“We have become
inured to bestiality”—ret. U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, on the
lack of response, globally, to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
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Autopsy X-Ray of Palestinian child shot in head by Israeli sniper |
IN EARLY MARCH,
Israel once more blockaded the Gaza Strip. No food aid would be allowed in
until the end of May when the newly incorporated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)
was brought in to handle food distribution to the over two million Gazans, many
of whom were suffering from malnutrition. From the get-go, the GHF was
understood to be a tool of subjugation, offering food aid at four “aid hubs”
located in the south-central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip. To receive
food, Gazans must move near the aid stations, concentrating the population into
the southern Rafah district where they live in tents or among the ruins. 90% of
the Palestinian population has been displaced from their homes.
👉Food
distribution using such a system is ineffective and wholly inadequate, “forcing
two million people into overcrowded and militarized aid zones* where they face daily gunfire” from Israeli soldiers. (BBC)
A RECENT STUDY suggests this is not a fault but, instead, a feature of the system. Yaakov Garb, Associate
Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev,
published a study of the Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation and its aid distribution network in southern Gaza.
AS THE MAP shows
there are four aid “hubs” set up, ostensibly to provide food aid for approximately
2.1 million Palestinians. I say “ostensively”
because the GHF has been roundly criticized by the UN and 170 charitable aid
organizations as being wholly inadequate for the job. Note that prior to Israel’s
2025 blockades of foreign humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, UNRWA (United
Nations Relief and Works Agency) had four hundred aid sites set up throughout the Palestinian
enclave. As Garb’s study suggests, GHF’s inability to provide timely, adequate
food and other supplies to Gazan citizens needing aid is, in fact, how this new system is
supposed to function. Not all Gazans can travel to the aid centres and not all who do make the journey receive aid once they arrive because of supply shortages and administrative oversights.
👉This is a feature of the system—to keep Gazans hungry
and desperate and insecure. And these distribution hubs are manned by often-armed American "contractors" and the grounds are patrolled by IDF soldiers adding
an element of threat for Palestinians seeking aid. Since GHF started in late
May, there have been daily instances of people killed by IDF fire en route to aid
centres or while they are queued. As of last Tuesday, 583 Palestinians were
killed including 408 near the distribution centres. “Today, Palestinians in
Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying
desperately to reach food to feed their families." (BBC)
“UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the GHF's aid
distribution system ‘inherently unsafe’, adding: ‘It is killing people.’ From
the start the UN has opposed the plan, saying it would ‘militarize’ aid, bypass
the existing UN-led distribution network and force Gazans to make long journeys
through dangerous territory to get food.” (BBC)
Garb’s study
provides helpful information on the physical location of the aid centres (in one
location, forcing people to travel miles for a box of food or to relocate
nearer the hubs). He reviews the physical structure of the distribution
centres, their layout, fencing, sight lines etc. He concludes the aid centres
are designed to accommodate military requirements for crowd control and
policing:
“The internal
layout of these compounds seems to bear the deep imprint of their military
context and mindset. Their architecture is the inverse of well accepted and
tested principles of food distribution in conflict or disaster areas, and
liable to cause recurrent episodes of chaos and violence.” (Garb)
He adds, comparing
true humanitarian aid systems with the cobbled together Israeli-American
sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s operation:
“This layout is
so far removed from the design principles and established guidelines for planning
emergency camps and distribution sites that a comparison is almost pointless. Humanitarian
design principles aim to integrate choice and dignity, reduce physical barriers,
rely on community mobilizers and trained de-escalation facilitators rather than
armed guards, and other facilities such as shading, toilets and water, as well
as first aid posts, and dedicated lanes for vulnerable groups” (Ibid)
EACH FOOD BOX is
calibrated to feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days, ensuring a continual “coercive” flow
through “dangerous and militarized zones” that Palestinians must regularly make.
The bull-dozed, flat and fenced off reception area of a GHF aid centre is surrounded
by steep embankments and guard towers, with obvious “choke points” along a ‘fatal
funnel’ Palestinians must pass through. The open-air facility, with its single entrance
and exit is designed to intimidate and to increase stress levels in a population
already traumatized from twenty months of relentless IDF bombings and gunfire. Those same troops responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans now guard the food distribution centres, adding to issues of
crowd control and the all-too-quick use of lethal fire against unarmed
civilians by IDF soldiers and by some American mercenaries contractors. Hence, the daily shootings we witness of dozens of
Palestinians as they approach or enter GHF’s militarized aid zones.
👉Garb makes it
clear that the design of the aid centres promotes insecurity and threats of being exposed with a ‘target on your back’. It’s no wonder there are chaotic scenes of
overrun facilities or else crowds of Palestinians fleeing Israeli gunfire
before they can get a box of food. And this, too, is a feature of the system; feeding
Gazans is not the mission of the GHF. It is there to present a show of
humanitarian relief, a bare minimum (if that) of food and medicines doled out,
so the Israelis can tell the world: “Look, we’re trying to get the food aid
distributed but Hamas….” Blahblahblah. Shameful!
Gazan mothers are unable to breast feed because they lack enough nourishment for
themselves, and baby formula is not allowed into Gaza. Meanwhile, newborn babies are malnourished
and dying.
How can this be
happening? How can this be allowed to happen?
FUN FACT: UNICEF
(United Nations International Children Emergency Fund) estimates upwards of
4,000 children in Gaza have one or more limbs amputated (often without anesthesia) due to Israeli bombing or gunfire. The Palestinian enclave has
more child amputees per capita that anywhere else on earth.
FUN FACT: During the Twelve Day War between Israel and Iran, Israeli warplanes that did not fire all their ordnance during their missions were ordered to discharge leftover payloads on Gaza as they returned to Israeli air space. Waste not, want not, I suppose.
FUN FACT: "American contractors guarding aid distribution sites in Gaza are using
live ammunition and stun grenades as hungry Palestinians scramble for
food," according to The Associated Press.
FUN FACT: The
Friday, June 13 surprise attack on Iran by Israel at the start of the
“Twelve-day War” had two “decapitation” sub-operations: One was the targeted
assassinations of perhaps thirty Iranian Air Force leaders assembled for a meeting. This sub-operation
was code-named “The Red Wedding”. A second decapitation strike, the
near-simultaneous assassinations of nine top Iranian nuclear scientists, was
code-named “Operation Narnia”. For
those who don’t know, “The Red Wedding” was a chapter in the fantasy novel, The
Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (as well as the popular HBO
television series). In it, Robb Stark, the scion of the Stark family, along with his entourage and body guards are murdered by Lord Walder Frey as
they celebrated the wedding of Frey's daughter, Roslin to Edmure Tully at Walder’s Riverlands castle. Lord Frey orchestrated the deadly massacre as revenge for Robb's breaking a marriage pact with the Freys. Treachery and
stealth were features in making Lord Frey’s bloody revenge a success, and the same holds true for Israel’s assassination plot against the Iranian military leaders.
“Operation Narnia”
takes its name from C.S. Lewis’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia
and suggests the plot to murder the nuclear scientists was considered a
‘fantasy’ for Israeli Intelligence operatives, one that came with a low
probability for success. But succeed it did, dear readers! The decapitation
strike+ killed the nine, long-surveilled Iranian scientists in their
homes, along with 22 members of their families. Nice.
WHY DO I
PICTURE A SCENE in some seedy, Tel Aviv bar, earlier this year, where a Mossad
operative and his American and British counterparts toss back shooters after having
spent the day hammering out the details for the June 13 attacks. I can all-but-see
the CIA ‘spook’, glassy-eyed and with a world-weary cynicism, his lips curling
in a half-smile-half-sneer, suggest the targeted assassination of a group of
Iranian military officers be code-named the “Red Wedding”, something he recalls
from a book he once read during a happier time in his life. The Brit, an MI6
spy, with his eyebrow arched in a rictus of supreme irony, suggests “Operation
Narnia” for the plot to murder the nine Iranian scientists.
FOR HIS PART, the
Israeli agent laughs and writes down their suggestions on the back of a paper
napkin. He folds the napkin into a postage stamp size, pops it in his mouth and
swallows it along with a shot of tequila, yelling “Top secret!” The table erupts
into loud peals of laughter and calls for more drinks, and the group sings narcocorridor
ballads until closing.
Aslan is not amused.
Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________
* The Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation (a misnomer if ever there was one) purports to be in
Gaza to provide food aid to the starving Gazan population but its real purpose
is to militarize the food distribution system, and to corral and control the
Palestinian population using armed American “contractors” (aka mercenaries). Its
goal is to lure, using food aid, as many Gazans as possible into the Rafah region bordering
Egypt, then immiserate and control them in camps patrolled by the IDF (Israeli Defence
Force) and either shove them into Egypt’s Sinai Desert, or starve them, or kill them, or send them
to other countries. [It's always good to have goals in life and plans to
achieve them. Ed.]
+ In this case,
the Israelis hoped to ‘decapitate’ or degrade the knowledge base of Iran’s
nuclear program by assassinating key personnel.