Displaced Palestinians receive food packages from a US-backed foundation pledging to distribute humanitarian aid in western Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. AFP
The right to food is a universal human right. Yet this fundamental right is denied to Palestinians in Gaza. It is not only Israel that is inhumanely starving 2.2 million Palestinians; with the exception of a few countries such as Ireland, Spain, and Norway, the entire Western world is complicit in Israel’s crime of genocide, having failed to take meaningful action to stop the Zionist state’s barbarism.
This week, an ad hoc US-based non-profit organisation styling itself the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) stepped in to distribute food among the Palestinians left to die of hunger. The American NGO’s intervention has drawn criticism from UN officials who see it as the politicisation of the starvation the Palestinians have been enduring for the past 19 months.
The sidelined UN, which has a sound distribution network within Gaza, has said the GHF approach lacks transparency and violates humanitarian principles. Critics say the Israeli-American food distribution can be abused, is unsustainable and only serves Israel’s war strategy. Only a fraction of the people in the south received food on the first day, while the north starved.
Guarded by heavily armed mercenaries and Israeli troops who show no hesitation in shooting at starving civilians, the GHF’s chaotic food distribution resembled crumbs from the master’s table.
At the distribution points, there was little regard for the dignity of the Palestinians, whom Israel and Israeli-friendly nations and their servile media continue to dehumanise as animals, terrorists, Amalekites and whatnot.
But those who do not feel the pain of the Palestinians are the real terrorists and the modern-day Amalekites—the wicked people mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
The United Nations and its agencies, especially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), had been doing a remarkable job in Gaza, providing people with food aid amidst bombs and missiles. This continued until the criminal Israeli regime on January 30 this year banned UNRWA and restricted the operations of other UN humanitarian agencies.
Moreover, encouraged by the complicity of the world leaders, their silence and the lack of condemnation for using food as a weapon of war, Israel had been blocking the flow of food aid into the bomb-ravaged territory since March.
It is only in recent weeks that Western leaders broke their silence to reprimand Israel—a ridiculous gesture, nothing more than a gentle rap on the knuckles of the baby killer. Their empty words of reprimand and toothless threats of sanctions fail to stop the ghoulish monster from carrying out its crimes against humanity in Gaza.
These hollow condemnations will not push Israel to reform itself and be counted among ‘civilised nations’—a term the ambitious United Nations adopted in its charter and later conventions to define nations committed to peace in a new world order that emerged from the ashes of World War II.
With no fear of consequences, Israel, propped up by the West as the only democracy in the Middle East, has the gumption to casually spurn the UN charter, multiple conventions, resolutions and even the rulings of the International Court of Justice. True democracies do not illegally occupy other people’s countries. True democracies do not commit war crimes.
Israel should have bowed to the world court’s March 28, 2024 ruling if it is civilised enough to respect international law and the very world body the then world powers utilized to unjustly hand over 55 percent of historic Palestine in 1947 for the migrant European Zionists with questionable Semitic roots to set up a Jewish state.
Subsequent to South Africa’s complaint against Israel over the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the ICJ’s provisional ruling ordered Israel to ensure the provision of adequate and sufficient food, water, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene, and medical assistance in Gaza.
Convinced of South Africa’s warning that famine was imminent, the court called on Israel to act without delay to allow the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid. But Israel ignored the ruling and, in an act of defiance, increased its genocidal act of starving the Gaza people to death by denying them food and water.
The so-called civilised Israel’s civilised friends, who preach to the rest of the world to uphold human rights and respect the rules-based international order, did virtually nothing to pressure Israel to obey the ICJ ruling. By their silence, by their deception and by their media manipulations, they whitewash Israel’s crimes on the basis that Israel has the right to defend itself. They won’t say Israel has no right to occupy other people’s countries. They won’t say Israel is committing genocide.
They refuse to put Israel in league with Nazi Germany, which used food as a weapon of war when it laid a 900-day siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944 and starved more than one million Soviet citizens to death. Yet Netanyahu calls Hamas the new Hitler; however, the title fits him best, just as the long and pointed fangs fit the demon’s bloody mouth. Yesterday marked the 600th day of Netanyahu’s insatiable thirst for Palestinian blood. For him, Hamas alone is not the enemy. All Palestinians, including children. He has already killed 20,000 babies, who he thinks are the next line of resistance against Israel’s illegal occupation.
The world stood idle when nearly 800,000 Tutsis were massacred over three months in Rwanda in 1994. The US, France, Britain, and the UN knew of the horror but did not feel the urgency to intervene and stop the genocide. To cover up their complicity, they revived the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine and said ‘Never again’ once again. They had earlier given this pledge in the aftermath of World War II not to let a Holocaust happen. But when the Palestinians are being eliminated in a slow genocide by Israel, the West’s twisted Responsibility-to-Protect doctrine appallingly comes into play only to protect the aggressor.
In a post on X, the newly inducted Pope Leo said, “From #Gaza, the cries of parents rise to heaven ever more intensely as they clutch the lifeless bodies of their children, searching for food and shelter from bombs. I renew my appeal to leaders: cease fire, release all hostages, and fully respect international humanitarian law!”
But is any Western leader listening to the papal appeal? Shockingly, none. These leaders may issue statements condemning Israel—after aiding and arming it in committing genocide for 19 months—but the peace-loving global community has little faith in their sudden change of heart.
Earlier this week, in one of the most heartbreaking tragedies, Palestinian doctor Alaa al-Najjar lost nine of her ten children in an Israeli bombing on Khan Younis while she was at the Nasser hospital struggling to save children critically wounded by Israeli attacks. The image of the 35-year-old mother hugging the lifeless bodies of her seven children—with two more of her dead children buried under the rubble—was, to say the least, beyond the heart’s ability to bear.
Was any Western leader moved by her grief? Sadly, none.
Empty words won’t stop Gaza’s tragedy, but tougher actions will.
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