Gaza's Famine and the Pathetic U.S. Response

When our top officials can’t even acknowledge the reality or the cause, what chance is there that they will respond to the crisis with the appropriate urgency?

Antony Blinken was asked yesterday at a State Department press briefing if he agreed with the EU’s Josep Borrell that Israel was using starvation as a weapon in Gaza, and he gave this answer:

What we’ve seen in terms of food as well as other supplies, going to your – the second part of your question, is of course the Israelis have been not only allowing food in, they have been working to make sure that it gets in and gets to people who need it.  We’ve seen throughout this process, first, the opening of Rafah back in October.  After my first visit to Israel, many hours of discussion, Rafah opened.  Assistance began to get in.  We went back some weeks later.  We got agreement to open Kerem Shalom.  During the first pause, the hostage pause, one week, the amount of assistance that was then going in doubled during that period of time. 

Since then, we’ve pressed them on doing things like getting flour in from Ashdod; I mentioned that a short while ago.  The flour that is now getting into Gaza is enough to produce bread to last for six months in Gaza.  We have a new opening that was just put in place that will facilitate more assistance going in.  And of course, I talked about the maritime corridor that we’re building.  We’ve been doing air drops.  The bottom line is food is getting in, but it’s insufficient. That’s why we’re talking about doing everything possible to maximize not only what gets in but what gets to people. 

If the occupying power of a territory deprives the population of basic necessities and objects indispensable for survival for five months but occasionally lets in a trickle of aid, they are still collectively punishing the population and deliberately starving them. The evidence that the Israeli government has been blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid is also overwhelming. Refugees International released a report on this last week:

Despite its claims to be facilitating humanitarian aid, research and analysis by Refugees International shows that Israeli conduct has consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations, and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Blinken talks about “doing everything possible to maximize” what gets to the people of Gaza, but it is obvious that our government isn’t doing that. Instead our government settles for dangerous and ineffective stunts and token aid deliveries that cannot prevent or mitigate the famine that is already happening. The executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA had this to say in response to the president’s announcement of the building of a temporary pier:

The US plan for a temporary pier in Gaza to increase the flow of humanitarian aid is a glaring distraction from the real problem: Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate military campaign and punishing siege. The food, water, and medical supplies so desperately needed by people in Gaza are sitting just across the border. Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies. This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem. Rather than look to the US military to build a work-around, the US should insist on immediate humanitarian access using the roads and entry points that already exist.

Blinken points to the small amount of aid that has been allowed in as if it disproves the charge of using starvation as a weapon that Borrell, Human Rights Watch, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, and others have made. Permitting a small amount of aid absolutely does not absolve Israel of committing starvation crimes. Alex de Waal, author of Mass Starvation, reminded us last month of how this crime is defined:

And the actions undertaken by the government of Israel — and the war crime of starvation is defined thus: “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies.” So the main element of the crime is destroying food, foodstuffs, hospitals, medical care, sanitation, shelter, etc. [bold mine-DL] Unless that is all stopped, Gaza will be in famine.

The record of what the Israeli government has done in Gaza is clear. They imposed a blockade in the first week of the war. Their forces have been destroying farms, orchards, greenhouses, and fishing boats. Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, has said, “We've never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so completely and so quickly. Never in modern history. We’ve never seen children pushed into malnutrition so quickly. Never.”

How does Blinken think this happened? It is the result of deliberate policy choices by the Israeli government. He won’t admit that, but there must be many people in his own department that know this to be the case. When our top officials can’t even acknowledge the reality or the cause, what chance is there that they will respond to the crisis with the appropriate urgency?

The speed and scale of the starvation of Gaza have been greater than in any recent humanitarian crisis. There have been other examples of governments using starvation as a weapon, including the Saudis and their allies in Yemen and the Syrian government in the civil war, but this crisis is unprecedented in how rapidly the civilian population has been driven to starvation. That makes the failure of the U.S. and other major countries to respond to this crisis all the more terrible. The need for urgent relief is extraordinary, and the reaction from the world’s wealthiest nations has been pathetically slow and inadequate.