“The starvation of the people of Gaza is no accident, this is not famine created by nature – it is the deliberate act of the state of Israel.”
By Hugh Lanning
How is it possible to witness in plain sight the deliberate starvation of a people? It requires the will and the means of the perpetrators and the collaboration of the witnesses.
Israel has always thought it is right and believed it has the right to do whatever it wills to the Palestinian people. From before its inception to its current Zionist leaders in the Government and Knesset they have referenced “Amalek” – which they believe gives them the biblical right to totally destroy their enemies.
Jonathan Freedland says in the Guardian, in response to Israel’s claim that its critics threatening recognition are appeasers like Chamberlain at Munich: “As if there is any analogy between Nazi Germany grabbing a chunk of Czechoslovakia and Palestinians seeking self-determination in their homeland”.
Israel squirms and equivocates trying to shift the threshold of the definitions of genocide and famine. It cannot be a genocide, the Holocaust, the only true genocide, was a lot worse. It is not famine, there is still food, it is Hamas blocking the food trucks and making us shoot at those queuing for food.
In the manner of Henry II, “will no one rid me of …”, Hitler is alleged to have said to his officers “It is my staunch desire to wipe Czechoslovakia off the map”. Netanyahu and his allies are as clear in their objectives in their war – they want rid of the Palestinians by ethnic cleansing, being bombed to death or starvation, whatever it takes.
The starvation of the people of Gaza is no accident, this is not famine created by nature – it is the deliberate act of the state of Israel. Since 2006, if not before, Israel has pursued the policy of putting the Palestinians on a diet, “but not to let them die of hunger”. According to their calculations this required 1.836kg of food per day, 2,279 calories per person.
Obstructing, blocking and, finally, banning the much-loathed UNWRA from distributing food in Gaza was a final piece in the Israeli jigsaw. Then, at some point prior to March, when all food aid was blocked, there was a proposition that Gaza should be taken off its diet and starved into submission. This was a conscious decision that was given authorisation at the highest level, no doubt by Netanyahu’s inner war cabinet. To the troops who carried out the order, they were told – yes, go ahead, block all food going into Gaza until further notice. The consequences were known and obvious.
By any standards, this is a ‘crime against humanity’ for which those responsible must stand trial in The Hague whatever their status or office. But they should not stand trial alone. Whilst Starmer, Lammy, Macron and others are playing diplomatic chess with Palestinian lives, most recently over the recognition of Palestine, we have willed or not blocked the means for this policy of starvation to be enacted.
Lammy, far from being, as he apparently thinks, “the right person, in the right place, at the right time”, has fiddled whilst Gaza has been bombed, flattened and starved. Israel’s actions were not secrets or surprises to our governments, who knew, watched and did nothing. The risk with the debate around recognition and two-states is that it is a diversion and dead-end whilst there is no change to Israel’s actions, no end to the ever-growing number of Palestinian deaths – counted and the many, as yet, uncounted hidden under the rubble.
And we, the UK and the West, have the means to stop Israel’s genocide – as we are obliged to do under the international laws that we wrote and signed – to stop or prevent it from happening. Israel is not a self-sufficient state, it relies on supplies from its Western allies for its war machine, its economy; it requires our aid and collaboration to do what it is doing.
We are not innocent bystanders watching in horror, it is not as Freedland says – the world turning on Netanyahu as he starves Gaza. First, this is not the policy of some single, megalomaniacal leader, accurate a description though that might be, it has the wholehearted support of the majority of the Jews living in Israel – although decreasingly of those abroad.
Secondly, it is a policy with which we have actively collaborated, we have done none of the things, not exercised the sanctions we could have brought to bear on Israel to make it stop. So, when the time comes for those responsible to be held accountable – as will surely happen eventually, it should be Starmer, Lammy and others who should stand trial as well. They have the means to stop the starvation of Gaza, not through dropping a few parcels from the air or establishing ‘killing’ food stations in Gaza – but by ensuring UNWRA is free to go about its role – feeding the people of Gaza.
We claim to be civilised, it was not Israel that invented the use of starvation as a weapon of war, that happened thousands of years ago, but we cannot be truly civilised if we continue to allow this to go on. This should not be possible. It is a crime against our humanity. The collaboration must end.
- Hugh Lanning is an officer of Labour and Palestine, former Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and former Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.
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