CRINGE PIC OF THE MONTH: A $300 MILLION PHOTO-OP

 

$320-million just floating away!

REMEMBER that fancy floating pier the U.S. military was building off the central Gazan coast that would significantly address the growing famine crisis there with shiploads of aid? Me neither. I had to be reminded, because we haven’t heard much of anything, for weeks, about that wizz-bang! solution* for bringing aid into the besieged and shattered enclave that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians. Apparently, dozens of truckloads of aid did get stockpiled and delivered via the temporary, floating causeway, but by late May the contraption got a bit seasick and broke apart in the choppy Mediterranean waters. Oopsie! Sections were towed to the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs.

SINCE the pier went into operation, delivery of food and medical supplies have remained compromised due to a breakdown of civil authority in Gaza and the difficulties of establishing a supply network there.¹ Recall that Israel put the kibosh to the largest and most efficient relief agency in Gaza, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), claiming a handful of its thousands of workers—twelve, I believe—were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks. [Still unproven. Ed.] Following Israel’s accusations in January, this year, funding for the UN agency was halted by several Western donors (including toady  Canada) and, as I understand it, the agency is not currently operating in Gaza.

 

    Israeli helicopter in Gazan pier staging area.

AS FOR THE DOCK, the Americans repaired and reinstalled it, but it's been mostly inoperative, again due to choppy seas and distribution bottlenecks. Additionally, there is an ongoing UN investigation as to whether (yes) the pier's gated shore facility was used as a “staging area” for Israel’s bloody, 9 June raid into the Nuiserat¹ refugee camp to free four Israeli hostages, and in the process killing nearly 300 Palestinian refugees and wounding hundreds in an air and ground assault by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). 

Oopsie #2!

RECENTLY, the pier has again (30 June) been towed to Ashdod because choppy seas have made it inoperable and there is debate as to whether the We-built-a-dock-aren’t-we-great! photo-op thingy will get the kibosh, and the dock dismantled and sold for scrap. Let's get real: The dock was there for show. It was window dressing to let the world see America responding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while at the same time allowing Israel’s criminal treatment of the Palestinian people to continue. [Upwards of 40,000 dead, sixty-thousand wounded and most of Gaza uninhabitable and turned to rubble. Ed.]

 

Meanwhile, according to the latest UN-partnered IPC report on hunger levels in the enclave,

 

"[n]inety-six per cent of the population—some 2.15 million people—face acute food insecurity at a 'crisis' level or higher. That’s level three of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) index.

Included in this number are almost half a million people enduring ‘catastrophic conditions’ (IPC level five), the IPC update noted, underscoring the “high risk” of famine across the whole Gaza Strip 'as long a conflict continues, and humanitarian access is restricted.'"

 

👉FINAL POINT: As we all know, “Geriatic Joe” could put a halt to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip with one (albeit mumbled) phone call. Stop the fighting, open the gates, make a deal—or no more bucks or bombs. Without U.S. military and financial aid, Israel could not carry out its ethnic cleansing of Gaza, its genocidal attacks upon the Palestinian people, nor potentially escalating the war by attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon.

 

Cheers, Jake.________________________________________

 

* Of course, the ‘solution’ for getting food and medical supplies into Gaza is to open the damn gates! Open the main Rafah gate at the Egyptian border with Gaza (it remains closed due to Israel bombing) and the gates between Israel and Gaza. Overland truck transport is the quickest and most efficient means of distributing aid in the Gaza Strip. The floating pier boondoggle is a bought and paid for clusterfuck.😖

  

1. An Israeli helicopter was filmed inside the pier’s shore facility. Point being, that tactical American support—a staging pad for part of the operation, possibly even the deployment of U.S. special forces—may have been involved with what can only be described as a massacre.