Mike Whitney • March 1, 2024
The majority of Palestinians in Rafah live in an area that is roughly the size of Heathrow Airport. The city is cramped and unsanitary. It is surrounded on three sides by Israeli ground forces and on the fourth side by the 20 ft high Egyptian border wall. For all practical purposes, Rafah is a prison, the only difference being that, in a prison, the inmates are fed. In Rafah, no one is fed even though there are nearly 2,000 humanitarian trucks lined up beyond the Rafah Crossing waiting to deliver food to the starving population. The humanitarian convoy is being blocked by Israeli forces that are acting on orders from top military leaders. Ostensibly, Israel is depriving the Palestinians of food to create a strong incentive for them to flee the country when the Egyptian border is breached. When that happens, the western media will characterize the exodus as a “voluntary migration”, a designation that downplays the reality of ethnic cleansing.
On Thursday, Israel launched a surprise attack on Palestinians who had gathered at food trucks in Gaza City. According to numerous reports, more than 100 people were gunned down while trying to get desperately needed food. Here’s a short recap of what took place:
“At about 4:30 this morning, trucks started to come through. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing at us as if it were a trap,” the man recounted to Quds News Network, as cited by Al Jazeera.
“As the Israeli military opened fire on the aid seekers, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies in the southwestern parts of Gaza City. It is a massacre, on top of the starvation threatening citizens in Gaza,” Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul said.
Over 250 Palestinians were wounded in the attack, the majority of whom have been taken to al-Shifa Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“Some of the others are being rushed to the Ahli and Jordanian hospitals. The [death toll] will rise. Hospitals are no longer able to accommodate the huge number of patients because they lack fuel, let alone medicine. Hospitals have also run out of blood,” al-Goul added….
Following the attack, Jadallah al-Shafei, head of the nurses’ department at al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera the “situation cannot be described in words… It is reminiscent of the dark scenes from the Baptist Hospital four months ago where 500 people were killed in one Israeli air strike,” he said.
“Since the early hours of the morning, the hospital has been flooded with dozens of dead bodies and hundreds of injured. The majority of the victims suffered gunshot wounds and shrapnel in the head and upper parts of their bodies. They were hit by direct artillery shelling, drone missiles, and gunshots. Israeli forces massacre civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, Mondoweiss
The incident is just the latest in an endless series of massacres. Israeli airstrikes account for the killing of 50 or-more people a day. The victims of these attacks are civilians, they are not Hamas and Israel knows they are not Hamas. But the killing goes on regardless. Why? Why is Israel shooting blameless civilians going about their business? What strategic benefit is there to that?
Plenty. The hungrier and more desperate the people are, the more likely they are to storm the border as soon as the wall has been breached. This is the only logical explanation for Israel’s behavior. They want to keep anxiety levels sky-high in order to produce the outcome they seek which is the expulsion of the entire Palestinian population. So, while it’s true that Israel’s attacks on civilians amounts to cold-blooded murder, it is cold-blooded murder with a purpose. And the purpose is the realization of the Zionist ideal of a Jewish-majority homeland from the “River to the Sea”. That majority can only be achieved by driving the Palestinians out of the country and into Egypt.
Have you seen the videos of the Israelis blocking food shipments to the people in Gaza? Some of these videos contain footage of families wrapped in Israeli flags, singing and dancing while they prevent aid trucks from entering Rafah. At one checkpoint the Israelis gyrate wildly while the loudspeakers blast rock-and-roll music at full volume. At another checkpoint, flag-draped Israelis set up an inflatable “Bouncy Palace” so their children can play with their friends while their parents stop emergency food supplies from crossing the border.
How do you explain this type of behavior? How do you explain the fact that seemingly normal people –who have jobs, went to college, and probably engage in the same social activities as the rest of us– are capable of such unspeakable cruelty? Are these the “good Germans” we’ve read so much about over the years?
No, this is very different, after all, no one can claim that “I was just following orders.” No one ordered these people to block food shipments at the border. They are here voluntarily because they want to be here. They want to be able to tell their grandchildren that, when their army launched its attack on the Palestinians in Gaza, they made their contribution by ensuring that women and children would face an agonizing death by starvation.
Once again, how do you explain this type of behavior?
Many of these people have allowed themselves to interviewed, and the interviews have been widely circulated on Twitter. Surprisingly, these people are quite bold in defending themselves. What’s clear, is that they believe in what they are doing and don’t feel any remorse for their actions. It’s extraordinary. Here you have intelligent, articulate people standing in front of a camera and making the case that it is their patriotic duty to starve thousands of women and children to death. It boggles the mind. And it boggles the mind to see them cheer wildly and celebrate when they stop the food trucks that are the last lifeline to an ailing population. For these people, starvation is not an avoidable crisis or a moral dilemma. For these people, starvation is victory.
Do you know what the term “sadistic” means?
It means: “taking pleasure in the infliction of pain, punishment, or humiliation on others.” (Merriam-Webster)
Would it be fair to call Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians ‘sadistic’? Would it be accurate to say that Israel’s assault on a civilian population goes far-beyond what ordinary people would regard as normal behavior? We’ve all seen the devastation, the ruins, and the mountain of rubble stretching miles in all directions. How do we make sense of these things? And what do they tell us about Israel? Do they tell us that Israel is trying to “defend itself”?
Of course, not. Transforming Gaza into a moonscape has nothing to do with ‘self-defense’. And it doesn’t have anything to do with vengeance either. It’s all about the land; seizing the land from its indigenous owners and incorporating it into a Greater Israel. That’s what Zionism is, a messianic ideology that blinds its adherents to the suffering of others, and turns intelligent, responsible men into heartless brutes capable of unimaginable savagery.
Israel’s rampage in Gaza is not the result of security concerns or the rebuilding of deterrents. No. It is the result of an idea that permeates Israeli culture and is finding expression in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Millions of non-Jews are being forced out of the country to preserve the racial purity of the state, the Jewish state. This is the idea that fuels the carnage; this is the dystopian ideal that has produced Gaza’s killing fields.
This is from an article at the Electronic Intifada:
Every single child in Gaza is facing death – either by Israeli bombardments, starvation or disease. More than one million children are living a catastrophic health emergency directly caused by Israel’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian aid, according to a new report by Save the Children.
In northern Gaza, which has effectively been cut off from aid deliveries by the Israeli military, one in six toddlers is acutely malnourished… “The Gaza Strip is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza,” warned Ted Chaiban of UNICEF last week….
Every child in Gaza faces starvation, Electronic Intifada
He’s right, isn’t he? Every child is facing a death sentence because he was born an Arab in a land that has been taken from him. Had he been born Jewish; his fate would have been entirely different. Had he been born Jewish; he would not be huddled in a tent in a squalid refugee camp in Rafah waiting for the Israeli army to drive him into the desert at gunpoint. But he was not born Jewish, so he’ll either have to go where he is told or die in his present location. There is no third option. Here’s more from UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri:
“The speed of malnourishment of young children is astounding. The bombing and people being killed directly is brutal, but the starvation—and the wasting and stunting of children—is torturous and vile. It will have a long-term impact on the population physically, cognitively and morally…
“We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely, that is the consensus among starvation experts,” said Fakhri. “Israel is not just targeting civilians, it is trying to damn the future of the Palestinian people by harming their children.” Biden claims Gaza ceasefire in sight as Palestinians starve, World Socialist Web Site
Israel has meticulously targeted food storage facilities, granaries, mills and bakeries. All the traditional sources of food production have been destroyed. There are numerous videos on the Internet showing tanks or armored vehicles crushing canned-goods or bags of flour beneath their treads. What we are seeing is the most robust and determined effort to starve a population in modern times. And it goes far-beyond the mere destruction of food production facilities and the blocking of humanitarian aid trucks. Israel is even taking aim at visa requirements in a fiendish attempt to prevent humanitarian organizations from operating in Gaza at all. Here’s the story from The Guardian:
Israel has stopped issuing visas for international staff of humanitarian organizations that work in occupied Palestinian territories, hampering efforts to get food and other vital supplies into Gaza.
Dozens of foreign aid workers, including heads of organisations, have had to leave Israel and the Palestinian territories, or are overstaying their visas and risking deportation so they can continue working, an alliance of aid groups has warned.
Emergency response teams, who have the specialist experience to deal with the multiple challenges of working in Gaza, are particularly affected…Visas are required to enter Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, but new ones have effectively been blocked by the ministry of welfare and social affairs….
There have always been ups and downs… where access was harder. But never on this scale… With no humanitarian visa renewals since the outbreak of this war, [Israel is] leaving humanitarian workers facing deportation when the Palestinian people need them most.” Humanitarian workers face deportation from Israel after freeze on visas, Guardian
Is this not sinister?
The food producing facilities have all been destroyed, the humanitarian aid convoys have been blocked, and now even the foreign aid workers and emergency response teams are being deported. Israel is determined to control every grain of rice that enters the Gaza Strip so they can keep a stranglehold on a population that had the audacity to be born in a land destined to become the Jewish state.
On top of that, the Israeli army has started mowing down civilians who dare to approach the food trucks that provide the meagre gruel that keeps their families alive.
Can it get any worse?
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