?
They’ve solid US support with the US Presidential election having no effect whom ever wins. Do anyone see the Congress changing it’s support of Israel?
It also looks like they have started in the West Bank with the process of purging the Palestinians. Jordan should get ready for a lot of new citizens.
So Gaza may well be added to the list of the worst that humanity can offer like Auschwitz.
someofparts
Well, last night a boomer friend of mine who only gets his news from “legitimate” US media told me that Biden has cancelled a bunch of student loan debt. That’s why I will be a bad person if I don’t vote for Joe in November I guess. Information from sites like this don’t count, according to him, because you guys are all Russian agents, or bots.
I am astonished that this guy can walk and chew gum at the same time and even more astonished that he is far from the only one who “thinks” like this.
Daniel Lynch
Agree with Ian that a single secular state is the logical solution, however, politics is not logical. I’m hearing that Russia and China favor the 2-state solution approved by the U.N. many years ago — Putin is a “by the book” lawyer, so if left up to the powers that be, there may be a 2 state settlement. It’s not clear how or if Russia and China would flex their muscles in the conflict. It’s not clear that a 2 state settlement based on 1967 borders, if it could be implemented, would bring lasting peace. It might merely kick the can down the road.
It’s certainly a tragedy of historical proportions, and I am ashamed that my government is facilitating it. Voting does not solve the problem because the choice is confined to warmonger “A” vs. warmonger “B” (I vote Green, but that is merely a futile protest vote). The U.S. is not a real democracy.
Jan Wiklund
I just wonder what “dezionization” looks like in real life. How does one get a total population to let go of its colonial mentality and its racial contempt for another population?
I believe the South African truth and conciliation trick was a pragmatically necessary part of delegitimizing the apratheid practice in the eye of the practitioners, since it implied no malignity and no revenge towards them, and thus no threat. As long as the Israelis believe the Palestinians want to kill them all, even a one state solution will not stop the genocidial inclination of the Israelis.
Look att the ex-Yugoslavia. It was one state. But as soon as the Serbs began to believe that the Croats wanted to kill them they went for the Croats. And vice versa. There will always be politicians ready to bait from behind. And you can’t go on guarding them infinitely.
Bill R
This is no longer genocide but a holocaust – the Israel state is do the same to the Palestinians that the Nazi did to Jews, Romany and Russians.
Feral Finster
@NR: the “pier” was always intended as a moral figleaf, that is, an attempt to have it both ways while making it perfectly clear which side Biden really was on.
Anyway, it is abundantly obvious that October 7 was but a pretext for ethnic cleansing or outright genocide. The question is – what is anyone going to do about it?
I ask this over and over, not because I am incapable of asking anything else, but because the sociopaths who rule the West are incapable of asking anything else.
“What is going to stop us?”
mago
One suspects that Israel is playing the long game here and counting on short memories, propaganda and other distractions to pull off their genocide without long term condemnation and repercussions, which if true, is a short sided view on their part.
In a generation or two, it will be like I wasn’t born then. Regrettable, but not my fault. It’s a new day. Time to move on.
On the other hand, one suspects that future generations of Palestinians and their Mid East brethren will have long memories and motivation for revenge.
Political solutions seem unlikely. Chaos and suffering are here for the long term.
Just my two cents. I’d like to be proven wrong.
different clue
” Never again” stopped meaning “never again for anyone” several decades ago. The callous cynic sees several genocides which were freely permitted to go on while “the world” watched them the way a cow watches a passing train. The Interahamwe Holocaust of the Tutsis comes to mind. ( Well, several relevant powers . . . France, America , maybe others, went beyond just watching. They aided and assisted the Interahamwe Militias in the genocide either by thinly disguised support (Mitterand) or the eyes-wide-shut view that no designatable-as-such genocide was occuring ( Clinton) ).
Another fast-forward genocide is shaping up, ground being prepared, etc. in Darfur.
https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/sudan/sudan-conflict-al-fasher-north-darfur-flash-update-no-01-12-may-2024
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/05/1149281
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722lppyn65o
Last night on BBC news the expert being interviewed noted that based on past actions, the Janjaweed Militias ( recently up-armed, up-trained and re-branded as the “Rapid Support Forces”) will exterminate 100,00 to 300,000 or so Black Afro-Africans in the soon-to-be conquered Al Fasher region as fast and completely as they can in order to establish an Arab settler ethno-region in their place. And the UN has been entirely prevented from getting any food or anything else into Al Fasher — same as Gaza. So ” never again” means “except for Darfur” today just as it meant ” except for Rwanda” during the Mitterand-Clinton period.
But any genocide prevented is better than no genocide prevented at all, and the Israeli genocide of Gaza appears to be just slow-moving enough that “the world” can still stop it if “the world” decides to freeze and torture Israel into making it stop. If “the world” stops worrying about how Israel feels about that, then “the world” can still make it stop, especially because Israel wants the Gaza Palestinians to suffer as long and slowly as possible before dying off . . . which gives ” the world” plenty of time to stop the slow-genocide before final dieoff. So it depends on what ” the world” wants and how badly ” the world” wants it.
bruce wilder
Israel probably hoped that it could create a refugee crisis and mass exodus of Palestinians, but no one seems to want to cooperate by letting Palestinians exit the largest open air prison in the world and become a diaspora of refugees and migrants somewhere else.
Normally (if we can use a term like “normal” to apply to genocide), a genocide includes population movement as a component. Israel itself was jump-started rather famously by Jews fleeing other places. The Turks drove the Armenians into the desert. The Americans drove the Native Americans west and into reservations. The Irish Potato Famine created a massive Irish diaspora into settler societies across the world. The Yugoslavian civil wars saw some pretty sharp “ethnic cleansing” to make Croatia more Croatian and less Serbian as an example. The end of World War II saw an expulsion of surviving Germans from across eastern Europe (and included Stalin moving Poland 300 miles westward).
It is a horrifying game of chicken in a way that no one seems to be willing to facilitate an Israeli “victory” by enabling mass migration. I have long presumed that the stupid pier was always intended as an American paved road to refugee camps in Cyprus and beyond. Now that it is “operational” we may see how Blinken and company try to game out spinning a narrative to justify a turn in that direction.
someofparts
At the end of the day, no matter what atrocities the US/Israelis commit, if they push it they will lose to the Asians. I think I/we just keep hoping these monsters will back down before Asia has to stop us the hard way.
A friend invited me over yesterday to watch the second episode of Dune. I kid you not, the thing was rewritten to put a supportive face on atomic colonialism. Turns out the dynastic family the hero hails from has nukes and they are gloating about how effective these will be against their enemies.
I keep hoping our ruling idiots won’t really decide to use nukes, but I’m probably an epic fool to think that. I just wish I were wrong to fear this.