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In Front of the Whole World:
Israel and the U.S. Continue to Starve Gaza into a Nazi-Style Death Camp
Palestinians line up for food in Rafah, Gaza Strip, February 23, 2024. Catastrophic hunger is dire in all of Gaza. Photo: AP
The major relief organizations of the world have said that the food situation in Palestine is the most dire of any country in 20 years. The UN’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is by far the main, and only meaningful way to channel food to Palestinians at anything close to the scale needed to stave off mass starvation. It employs 13,000 people in Gaza and has the logistical skills, connections with local administrations, and ability to move food quickly to people in an orderly and rational way. In the midst of mass destruction, terror, and chaos in Gaza, under siege by Israel, that is not something that could be recreated in a way that came close to addressing the situation.
U.S. efforts to “air drop” aid have been at best random and at worst murderous (these air drops have killed a number of people when parachutes failed).
Palestinians wait for humanitarian aid on a beachfront in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024. Photo: AP
So, what did the U.S. Congress do to deal with the imminent starvation of perhaps 2 million people? It cut off aid to UNRWA, the ONLY viable relief organization operating in Palestine!
The supposed “reason” being unsubstantiated, unproven, claims by Israel that a few of the thousands of UNRWA employees in Gaza were part of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. The U.S. Congress might just as well have voted to make it a U.S. law that Israel must starve the entire population of Gaza to death.
And that’s just one element of a whole panorama of horror—carried out by Israel, but in many, many ways “Made In USA”—that went on this past week.
Israel continues unchecked mass murder of civilians in bomb and missile attacks. And the U.S. continues to rush those bombs and missiles to Israel. As of March 23, the number of people killed by Israel in Gaza was 32,142. Uncounted thousands more bodies lie buried in the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli missiles and bombs. On March 23, the New York Times reported that “Gaza has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within.”
In addition to tens of thousands of dead, Israel’s bombs, missiles, tanks, and foot soldiers have injured at least 75,000 people in Gaza. The entire population suffers from malnutrition and starvation. Emaciated women are giving birth in shelters. Israel has systematically decimated Gaza’s health care infrastructure; two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have been effectively knocked out of operation by Israeli attacks.
None of the 2.2 million people in Gaza have enough food to eat. Half the population is on the brink of starvation! In northern Gaza, the UN reports that 70 percent of the population is already suffering from catastrophic levels of hunger. People are eating grass and animal feed, and drinking polluted water. Starving mothers are unable to produce enough milk to feed their babies and parents beg for infant formula at overwhelmed health facilities.
What starving people in Gaza sometimes eat—animal feed and straw, sometimes mixed with dirt. Photo: Mosab Abu Toha IG
Having systematically destroyed Gaza’s food production, storage, and transportation with bombs, missiles, tanks, and bulldozers, Israel chokes off food going into Gaza through so-called “inspections” of aid trucks, banning items ranging from sanitary napkins and pregnancy kits to hospital supplies and water purification tablets, claiming these items can be used as weapons by Hamas.
On March 23, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA tweeted:
Today, the Israeli Authorities denied another convoy with much needed food supplies from going to the north where people are on the verge of famine. The last time @UNRWA was able to send food aid to the north was nearly 2 month[s] ago. I’ve said it many times: this is a man made hunger & looming famine which can still be averted. The Israeli Authorities must allow delivering food aid at scale to the north including via UNRWA, the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza. Meanwhile, children will continue to die of malnutrition & dehydration under our watch. The unbearable cannot become the new normal.
In recent months, Israeli forces have killed over 400 Palestinians in northern Gaza as they gathered to collect aid from trucks arriving from the south. On February 29, Israel killed over a hundred people and injured many hundreds more in the “Flour” Massacre in North Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that on March 23, at least 19 people were again killed by Israeli shelling as aid was being distributed at the same location where previous massacres took place in Gaza City.
Reports, including at Middle Eastern Eye, have documented Israel targeting aid workers. This includes civilian officials responsible for organizing food distribution, and committees of volunteers who have organized to coordinate and manage food distribution. Israel gives the excuse that these civilian officials are part of Hamas, but Hamas has been the government in Gaza for 18 years—meaning the entire civil apparatus could be considered to be “affiliated with Hamas.” Israel has not provided evidence that the people they killed in the last week were military combatants. After Israel struck a UN food distribution operation in southern Gaza on March 13, killing a UN staff person and others, the Washington Post reported that Israeli attacks on aid convoys and local police that guard them are creating conditions of chaos and looting by gangs.
As we post this, Israel’s siege of al-Shifa Hospital in central Gaza is in its seventh day. This is the largest hospital in Gaza. As the siege began, al-Shifa was barely equipped after months of war and a previous raid by Israeli forces.
Amr Fawzi Jedbah, a 31-year-old vascular surgeon at al-Shifa described looking out a window of al-Shifa on March 18 and seeing Israeli tanks surrounding the hospital. He told the Washington Post that minutes later the Israeli military announced “they have conquered al-Shifa and everyone is under arrest.” Dr. Jedbah said Israeli troops forced out, or detained, hundreds of patients. Some 150 to 200 patients who could not walk remained in the hospital with a handful of doctors. At least nine patients—including two in the intensive care unit—died from lack of treatment. While Dr. Jedbah remained in the hospital, he avoided looking out of hospital windows for fear of being shot.
American and British doctors with years of experience treating patients in war zones came to Washington, DC, to bring firsthand accounts of what they saw in hospitals in Gaza.
Nick Maynard, a British surgeon, described operating on chest injuries from explosions with few anesthetics or antibiotics at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza in December and January. “The lack of pain relief was particularly disturbing because we saw lots of children with awful burns.” He described trying to operate with only a limited supply of sterile gloves and surgical gowns. This absence of essential medical material is due to the Israeli siege of Gaza. Dr. Maynard described walking through hallways packed with displaced people to check on patients he had operated on and sometimes failing to find them. He told the New York Times, “This is the deliberate destruction of the whole health care system.”
Thaer Ahmad is a Palestinian-American emergency medicine physician. He worked at Nasser Hospital in the south of Gaza through January. On February 15, after he left, Nasser Hospital was raided by Israeli forces in what Israel claimed was a search for Hamas members, weapons, and the bodies of Israeli hostages. Israel ordered patients and staff to leave, attacked and killed some of those trying to leave with bullets and air strikes, and forced thousands of patients, staff, and refugees out of the hospital.
Videos from the February raid depicted chaos inside the damaged, smoke-filled hospital, punctuated by automatic gunfire and explosions. Under rapidly deteriorating conditions, patients died from a lack of power and oxygen. The Israeli military described the raid as “a precise and limited operation.”
What we are seeing with the utter destruction that Israel is bringing down on the people of Gaza—with the financial and military support of the U.S.—is an attempt, on the part of Prime Minister Netan-NAZI (aka Benjamin Netanyahu)—toward a “final solution” to Israel's “Palestinian problem.” This means, at a minimum, reducing the Palestinians to such a state that they can no longer pose any obstacle to Israel’s objectives. Beyond that, it could mean mass expulsion and/or slaughter on a massive scale, beyond even what Israel is now carrying out.
Over and over, Israel justifies targeting hospitals, choking off aid distribution, and shooting down starving people getting food aid by claiming Hamas is hiding among the civilian population. And that its mass slaughter in Gaza is necessary for Israel to “defend itself.” While Biden and other U.S. officials decry, at least publicly, some of the most egregious and horrific of these crimes, over and over they frame that in proclaiming Israel has a “right to defend itself.”
In REVOLUTION 6, Taking on the "justifications" for Israel's genocide of Palestinians, revolutionary leader, and author of the new communism Bob Avakian answers that:
Here’s another excuse raised by Israel and its supporters to “justify” its mass slaughter of Palestinians: “Hamas is hiding among the Palestinian population in Gaza, so Israel can’t help killing civilians in going after Hamas.”
This is more bullshit. The fact is that Israel is attacking Gaza with massive (2000 pound) bombs that are bound to kill huge numbers of civilians, not just Hamas fighters. More than 2 million Palestinians are packed into the tiny territory of Gaza, confined there under Israeli control, so is it really surprising that Hamas is “mixed in” among the larger Palestinian population? It is disgusting hypocrisy for Israel to complain that Hamas is mixed in among the overall population in Gaza and to use that as an excuse for slaughtering Palestinian civilians.
“Well, what is Israel supposed to do, just let this attack by Hamas go unanswered, encouraging further attacks? What about Israel’s right to defend itself?” That is another argument raised by Israel and its supporters.
The truth is that Israel, like apartheid South Africa before it, is an illegitimate state—and as such, it has no legitimate right to “defend itself”—and its so-called “defense” has repeatedly involved the deliberate killing of civilians, including large numbers of children.
What is Israel supposed to do? Israel is “supposed” to stop brutally oppressing the Palestinian people. But Israel, as a racist, Jewish-supremacist (Zionist) state, cannot do that: it cannot do that, because murderous oppression of the Palestinian people has been built into the state of Israel from the very beginning, and Israel could not exist without brutally oppressing the Palestinian people.
And, since Israel cannot stop brutally oppressing the Palestinian people, Israel—as a racist, Zionist state—must cease to exist.
The real question is: what is the legitimate way to fight against the state of Israel, and what is a just solution to all this?
The answer is definitely not to “kill off all the Jews in Israel” or “drive them into the sea.” The answer is the abolition of the state of Israel, and in its place the creation of a revolutionary state in which the government and the laws do not promote any religion and do not favor one people over another, and instead there is equality between Jews and Palestinians.
The answer is also definitely not the “two-state solution” being promoted by the Biden administration. Such a “two-state solution” would really amount to nothing more than a powerful state of Israel continuing to occupy land stolen from the Palestinian people, while the so-called “Palestinian state” created with this “solution” would be a bitter joke—a puppet state—merely a patchwork of separated small territories, surrounded and dominated by Israel, with the Palestinian people still subjected to terrible oppression and deprivation.
The answer is that the fight against the state of Israel must be waged on a revolutionary basis, with the goal of putting an end to all oppressive relations and all inequality among people based on race and nationality, sex and gender, and all relations in which one part of society exploits others. And the urgent need is for a revolutionary force to emerge to lead the struggle on that basis.
UPDATE: Resistance News Network issued the following statement on March 25: “The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire until the end of Ramadan, presented by non-permanent member states, with only the United States abstaining (without a veto). The vote came after an amendment presented by Russia to include the words ‘permanent ceasefire’ failed. The resolution called for the unconditional release of zionist prisoners held in Gaza. Netanyahu announces his anger at the U.S.’s abstention from the U.N. Security Council vote, stating that their decision not to veto ‘harms the war effort.’ As punishment, Netanyahu has withdrawn the ‘israeli’ delegation set to head to Washington D.C. to discuss the planned invasion of Rafah.”
Boston protest, Feb. 4, 2024. (WW Photo: Stevan Kirschbaum)
The Joe Biden administration attempted to push a resolution through the 15-member United Nations Security Council on March 22 calling for an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” in Gaza. This resolution was defeated in a vote of 11 for, three against and one abstention. Permanent Security Council members China and Russia vetoed the resolution, with Algeria being the other no vote.
Guyana abstained, whose U.N. Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett explained, “Indeed if one were to read this resolution without background knowledge, it would be difficult to ascertain which party in this conflict is committing the atrocities in Gaza.” (caribbean.loopnews.com, March 23)
The resolution included a condemnation of Hamas — the Islamic Resistance Movement — for conducting the October 7 action against Israel. The resolution did not raise one iota of criticism of Israel’s ongoing racist ethnic cleansing in Gaza, including the blockade of huge amounts of humanitarian aid, preventing it from reaching hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are literally dying of starvation, dehydration and preventable diseases. As of March 24, over 7,000 trucks carrying aid still wait outside the Rafah crossing in Egypt.
While the U.S. resolution called for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, it did not call for the freedom of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held for months and years in Israeli torture chambers.
Palestinian resistance groups praised the veto of the U.S. resolution. Hamas stated that the resolution was “complicit with the goals of the criminal zionist enemy, enabling it to continue its aggression, and giving it cover and legitimacy for the war of genocide that it is committing against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The resolution does not include an explicit demand for an immediate cessation of the zionist aggression against Gaza.” (Resistance News Network, March 21)
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya characterized the resolution as a “hypocritical initiative” to “ensure the impunity of Israel.” He went on to say: “The American product is exceedingly politicized, the sole purpose of which is to help play to the [U.S.] voters, to throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire.” (New York Times, March 22)
The Palestine Chronicle conducted interviews with Palestinians in Gaza on their reactions to the U.S. resolution and its hypocritical nature. Baraa Eid, currently displaced in the Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, stated: “Isn’t the blood of more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them children and women, enough for the world to unite on a firm stance to force Israel to stop its war on Gaza?”
Eid went on to say, “We have no part in the political game between other major countries. We want to live in peace in our homeland, and we want the unjust blockade that Israel has imposed on us since 2006 to be lifted. What is happening on the ground now is the continuation of a brutal war, with more martyrs and victims falling every day.” (March 23)
Congress provides more weapons for Israel
The U.S. had vetoed three previous resolutions since October 7 demanding a permanent ceasefire and to allow humanitarian aid to be distributed in Gaza. This latest maneuver at the U.N. has deepened the view on a global scale that the U.S. is a social pariah for backing its fascist ally, even amongst some of Washington’s longtime allies, some of whom have cut military aid to Israel.
Just hours after the U.S. resolution was rebuffed in the U.N., a $1.2 trillion bill was passed in the House and Senate to avert a partial shutdown of the government.
Among the provisions in the bill, $3.8 billion was allocated for more arms to Israel, and the U.S. banned its funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which since 1950 has provided vital aid for displaced Palestinians.
The bill also limits aid to the Palestinian Authority if any of its representatives initiate or support the International Criminal Court investigation against Israel for genocide. The U.S. is seeking to rehabilitate the image of the discredited Palestine Authority in order to replace Hamas as the governing body in Gaza.
The bourgeois media is attempting to emphasize any tactical differences “Genocide Joe” and his administration may have in how the Zionist, terrorist regime is conducting its massacres and mass displacement of the Palestinian people. But these tactical differences can never disguise the blatant complicity that U.S. imperialism has in sending deadly war machinery to Israel that is responsible for killing and wounding over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza in a nearly six-month period.
If the U.S. was truly concerned about the plight of the Palestinians, it could have cut off all military funding to its garrison state immediately to force Israel to open up the borders to allow humanitarian aid, to adhere to a permanent ceasefire and to withdraw all Israeli occupation troops from Gaza. These are all demands coming from the united Palestinian resistance.
But once again, the U.S. is just as guilty of genocidal war crimes as its junior imperialist partner, resulting in the two countries facing further diplomatic and political isolation on a global scale
The United Nations Security Council adopted on Monday a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as the United Nations refrained from using its veto power for the first time, after 171 days of war.
The resolution, which was presented by non-permanent members of the Security Council, “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a sustainable lasting ceasefire.
It also “demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, stressing the urgent need to increase aid and demanding the removal of all obstacles to its delivery.”
The resolution, which was written by the ten elected members to the council and was proposed in the council by Mozambique’s representative, passed with 14 votes in favor and the US abstaining.
Before the vote, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia had slammed as “unacceptable” the fact that the word “permanent” was replaced with weaker language.
“We all received instructions for a vote on the text that contained the word ‘permanent’” and anything else could be seen as permission for Israel to continue its attacks, he said. Russian verbal amendment, however, did not pass due lack of votes.
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of China to the UN, Zhang Jun, said that “the current draft is unequivocal and correct in its direction demanding an immediate ceasefire, while the previous one was evasive and ambiguous”.
The Chinese representative blamed the US for obstructing previous attempts at passing a ceasefire resolution.
“For the lives that have already perished, the Council resolution today comes too late”, he said.
Speaking after the vote, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the US “did not agree with everything with the resolution”.
“Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
Today’s vote followed several attempts by the UNSC at brokering a ceasefire resolution.
Last Friday, Russia and China vetoed a US draft UN Security Council resolution which conditioned the ceasefire in Gaza to “immediate” release of all “remaining hostages” currently held in Gaza.
Russia’s Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that the US was trying to “sell a product” to the UNSC by using the term “imperative” without demanding a ceasefire.
“We have observed a typical hypocritical spectacle,” he said.
Nebenzia added that “there was no call for a ceasefire in the text, accusing US leadership of ‘deliberately misleading the international community’,” the report added.
For his part, China’s envoy Zhang Jun said that the Council should call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, adding that too much time has been wasted in this regard.
Beijing’s representative also said that China will support a new draft resolution that is already circulating and that “is clear on the issue of a ceasefire and is in line with the correct direction of the Council action and is of great relevance.”
Since the start of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza last October 7, Washington has used its veto power against three draft resolutions, two of which called for an immediate ceasefire.
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 32,333 Palestinians have been killed, and 74,694 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’
(The Palestine Chronicle)
“A large operation in Rafah was (only) possible in the first weeks of the war, but we did not fight and the opportunity is no longer available”.
The former head of the Planning Department in the Israeli General Staff Command, Major General Nimrod Scheffer, ruled out a large-scale Israeli attack in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
He said in an interview with Maariv’s 103 FM that such an operation is not possible without a green light from Washington.
Scheffer, who previously ran the Israeli Aerospace Industries Company, said that the United States “has the (power to make the) decision on Rafah,” not Israel, “and that it is ridiculous for (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) to resist even knowing that we will not fight and that the Americans refuse to do so.”
Instead, Scheffer predicted limited military operations in Rafah, which, in his view, will not resemble the major attacks launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip in the first five months of the Israeli aggression.
“A large operation in Rafah was (only) possible in the first weeks of the war, but we did not fight and the opportunity is no longer available,” he said.
Scheffer also strongly criticized Netanyahu for contradicting the US administration on the issue of the Rafah invasion despite the latter’s unprecedented support to Israel.
The former official, however, said that Netanyhau’s ‘stubbornness’ over the issue is not actually sincere. “He lies when he sends this message. Army commanders know they will not fight in Rafah if the Americans ask that this does not happen.”
Scheffer went further, stating that Netanyahu is turning Israel into a “pariah” state, which, according to his estimation, just six months ago received tremendous support from the whole world.
Regarding the actual motives behind Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s visit to the United States, Schaeffer said that it is likely an attempt to prevent a US arms embargo or other measures that reduce or slow the flow of weapons.
As for the northern front, Scheffer expects that the cost would be very high if war broke out with Hezbollah, saying that Israel, despite repeated threats, cannot and does not want to fight a war under the current circumstances.
Scheffer added that if the war breaks out in the north, it will be a great matter with very high costs, calling on Israel to do the right thing, which is to achieve an agreement that spares it such fate.
Netanyahu and cabinet ministers have repeatedly expressed Israel’s willingness to fight an all-out war in Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah in a repeat of the Gaza war scenario.
The powerful Lebanese resistance group, however, has responded to the Israeli threats by confirming its readiness for an all-out war if necessary.
(The translation of Scheffer’s comments, which were originally in Hebrew, were taken from Al-Jazeera. They may deviate slightly from their original form.)
(PC, AJA)
